During our formative years, parents and teachers, serving as social guides, warned us against the perils of outspokenness. Their training emphasized the importance of not making waves. Repetitive injunctions like “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” clearly warned us to remain silent or at least to be careful what we said.

The supposed intention of these childhood admonitions was to teach us how to avoid making enemies by not offending other people. It’s more likely that the underlying purpose was to keep us from embarrassing our social guides in front of their peers.

Most of us can remember the condemnation that followed an innocent childhood disclosure of a family secret in front of company.  That lesson, once taught, is seldom forgotten. As adults, we still tend to avoid discussing issues that might provoke retribution or anger from those in positions of authority.

That was then, this in now. As we form ourselves into teams, with our different styles, values, and behavioral patterns, and try to work together, there are bound to be disagreements. Acting as though they don’t exist—treating it as a undiscussable no-no—erects barriers between members of the team. If a work unit does not have a method for resolving interpersonal differences, that unit will eventually become dysfunctional.

This effect is cumulative: there is a direct correlation between the number of items on the no-no list and the level of dysfunction within a work unit.  That is, the longer the list, the higher the level of dysfunction. It is important to understand how unresolved issues, stored on the team’s no-no list, relate to organizational dysfunction. 

You can tell when a no-no list exists because your teammates avoid open discussions of relevant issues. Rather, they bog down in never-ending debates over mundane issues like copy machine usage, personal telephone calls, office furniture, computer upgrades and whether there should be macaroni or potato salad at the department picnic.

Over-reaction to a simple mistake is another clue that bigger, unstated issues are buried on the no-no list.  The longer the list gets, the more tense and anxious people become to avoid discussing critical issues for fear of provoking a fight or igniting a firestorm of anger. 

Few people can thrive for very long in the tension-filled environment that inevitably results when the team is unable or unwilling to discuss the items on the no-no list. Unless the pattern changes, the list will continue to grow until the unit chokes on the volume of undiscussable issues.

The objective at this point should be to pull the team together and work through the entire no-no list. Typically, the heaviest issues top the list. Not only did they surface first, but also they have been there so long that they have taken on additional weight. More recent items—which have been tacked onto the bottom of the list—are much less significant. That’s why it’s best to start at the bottom with the least significant issues and purposefully work your way up the list.