A few years ago, I was brought in to help a company stuck in contract negotiations with its labor union. They’d been at an impasse for nearly three years.
By the time I showed up, everyone had a theory about why things were stalled.
Lack of willingness to compromise, a winner-takes-all attitude, night-shift conditions, minimum salary increase, etc. The parties were each focused on their own interests and were unable to identify a shared interest on which to negotiate. Additionally, three years of friction had worn down trust and hardened positions.
Instead of trying to push the contract points across the finish line, I started looking at the dynamic between the people in the room. What were they avoiding saying out loud? Where did they feel disrespected? What were they trying to protect? I was looking at deeper patterns that maintained the parties in a confrontational attitude.
Eventually, after getting to know the parties and working with them separately, training them in negotiation, and helping them open up their attitudes, I invited the two negotiating teams to join me at a resort. I told them we had three days to overcome the obstacles and reach a final agreement. We worked all day; we shared meals and breaks. Little by little, the atmosphere shifted; the human environment changed. By the deadline I had established, they had an agreement. The gap that once seemed impossible to overcome was finally overcome.
I’ve seen this pattern over and over.
Every time a board complains about execution, or partners argue over the organization’s direction and key strategies, or a founder struggles to hand off responsibility to the next generation, we are usually dealing with symptoms. Of course, the surface problem is usually real enough, but the diagnosis is incomplete.
The Problem Beneath the Problem
When a problem surfaces, we usually address the visible behaviors. In fact, we tend to believe that behavior is the problem and that it is what needs to change. This is also true regarding unsatisfactory performance or slow execution. We address the symptom but not its cause.
That works often enough, but it pays to pay attention when the same issue keeps returning despite smart people trying to fix it. That’s usually a sign you’re solving the wrong thing.
What looks like an operational bottleneck might actually be a broken relationship. A broken relationship might point to a personal conflict. And a personal conflict often leads back to someone’s internal habits or insecurities.
Once, a CEO at the head of a company in the Gulf Region complained to me that his team wasn’t taking enough ownership. He wanted people to step forward. Make decisions. Take responsibility. Stop bringing everything back to him. But I became curious about what happened when they did.
I asked him what had happened in the past when someone made an independent decision. Was he trusting his people? What had happened when someone had made a mistake? What was the level of emotional security experienced by his executives and employees?
The lack of ownership turned out to be a trust issue.
Going deeper, we discovered that my client feared losing control. He saw himself as someone who always had to have an answer, to be the unfailing problem solver. He feared that an executive’s mistake might damage his reputation. His perfectionism made him skeptical of cooperation, which in turn made it difficult for him to really listen to his people.
The conversation shifted well beyond the initial problem he came to the session with. We had to dive into the invisible pattern that produced the lack of ownership as a response. He had to take full responsibility for that result if he wanted to see change happening.
Learning Not to Speak Up
My client’s attitudes and habits were shaping the company culture.
Indeed, leaders play a great role in creating the environment in which people work. The quality of their listening, how they conduct themselves when stakes are high, and how they react to pushback. People pick up on these unwritten rules quickly.
Teams do not merely follow leaders. They adapt to them.
I remember being invited once to address the executive team of a CEO. Until he joined us, people were conversing. When he entered, a thick silence dropped. No one dared to share their opinion or ask a question. The fear in that room became tangible.
The problem was not passivity among those executives. It was the result of adapting to a leadership style.
Thus, if dissent creates friction, the system learns compliance; if initiative creates risk, the system learns dependence. If mistakes threaten status, the system learns concealment.
Adaptations That Outlive Their Purpose
There is another reason why certain patterns are not immediately visible. In fact, the habits that create today’s problems are frequently the very habits that created yesterday’s success.
I believe people are fundamentally good and well-intentioned. Thus, a founder who today micromanages probably needed to oversee every detail to keep the company alive at the very beginning. The habit that was a virtue yesterday becomes a vice today. An executive who never shows vulnerability might have learned self-reliance in a high-risk environment. Those weren’t mistakes; they were effective adaptations.
Organizations are like living organisms. They naturally and necessarily change. They constantly need to adapt to outside pressures. The trouble comes when the behavior doesn’t adapt to the change.
What helped you build a startup can keep you from scaling it. Growth isn’t always about picking up a new management framework—sometimes it’s about letting go of an old survival mechanism. Instead of asking what skill you need to learn next, the harder question is often, “What am I trying to protect?”
The Internal Boardroom
Before behaviors, the mindset needs to change.
This requires recognizing that when we talk about prudence, demand more data, or commit to high standards, we are, in reality, reacting to an underlying fear that presents itself with valid excuses to delay a tough decision. The timing isn’t right. We need to finish this quarter first. The team is under too much pressure.
Control works the same way. Micromanagement rarely feels like control to the person doing it—it feels like taking responsibility or maintaining quality. But the real question often isn’t why the team isn’t performing, but why it feels so unsafe to trust them.
What I explain to my clients is that a leader operates in two settings:
The External Environment: Markets, balance sheets, hiring, org structures, and competitive threats.
The Internal Environment: Fear, ego, ambition, identity, and the need for control or recognition.
The path lies in attending to both settings. In fact, when you ignore the internal side (what Jung called “persona”), you remain blind to how your own habits warp your strategy. Instead, ignoring the external side turns leadership into navel-gazing. The real work happens where the two overlap.
Questions Worth Asking
So, here I want to share a few questions worth asking when you feel it’s time to step back and go beyond the mere observable symptom (the problem):
What am I actually protecting here? (Is it the business, or is it my reputation, status, or need to be right?)
What conversation am I avoiding?
Why is this situation specifically difficult for me?
What is this asking me to let go of? (Control, an old habit, or the need to have the answer?)
What am I missing because of my own blind spots?
When a problem keeps cycling back, resist the urge to push harder on the immediate fix. Look at the dynamic driving it. Most long-term strategic challenges are human challenges in disguise—and often, the most useful adjustment you can make is to the person leading the effort.
If this letter made you think, consider sharing it with someone who might want to think with us—or restack it here.
Dr. Aldo Civico is an anthropologist, author, and private leadership advisor to CEOs, entrepreneurs, and leaders navigating consequential decisions and transitions. A Columbia University Ph.D. and former director of its Center for International Conflict Resolution, he has spent three decades working at the intersection of leadership, conflict, power, and human nature. The Inner Boardroom is his weekly exploration of what we might not be seeing.
