Why Smart Teams Get Stuck: The Hidden Assumptions That Shape Performance
We already knew it, and Covid reminded us of it once again: human beings need to interact with other human beings. The absence of social contact leads to distress, and sometimes worse. According to a team of cognitive scientists at MIT, social isolation triggers the same sense of deprivation in the brain as going without food.
Yet human interactions are rarely smooth, even at the best of times. They can be marked by misunderstandings, tensions, misinterpretations and cognitive biases—a trap we all fall into. Each of us perceives the world through our senses and assigns meaning, value and order to what we experience, thereby constructing our own reality. That reality differs from one person to another according to our life experiences, cultural background and patterns of thought. Recent events around the world provide countless examples of this constructivist way of interpreting reality and have contributed to deep social divisions across many societies. When these individual realities are reinforced within a group—driven by our fundamental need to belong—they can become more rigid, leading to increasingly polarised thinking.
In organisations, interactions between team members can become a source of dysfunction. Intentions are not always perceived as they were intended. One person’s actions may be interpreted very differently by another:
“She’s trying to take over my job.”
“He’s putting me under pressure because he doesn’t like me. He wants to see me fail.”
Each person constructs their own reality based on the events they experience in everyday working life. Within a team, these individual realities can merge, becoming reinforced and crystallised into shared beliefs. These perceptions generate reactions, which in turn create new perceptions and further reactions, creating self-reinforcing loops.
Such cycles of perception and reaction can undermine team performance by encouraging dysfunctional behaviours such as withholding information, poor communication, avoidance and excessive control.
“I need to protect my commission, so I’ll stop my colleagues from accessing my client information.”
“We’re really struggling with all these young people joining the company. They’re lazy, entitled and, to make matters worse, they’re all suffering from burnout.”
Team coaching helps identify these recurring patterns of perception, thought and behaviour, as well as other dysfunctional dynamics within the team. The coach acts as a mirror, helping team members become aware of the patterns that are preventing them from functioning effectively. Once these dynamics become visible, the coach helps the team emerge from its self-created impasse by challenging assumptions, reframing situations and encouraging new ways of thinking and working together.
The objective is to foster healthier, more constructive behaviours that enhance not only team effectiveness but also individual well-being, engagement and satisfaction.
Although team coaching has been widely established for decades in English-speaking countries and Germany, it is becoming increasingly recognised in France across organisations of all sizes. More and more companies are engaging coaches not simply to solve problems, but to strengthen collaboration, improve performance and support leadership and personal development. Leadership development, career transitions, improving team effectiveness and strengthening communication remain among the primary reasons organisations seek coaching.
At the same time, the professional landscape has been profoundly reshaped in recent years, while burnout and psychological strain remain an ongoing reality. In a world characterised by constant disruption, organisations must continuously adapt to survive. This places increasing demands on leaders and teams alike, highlighting the importance of creating workplaces that take human needs into account and place well-being alongside performance.
In this evolving context, coaches have an important role to play in helping organisations navigate complexity, strengthen relationships and foster healthier ways of thinking and working together. The future of team coaching is bright.
