How to Fix Dysfunctional Team Dynamics

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Leadership, case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts—hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you.

There are endless types of team dysfunction—types easier to fix than others. In this Dear HBR: episode from 2018, Harvard Business School professor and psychological safety expert Amy Edmondson joins hosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn. They give advice to listeners who are struggling to manage their own dysfunctional teams. And they talk through what to do when team communication breaks down, when a team doesn’t respect its leader, or when a people-pleasing boss won’t confront a toxic colleague.

ALISON BEARD: OK. First question. Dear HBR: I’ve been at my current company for a little over four years and a change in our teamwork has me frustrated. I work in a small strategy office. There’s a Vice President, one corporate Director, two Senior Managers and one Data Manager. I’m one of three Senior Planning Associates. People on our team proudly tout that we have a flat office culture, but lately, this has changed drastically. About a year ago our VP, Corporate Director, and two Senior Managers started having meetings about projects without the rest of us. Ever since there’s been a change in our team culture. Communication is less frequent and less transparent. I’ve been taken off projects, or added to them with little or no discussion, leaving me completely in the dark. The expectation is that a project lead with a Senior Manager title will work together as equals with the Senior Planning Associate, but this is rarely if ever the case. Often as the Senior Planning Associate I end up doing most of the work on projects, but I receive hardly any of the credit. The Senior Managers aren’t giving my boss an accurate picture of my performance. I’ve tried to bring these frustrations to her, but she seems to have little interest in listening to my concerns. I’ve begun looking for other jobs. What else can I do? Amy, what do you think?

AMY EDMONDSON: This is one of those situations where first we have to back up and say teamwork is hard and office dynamics are hard. That’s the nature of the beast. I think I would start with this issue of communication now seems to be less transparent. I’m not in the loop anymore. I think one of the best ways to put yourself back in the loop is asking good questions.

DAN MCGINN: Can you give us an example of a question this letter writer might ask?

AMY EDMONDSON: The question would address the project. The desire to know more and offer to help with important aspects of the work.

ALISON BEARD: But how do you do that as the junior person without seeming annoying?

AMY EDMONDSON: It really starts with intent. If your intent is to learn, your intent is to offer value, you will not be seen as annoying. I promise.

DAN MCGINN: The big question I had here is what happened a year ago that made them change their meetings and their decision-making process? Whether there was an incident, whether there was a perception that maybe some of the junior people were making decision making more difficult. I don’t know that they just would have woken up one morning and say, hey, let’s exclude all the junior people and make the decisions in a closed room and not tell them anything about it. Figuring out what this sort of in sighting incident that led to the change might be useful information here.

AMY EDMONDSON: I think that’s a great point. It is probably important for the letter writer to better understand what changed and why from others perspectives, not just from her own perspective. It’s probably not the case that we’re going to get the old system back. What we want to have is to make the new system feel engaging and functional for her, so that she can make the contribution she believes she can make.

ALISON BEARD: I think that’s the real problem here is that the higher-ups haven’t done any job of communicating why this change has been made and it was an organization that touted its lack of hierarchy. How can she as this very junior person, who now is operating in a much more hierarchal environment, flag that poor communication to her bosses and make them communicate?

AMY EDMONDSON: I would have to encourage her to not frame it as poor communication, even though it may be poor communication. But to frame it as an unintended gap. So, I saw a change and I don’t fully understand the rationale. I would love to understand it better so that I can work most effectively in this new system.

ALISON BEARD: Right. She does mention that she’s talked to her boss and it worries me that she’s come to her boss with complaints and not solutions.

AMY EDMONDSON: And complaints by definition are not curiosity.

DAN MCGINN: Do bosses sometimes unintentionally share the wrong kind of information?

AMY EDMONDSON: Absolutely. So, here’s the right kind of information. The right kind of information is first and foremost, why it matters that we do what we do. And then very quickly, I’ve got to give you information that helps you connect what you do, in your role to that ultimate purpose. And quite often that’s not done.

ALISON BEARD: So, I think one aspect of engagement that bosses overlook is recognition and our letter writer really seems to want recognition for the work that she’s doing. So, how does she do a better job of letting her bosses know that that is important to her and that’s what’s going to keep her engaged even if the flat hierarchy is gone for good?

AMY EDMONDSON: Now the tragic part about that is that it’s free. Recognition doesn’t cost anything. And I think when it’s not being given it’s usually blindness. It’s usually the people are forgetting to realize that very deep human need.

DAN MCGINN: Amy, do you think there’s a link between the fact the culture seems to be getting more autocratic and maybe a little bit more political in the fact that there’s a grab for credit and people are suddenly conscious of who’s getting credit for what?

AMY EDMONDSON: I think there’s absolutely a link. And when we’re in a hierarchy we suddenly have the mindset of scarce resources and credit, I think erroneously in a way, but feels like a scarce resource. People feel it is scarce because they want to have the approval of the higher-ups and they want to be in good positions to move up. This is very human and there are risks to the quality of the work that can be created by that mindset.

ALISON BEARD: It seems to me that part of the problem is that she’s never working directly with her boss. She’s working with people who are her boss for that project. So, how should she approach that just sort of structural issue she has at this organization?

AMY EDMONDSON: Frankly, you’re going to find this in lots of organizations today. If you leave this one, you may find some very similar dynamics in another one because there’s more and more need for teaming, for different relationships, different sort of collaborations over time rather than nice little stable flat teams. And so, doing this well, kind of working closely, collaborating with someone on a piece of the work takes skill and it takes the kind of skill to be constantly saying, here’s what I’m trying to do, what am I missing?

DAN MCGINN: One of the things that I think this letter writer should think about is that she’s not ever going to be happy with a black box decision because I said so, and as she tries to find a new boss in a new organization, if that’s the route she goes, maybe being aware of that need that she has would be useful.

AMY EDMONDSON: But realize that when you opt for a more open, more transparent culture, you’re also opting for a workplace where credit is more difficult to pin on an individual. I mean they have to be the kind of organization where at the end of the day we say, we did it. And it’s not clear which one of us contributed how much.

DAN MCGINN: Maybe this wouldn’t be such a problem if this company hadn’t advertised itself as flat, non-hierarchical, democratic. It results in a mismatch and a hypocrisy.

ALISON BEARD: Which is what’s frustrating our letter writer.

AMY EDMONDSON: I think you’re absolutely right and it’s something I’ve written about, this sort of when people perceive hypocrisy they are extremely demotivated by it.

DAN MCGINN: So, Alison what are we telling her?

ALISON BEARD: So, we feel for her and we understand that she’s been put in a frustrating position. But we’d encourage her to try to understand more about the situation, approaching it not with complaints, but curiosity. What changed and how can I work within this new system. She should recognize that this company might never go back to the premise of flat, open, transparent, but we think that she can find ways to insert herself into the decision making and position herself for getting more credit from her bosses, just by asking smart questions. If she does explore opportunities outside, she needs to look at the cultures where she’s interviewing and make sure that if it’s a flat hierarchy that’s what she wants because that requires intense interpersonal skills, or if she actually prefers a more hierarchal structure because then her tasks and deliverables will be perfectly clear. So, Dan, should we go to the next question?

DAN MCGINN: We should in fact. Dear HBR: I’m writing for advice on how to fix a problem I may have created. I’m a Senior Director for a consulting company in the healthcare industry. When I started with the company, one of my direct reports was a newly promoted director. She had been in this role for around six months before I joined the company, but she was having performance issues. Clients were complaining, so were the teams she managed. As a newbie to the company, I had to figure out what to do. She oversees a handful of operations consulting teams of two to five employees each, working with different clients. These clients were complaining that work was not getting done on time. Also, there was a lack of transparency. The teams complained about her management and her communication style. I put her on a performance improvement plan and coached her. I was more or less micromanaging her. I also assigned her some of our company management training modules. She took the feedback constructively. She worked hard to address her performance issues. The work is now being completed on time, at a high level. The clients are happy. The majority of her teams are happy with the noticeable change as well. But there’s one lingering problem I didn’t anticipate. One of her consulting teams continues to second guess her. They try to go above her to me for minor issues that should be handled by her. I want this team to respect her position and her decisions. The last time this came up I responded that their director briefed me and I support her decision. But am I only perpetuating the issue by admitting I’m checking off on her decisions? How can I get this team to respect the chain of command and give this new and improved team leader the benefit of the doubt regarding her decisions?

AMY EDMONDSON: First of all, I love how he says at the beginning I’m writing for advice on a problem I may have helped create. That is such a strong sign of leadership. And rare. When someone comes to us with the recognition that what they’ve done may have contributed to the challenge they face, I’m just, I think we’re half way there.

ALISON BEARD: Even after he scored this huge victory by turning this underperforming employee into a high performing one. I mean that’s pretty impressive.

AMY EDMONDSON: Exactly. This concern that he expresses that other people may not be fully seeing the change, or may not yet be giving her the benefit of the doubt, this is one of those challenges that I think is pretty easy to address.

ALISON BEARD: Wow, because I totally didn’t think it was easy, so go ahead.

AMY EDMONDSON: See, I just think when people come to him with the minor issues, be very frank with them. I see this is a minor issue. I completely trust the senior director to handle it. Let me know if I’m missing something. But essentially he can be quite direct about the worry he has in this case.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I agree with Amy that two or three well-crafted emails could turn this around. If Amy were the subordinate, this is Amy’s call, but thanks for reaching out and copying Amy on it, or copy the whole team on it. A few demonstrations of the fact that she has authority and respect and is not going to be second-guessed, and I think this element of the problem could go away.

ALISON BEARD: My concern about this boss is that he’s done too much for the senior director and he’s still trying to solve even these minor problems for her. She needs to solve this problem herself.

AMY EDMONDSON: It may be that both need to happen. I agree with the idea that he probably needs to be stepping back. Stepping back which is why I like what Dan said which is answer the question but answer it in such a way that you convey and demonstrate that this really is the manager’s call.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah.

DAN MCGINN: I wonder if he could have in some ways shown more discretion, or been more private so that the team wasn’t hyper-aware of the fact that she was under the microscope and that she was being counseled and coached.

AMY EDMONDSON: I think that’s a really good point. I’m not sure how much other people knew she was on this program. So —

ALISON BEARD: They did know she was an underperformer. The clients were complaining.

AMY EDMONDSON: They knew she was an underperformer.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah.

AMY EDMONDSON: For sure. Certainly, these kinds of developmental opportunities should be done privately and with a great concern for people’s sort of reputation and privacy. But this is an issue between one of her consulting teams and the letter writer. It’s only one frankly, not one of a handful. But that consulting team I think, also needs feedback.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I mean I do wonder what went wrong with this particular team.

AMY EDMONDSON: I think that’s the critical issue, is first to be curious. Because we don’t know why this team isn’t yet happy, or why this team is not giving her the benefit of the doubt. So, the first thing we have to do is find out. Is to learn. And we may discover that there are some dysfunctions in, they’ve banded together against her and that that needs to be really looked at and really addressed. We just don’t know.

ALISON BEARD: Or, she’s not leading this particular team as well as she is the others.

AMY EDMONDSON: Right and it could be a different kind of client. It could be, there could be lots of contributing factors and job one is to learn what they might be.

ALISON BEARD: I definitely agree with that. Frankly, I was surprised that she did such a good job of earning back the trust of all the other teams. So, I think that’s where I’m coming from. But I do wonder how they get to a place of trust without it just taking time.

AMY EDMONDSON: I mean maybe we can do a better job advertising within of how well the other teams are doing that the clients are happy, the teams are happy. Maybe there isn’t a clear enough line of sight on that.

ALISON BEARD: That’s a terrific point. The idea of learning from what happened with the other teams. Why do you now respect this boss? What’s she been doing for you differently? I think that’s a fabulous idea.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I think the fact that this is a two to five-person team is a big advantage here in the sense that it would not take 20 minutes for the letter writer to sit down with each of them and be very candid and say, look, I know we had a little bit of a rocky start for this new boss, but my sense is she’s turned the corner. I trust her. Let’s make this work.

ALISON BEARD: I feel like you both come at persuasion from sort of a fact-based, let’s show the team the evidence of how well she’s doing. And for me, I want her to emotionally win these people over. Reid Hoffman from LinkedIn said the best way to sort of get a team working together is three words. We are allies. So, how can either the boss or the manager just get that connection and trust happening on this team?

AMY EDMONDSON: For me, the best way to improve a relationship is to show interest in them. Act like a leader. Act like a manager that is there to make them do the best possible job for the clients. And that is the way you build the relationship. And the Senior Director who wrote the letter can coach her in doing that.

ALISON BEARD: That’s great advice. So Dan, what are we telling our letter writer?

DAN MCGINN: First we’re giving him a lot of credit. He recognizes that this is a problem he created. He owns it. He’s taking responsibility. He’s also turned this performance around. For a new boss, there’s often a temptation to just start moving people out of the organization. He didn’t do that. He stepped in and he coached. He got this new manager who was struggling up to par and beyond par. So, first a lot of credit to him. In terms of solving this problem, we hope that it could be done fairly easily with a few gestures and candid communication to the team that the manager has his trust, but he expects the manager to be able to handle minor decisions without much input from him. The idea that he may have been micromanaging for a little bit of time, but now he’s going to be hands-off and that she has his trust. We also think it’s worth looking at whether there was anything that was done during the coaching and performance improvement with this manager that could have been done a little bit more discretely to try to keep the problem a little bit less transparent to the teams. We also think the manager has some work to do here as well. She’s succeeded in getting the other teams on her side. She needs to find a way to win over this one team that’s a little slow to get there.

ALISON BEARD: Dear HBR: I’m a senior level professional working with two other senior women and I feel trapped in the middle. My boss is a pleaser and afraid of conflict, though she does complain a lot. My colleague is disrespectful and focuses only on doing whatever helps her career. For example, she speaks disparagingly about the company to clients. But each time I’ve communicated that I find the behavior unacceptable, it’s accomplished nothing. No one wants to address it. So, she’s been allowed to continue with bad behavior. It’s getting worse as she becomes more embedded with clients. There’s no teamwork, no trust. I’m now tolerating it because my complaints haven’t gone anywhere. But I feel I’m enabling my boss, letting her off the hook from having to make tough decisions and reign in this bad employee. The situation is causing me stress. It’s a daily distraction. It’s getting in the way of work. I’ve been with the company for 12 months. Should I just accept that my teammates won’t change and move on?

AMY EDMONDSON: I have enormous empathy for the challenge that she faces. It’s going to be a difficult one to unlock without stopping to do some soul-searching of her own.

ALISON BEARD: What kind of soul searching?

AMY EDMONDSON: So, I think the frame of bad behavior is a problematic frame. What she needs to do is recognize first and foremost that she is very able to see the impact that the behavior is having and she is blinded to, we all are blind to the intentions. Because as long as it’s framed as bad behavior, it’s so threatening and difficult because all you can do is tell the person, well that’s really bad and not working, or stay silent. Those are your only two options. And neither one of them works very well. So, what she needs to do instead is try to understand what the, what her colleague is intending to do.

DAN MCGINN: That’s an interesting perspective and I didn’t think of that one at all. The idea that there may be a motive or an intention to speaking badly about the company. Should maybe our letter writer ask her colleague, hey, help me understand. How is it good for us when you badmouth the company?

ALISON BEARD: That sounds a little passive-aggressive! [LAUGHTER]

AMY EDMONDSON: No, it’s a little to pointed. It’s a little too pointed.

ALISON BEARD: But I would feel the same way.

AMY EDMONDSON: Let’s remember that wonderful phrase, benefit of the doubt. We’ve got to start. We may be wrong, but we’ve got to start by giving the colleague the benefit of the doubt.

DAN MCGINN: All right so if I were a little heavy-handed in asking the question that way, how would the two of you ask it?

ALISON BEARD: I wouldn’t not ask it because I actually do think its bad behavior, so I would really struggle to come from a place of curiosity, but Amy, you answer.

AMY EDMONDSON: Here’s the deal. The phrase speaking disparagingly about the company to clients is ever so slightly abstract. We don’t actually know what that means. It could mean something as innocuous as we are unable to get things turned around within a week’s time. It’s just not something we can do. Which is fairly factual, but could sound disparaging because it has a negative tone to it. Or, it could be oh, we’re bad, we’re hopeless. I mean we just don’t know exactly what that means.

ALISON BEARD: Or, it could be the cafeteria isn’t great.

AMY EDMONDSON: Right.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah.

AMY EDMONDSON: Right, exactly. Right, so it’s too abstract for us to know and so what we want is for her to get a little bit interested in what the colleague sees herself as doing.

DAN MCGINN: You’ve already changed my view of this letter a lot.

ALISON BEARD: But let’s not forget that our letter writer also says she’s disrespectful and focuses only on doing whatever helps her career. Sounds like interpersonal communication. It sounds like a credit stealing, or not sharing situation, too. I would like to give our letter writer the benefit of the doubt in that this woman isn’t a great peer.

AMY EDMONDSON: I agree. I mean it sounds very much like this woman is not a great peer. I just don’t, I don’t hear that as other evidence. I hear it as other attributions. And most of us don’t see ourselves as putting me first or making my career the most important thing over, so these are the kinds of things that all of us are guilty of saying about others, and rarely believe that we engage in. And yet, we are at risk for others believing that we’re doing that and we wouldn’t know, because they don’t tell us. So, all I’m saying is let’s start by walking down what Chris Argyris used to call the ladder of inference. Let’s get from more abstract attributions to more concrete data. When you said or did X, in that client meeting, I worried. And it conveys the, it describes the behavior and the impact it had on me. It doesn’t say when you said you, that was really bad and you really messed up, and you better stop that because it’s unacceptable. Because most of us never saw ourselves as behaving in ways that are unacceptable, or we wouldn’t do it. So, the art of giving good feedback is challenging, but I think quite important.

ALISON BEARD: Did she make a mistake by going to the boss so early?

AMY EDMONDSON: It’s hard to say. I do think it’s important to first give feedback to the colleague and then if timely, skillful feedback doesn’t get you anywhere, then I do think you have a responsibility on behalf of the company to ask for help from the boss.

DAN MCGINN: I think about you and I Alison.

ALISON BEARD: Oh-oh. [LAUGHER] Whom am I in this scenario?

DAN MCGINN: I was about to say something very nice about you really. You and I actually give each other feedback. Like after a meeting you won’t hesitate to pull me aside and say hey, I would have said this differently and I do the same to you. But that comes out of a pretty close relationship and it’s really hard to give peer to peer feedback unless, or until you have that kind of really tight relationship with the person, which she doesn’t have in this situation.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah.

AMY EDMONDSON: I agree with you Dan, and I’d love to change that. But I think that there is at least the possibility for organizations to create that kind of expectation for everybody. In fact, that’s what I might think of as a fearless organization. You two have a long standing work relationship and so, you trust each other. You respect each other. You know you can do this, but I would like it to be possible for people who have just met and who work for the same organization to do that. And I understand that’s a tall order, and I think that today’s leaders have a responsibility to create the conditions and the expectations where people feel they can do that.

ALISON BEARD: That brings us to our letter writer’s second problem. She has a conflict, avoidant boss. So, how does she influence her boss to open up those sorts of conversations?

AMY EDMONDSON: This is a great opportunity for telling your boss the impact it’s having on you. We’re all tempted to say, boss, you’re doing X, Y, Z wrong and it’s bad. It’s problematic. I think we can readily recognize that won’t get you very far. Because no, but you know, for obvious reasons. So, instead what you can say is here is the impact this is having on me. And —

ALISON BEARD: Present evidence.

AMY EDMONDSON: Present, yes. So, you’re coming at it from the I position.

DAN MCGINN: Or, even focusing on the performance of the company. I’m not a boss, but I think I would be more receptive to the argument that this is causing our client billings to go down, to be more compelling than this is making me feel kind of argument.

AMY EDMONDSON: Sorry, I should be clear. When I say impact, I don’t mean feelings necessarily, although feelings matter too. But all I’m saying is you got to come at the problem with the recognition that yours is simply an account of reality, not reality itself. So, here’s what I see. I see her do X. I see and worry about impact Y.

ALISON BEARD: I was worried that this team is so small, it’s so hard to take the personalities out of it. It can’t be oh, I’d like to change the way our team works and open us up to having more candid conversations without the colleague feeling as if it’s all designed for her specifically. Especially since the issues have already been raised.

AMY EDMONDSON: I think she should offer her help. So, she should come to the boss and say here’s my concern. Here’s why it’s my concern. Here’s what I’ve seen and I do worry. Is there any way I can help you in addressing this situation? It doesn’t, don’t even leave open the possibility that the situation shouldn’t be addressed. But offer that help with an understanding that I know this is challenging.

ALISON BEARD: Both of you are suggesting very direct ways of approaching this. Are there any subtle nudges that you can use to encourage either this disrespectful colleague or this conflict avoidant boss to improve their behavior without making it confrontational on this very small team?

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I would think whether there’s anything she can do in subtle ways to try to limit or undo the damage to clients that these remarks are having. Almost kind of like a good cop, bad cop kind of scenario. Maybe there’s a way in a follow-up conversation to explain away these negative remarks. Because it seems like at the end of the day that’s the biggest problem here, is that the clients are being left with negative impressions, and this is somewhat of an impression management kind of thing, and can she nudge that in the other direction?

ALISON BEARD: So, at the end of the letter she does ask, is it time to move on? Do we think that she should even consider that possibility?

AMY EDMONDSON: I think it’s possible. The question would be, has she given up? Because if she has given up, she’s not going to be effective anymore and she might as well go and look for the next organization. The one worry I would have is: be wary of expecting the perfect organization to show up. It won’t. There will always be conflict resistant bosses. There’ll always be colleagues whose behavior you think is ineffective. All of us have to learn how to manage these as well as we can.

DAN MCGINN: So, Alison, what’s our advice?

ALISON BEARD: So, we think that first, she needs to try to take a step back, understand whether her perceptions of her colleague and her boss are totally accurate. One way she can investigate this is by engaging with the colleague first. Ask questions about her intent, why she’s behaving with the clients the way she is, and then give specific feedback about why she’s worried, what she thinks the potential impact to the team and the performance will be. If she’s considering other organizations after she’s tried engagement, she just really needs to understand that she’ll have these problems in most organizations and so she needs to think carefully about making a quick switch.

DAN MCGINN: Amy, thanks for coming on the show.

AMY EDMONDSON: It was a pleasure to be here.

HANNAH BATES: That was HBS professor Amy Edmondson in conversation with Alison Beard and Dan McGinn on Dear HBR:. Edmondson is the author of the book The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth.

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This episode was produced by Curt Nickisch and me, Hannah Bates. Curt is also our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Ian Fox, Maureen Hoch, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.