You know this plan won’t work, but everyone else approves so you keep quiet. Or you have the same meeting over and over again, but nothing ever gets resolved. Or you think your boss is dismissive, but you’re afraid to say so. Or you don’t speak up because nothing will change. These aren’t isolated frustrations. They’re symptoms of broken team communication. They can signal avoidance of difficult conversations and even significant team dysfunction.

On episode 149 of The Science of Personality, Gustavo Razzetti, CEO and founder of Fearless Culture and author of Forward Talk: The Bold New Method for Getting Teams Unstuck, discusses why teams get stuck and what it takes to get them moving again.

“If you want to change your culture, you need to start by changing your conversations,” Gustavo said.

The Avoidance Trap

Teams get stuck when they avoid having conversations that help them move forward. Anyone who’s worked on a team knows exactly how that feels.

Gustavo describes a two-by-two matrix for diagnosing stuck teams. One axis is whether the team is focused on the past or the future. The other is whether the team is addressing the issue or avoiding it. Three of the four quadrants are unhelpful:

• Blame (past + addressing) – The team focuses on what went wrong and who’s at fault instead of moving forward.
• Avoidance (past + avoiding) – The team neither addresses past issues nor moves past them.
• Groupthink (future + avoiding) – The team agrees to move on, creating the illusion of progress while leaving the real issue unaddressed.

The fourth quadrant is forward talk. This means the team has conversations that address the issue and focus on the future rather than the past.

Why Teams Avoid Difficult Conversations

Our emotions keep us from having challenging conversations. Fear is one reason why team members don’t engage in conversation, share their perspectives, or ask questions. When Gustavo surveyed team members about why they thought others don’t engage in important conversations, most said their colleagues were afraid.

Resignation is another reason why team members don’t, can’t, or won’t communicate. When Gustavo asked team members why they themselves didn’t engage, most said, “Because nothing’s going to change.” When organisations ignore the results of engagement surveys or handle change management poorly, trust suffers.

When teams avoid important conversations, they accrue what Gustavo called conversational debt. He compared this concept to credit card debt: the debt exists whether you open your credit card statement or not. The same happens with unresolved conflict. “The more we avoid it, the worse it’s going to become,” he said. On the other hand, when people engage in a genuine, authentic conversation, even if it is tough, they usually perceive that it went well. They also feel relief from their fear.

Personality and Conflict Avoidance

People with certain personality characteristics are more likely to avoid conflict than others. These people are more sensitive to or influenced by the workplace environment, such as the degree of psychological safety. “If a context is safe, people are going to speak more than if it’s not,” Gustavo said. The opposite is also true.

Other people are more likely to speak up or push back no matter the context. In Hogan terms, these behaviours are likely related to groups of scales on the Hogan Development Survey, which measures how people tend to behave when they aren’t self-monitoring. Someone who has a low Cautious score or a low Dutiful score would be more likely to speak up and challenge authority. Conversely, someone with a high Cautious score might be more likely to avoid conflict, and someone with a high Dutiful score might be particularly prone to groupthink.

The Leader’s Role in Team Communication

The personality of the leader also plays an important role in how teams communicate and respond to their environment. Leaders who dominate conversations need to learn to facilitate conversations instead. Effective leadership means building and maintaining a high-performing team. That means leaders accomplish work by means of their team and shouldn’t provide all the answers themselves. “You [a leader] should be curating the answers from your team, getting the best out of people. You need to make sense of those different personalities to inform your decisions,” Gustavo said.

How to Tell If Your Team Is Stuck

The team seems to be performing well. Then suddenly their metrics start to suffer. Why? “If you’re not addressing the real topics, that’s going to hurt the team,” Gustavo explained.

Signs that a team is stuck include a lack of consensus and relitigation of decisions. Blaming others, whether another employee, the budget, the timeline, or anything else, is also an indication that all is not well with team communication.

Gustavo told a story about an executive team he worked with whose CEO was leaving the organisation after many years of leadership. The team was definitely stuck. Some team members thought they would become the next CEO. Others wanted the current CEO to stay longer so they could accomplish their goals. None of them faced the reality of the CEO’s departure. They didn’t have a conversation about next steps for themselves and their organisation.

For a leader to notice that their team communication is stuck, they need humility to realise they don’t have all the answers. They need to build a psychologically safe environment for their team members to speak. And they need to take the lead on modelling courage by admitting their mistakes. Leaders who only hand down orders are unlikely to be aware that their team even has a leadership problem.

The Link Between Team Communication and Trust

One excellent place for leaders to start is by asking for feedback. Gustavo points to Steve Jobs, who got only silence at Pixar town halls until he started asking two simple questions: What’s working? What’s not working? The questions gave employees permission to acknowledge what was going well and to name what could improve.

This openness, even when starting small, fosters trust. “Trust is the foundation of effective conversations,” Gustavo said. “Trust gets built through actions and interactions.” The two questions also signal positive intent toward improving team communication and reducing team dysfunction.

Advice for Leaders

When team members have worked together for weeks, months, and years, difficult conversations can be challenging. However, avoidance only contributes to the problem. “We all play a part in the conversations. If other people are not participating, that’s not an excuse for you to not do so,” Gustavo said. He urged leaders not to regret the conversations they avoid having. Team communication can improve . . . but only if the leader has enough courage to address why the team is stuck.

Listen to this conversation in full on episode 149 of The Science of Personality.