When one voice becomes the team’s reality

By Sandra Oliver, Impact Founder

One of the most difficult dynamics to manage in senior teams isn’t open conflict, it’s when one person’s version of reality starts to dominate the system. This is especially powerful when the person is intelligent, articulate, senior, forceful, charismatic, or very certain.

The leader may not even realize they’re doing it, but their interpretation of events begins to shape how others see the situation. Their language gets repeated. Their assumptions become the starting point. Their frustration becomes the emotional weather. Their version of the story starts to feel like the story.

They may also genuinely believe what they’re saying. Often, the person isn’t consciously trying to distort the system, but simply feels anxious, threatened, hurt, or convinced that they’re the only one seeing clearly. But because they‘re so compelling, others start to organize around their view. Everyone starts using their language and alternative interpretations get quieter. Meetings become less about discovering what’s true and more about managing the dominant person’s reaction, which can cause the culture to tilt over time.

And for the leaders on the other side of that dynamic, it can be deeply disorienting. We might begin to wonder if we’re seeing things clearly, replay conversations, or ask ourselves if we’re being too sensitive, defensive, slow, difficult, ambitious, passive, emotional, or detached. We may find ourselves working harder to prove our value, explain our intentions, or correct the record.

Reality isn’t as stable as we like to think

In leadership teams, there’s never one clean version of what’s happening. There are lots of factors – facts, events, decisions, numbers, emails, meetings, missed deadlines, client outcomes, performance issues, and things people said – and people build meaning around all of them. For example:

• One colleague might see a missed update as a sign of disrespect, while another sees it as a normal oversight.
• One person sees a colleague’s quietness as disengagement – another sees it as restraint.
• Someone sees a decision as decisive leadership, while someone else sees it as control.
• One person sees themselves as carrying the firm, where someone else sees them as taking up too much space.

Neither person may be entirely wrong in either of these situations – they’re just seeing different parts of the same system. They’re disagreeing about what things mean, and it’s why senior team conflict can become so painful and hard to resolve.

The instinct for many of us is to correct the story, which is understandable. If we feel misrepresented, we feel the need to set the record straight or push back. But trying to “win” a reality contest usually makes the dynamic worse.

Three simple steps to move forward positively

The more we argue our version, the more entrenched the other person may become. The room can polarize and people can start choosing sides. A better move is to focus on these  three things:

• What happened?
• What meaning are people making of it?
• What impact is it having?

For example, if a partner didn’t attend two meetings, the interpretation might be that they’re disengaged, disrespectful, overwhelmed, excluded, avoiding conflict, or focused on something more urgent. And the impact might be that others feel unsupported, decisions slow down, or frustration increases.

It’s important to do the internal work and have the courageous conversations necessary to uncover the truth of what’s really happening. Once we do, we can begin addressing it in more constructive ways that benefit everyone. And help build stronger team and organizational culture at the same time.

We’ll explore these positive communication and relationship strategies in more detail next week. If you’re experiencing these kinds of challenges in your leadership team, tune in for next week’s insight. We think it will help.