On the flight back from a team workshop, I took this picture. I look tired because I am.
I had just spent time with a team that has been together in this constellation for quite a while. What showed up wasn’t “low performance” in any simple sense. It was heavier: cooled-down conflict, emotional withdrawal, guarded bodies, careful language, mutual mistrust that had become normal.
Nobody exploded. Nobody told the truth either. And working in a room like that is exhausting.
This is something I keep seeing in executive teams: dysfunction rarely looks dramatic. It looks civilized. Polite. Structured. Reasonable. And underneath that surface, something is already breaking apart.
There are teams that do nothing about it. No reflection, no real development, no serious work on trust, conflict, or leadership impact. Those teams slowly adapt. Expectations drop. Energy drops. They more or less vegetate.
But that’s not what concerns me most.
The more deceptive case is the team that does all the right things on paper. Offsites. Workshops. Team journeys. And still nothing really changes.
Why?
Because a lot of team development is camouflage.
I see teams speak eloquently about openness, courage, ownership - and then return to silence, triangulation, and political caution between sessions. I see leaders sponsor “deep work” - and then embody the opposite when it matters: defensiveness instead of curiosity, control instead of trust.
You can feel it surprisingly quickly.
As a coach, you sense when something becomes performative - from the leader and from the team.
I tend to confront that quite directly.
And yes, I have ended team journeys because of this.
Not because the team was too difficult, and not because conflict was too strong, but because the incongruence was too persistent.
If what is named in the room is not worked with afterwards, if the leader does not embody it, if the system keeps rewarding avoidance, the whole exercise becomes theatre. Well-designed. Well-spoken. And ultimately empty.
Camouflage. And a quiet form of waste.
I’m starting to question how honest many organizations really are about this.
They say they want high-performing teams, but often they want harmony without discomfort, alignment without challenge, trust without vulnerability - transformation without anyone giving up control.
What I see instead is simpler.
Truth doesn’t land. Not in conversations. Not in decisions. Not in leadership behavior.
And then things slowly thin out.
Energy drops.
Good people go quiet.
Some disengage long before they leave.
I’ve seen top executive teams go down that path. In some cases, I stepped out of the work because nothing real was moving anymore.
And it’s striking - how much damage a team like that can quietly create for an entire organization and its performance.
So maybe the real question isn’t whether a team is doing development.
Maybe it’s whether anyone is willing to carry it once the workshop ends.