How and why we avoid talking about the 'elephant in the room'

Even with the best of intentions, many of the teams and organisations we work in, experience ‘issues’ or challenges which can get in the way of doing good work. These challenges need our attention so we can work through them, which can, in turn, release energy to do the work which drew us in, in the first place. However, we often find ways to avoid doing so.

Management might avoid convening more reflective discussions amongst staff to work through issues, for fear of releasing a ‘can of worms’. Conversely, getting team members into the same room, especially if the group is reasonably large, might feel like ‘herding cats’.

Even if time is carved out for discussion, to make sense of what’s happening and move forward, members might turn up late to meetings. Once they get into a meeting room, they might find themselves distracted by their devices – a phone, a laptop, their watch. The pull to multi-tasking is particularly strong during remote meetings due to a perception that no one will notice. They might bring food and drink into the meeting or leave the room to make to make a hot drink or go to the bathroom.

If they do settle down, members might turn the meeting into a conventional management meeting, with people updating each other about what they’re doing and/or looking forward to what needs doing. Team members might discuss issues at a frantic pace, talking over each other, rarely pausing between contributions, not allowing people to connect to their experience and think. Silence might be seen as oppressive, unproductive or a waste of time, which in turn might be representative of a team/organisation that is overworked, hyperactive, in a state of crisis and constantly in delivery mode.

To facilitate discussion, in person teams might use flipcharts and post it notes while remote ones might use Miro or Jam boards. However, rather than enabling discussion, they might be used in a way that ‘papers over’ the opportunities people have to talk to one another. Members might also talk about issues external to the organisation, or use ambiguous phrases, words and acronyms as a way of sidestepping having to think seriously about the difficulties being experienced.

If members do identify problems, they might avoid thinking about their difficulties by immediately blaming others. For instance, it can be easy for an incoming leadership team to criticise their predecessors for the ‘mess’ they find themselves in.  If important issues are raised, members might deny what’s said or feel the urge to ‘look over their shoulder’ before they say anything that might ‘implicate’ colleagues. Members might worry that any criticism they make might be perceived as ‘telling colleagues off’. And they might also rush to finding solutions rather than explore the causes and effects of key challenges.

Sometimes people discharge their true experiences in formal spaces by cracking a joke or being sarcastic. Or members might arrange to meet trusted colleagues informally around the edges of more formal spaces. Both of these can make (some) team members feel better temporarily but don’t enable them the group to acknowledge key issues and to consider how they might work together to change dynamics in the long run.

Metaphorically teams might function as if they had a ‘second skin’, concealing their underlying feelings and their true experience of the work. So what might explain this?

We live in an age of hyper competition where image is crucial, especially given the scrutiny there is from the media, funders, accreditors and regulators. How one presents oneself is often taken as reality itself. And if organisations can do just enough to gain approval from these ‘authorities’, why bother with deeper reflection?

Reflecting on issues requires one to be vulnerable, which can often feel like too big a risk to take. Staying with the trouble that thinking might bring, can often bring too much discomfort to members, releasing feelings such as shame, guilt and embarrassment. Team members might be afraid of psychologically harming one another or being harmed in turn. They can fuse with their roles, where any feedback reinforces and intensifies a sense of inadequacy.

But not opening the ‘pandora’s box’ might also serve the interests of certain people who benefit from the status quo. Jn a context where reciprocity is being practiced, saying anything uncomfortable might risk losing out on valuable information and future business opportunities.  Thinking together in this context could be seen as subversive.

To talk about the ‘elephant in the room’, those with power need the courage (and the resources) to create space for this to happen. Team members also need a shared history of risk taking and exposing each other to their ‘not knowing’ – which takes time. Without this, members can struggle to be vulnerable with each other, for fear of being judged, being seen as weak and lacking resilience. And the challenges people are experiencing will continue to persist until the difference between the image the organisation is projecting to its external world and the reality of its internal world becomes untenable.