Why Your Team Keeps Getting Stuck in the Same Patterns
You can’t change a pattern you can’t see.
Which sounds obvious. But I think we’re surprisingly bad at seeing our own patterns. We notice the incident: the meeting that went badly, the moment we got defensive, the conversation where nobody said what they really thought. What we’re less good at is stepping back far enough to ask: Is this an incident, or is this a pattern?
A friend of mine had been seeing someone for a few months when he told me about a dynamic that had played out. There were aspects of it that seemed rather concerning, but our conversation wasn’t about how to interpret that one incident. It was about observing what happened next. Was this an unusual response from someone going through something difficult? Or would he start noticing versions of the same behaviour again and again?
Because one incident tells you something. A pattern tells you much more.
Why recurring patterns are difficult to recognise
I learnt this about myself years ago, when a big part of my work was qualitative research. I’d spend days immersed in transcripts. Things would start coming together. And then, just as I was finally on the home stretch, I’d think: “Oh my God. This is all rubbish. None of it makes sense. I’m going to have to go back to the start.”
A day later, the pieces would fall back into place. Crisis averted. Once I recognised that this was my standard pattern, I could stop myself reacting to it in the same way. Instead of disappearing down another rabbit hole trying to fix my apparently terrible analysis, I could catch myself and laugh: “Oh right. The messy middle. Go to bed. It’ll make more sense tomorrow.”
Teams have patterns too. And they can be remarkably difficult to see when you’re inside them.
How team diagnostics can reveal hidden patterns
That’s one reason I love diagnostics: they help us join the dots.
A Collective Leadership Assessment, for example, might show high Complying alongside lower Authenticity. As we explore the results, the team starts connecting the data to recent events. Suddenly, instead of wondering why there seems to be alignment in meetings but very little action afterwards, they can see what’s happening beneath the surface.
Difficult issues get softened. People keep quiet until they see where the leader stands. The real concerns emerge afterwards in side conversations. Now the team has something specific to change.
The leader might deliberately hold back their view until others have spoken. The team might build a ritual into important discussions: “What are we not saying?” or “If we had to challenge this idea, what would we say?”
An Enneagram Team Archetype can reveal a different layer of the pattern. Take a team with a 368 archetype. You might see a high-performing team that works at pace, moves quickly to solutions and debates intensely. Underneath that can be a tension between the drive to get it done, the need to question and test, and the instinct to challenge and push.
So they move quickly towards a decision, doubt whether it’s the right one, reopen the debate, push harder for resolution … and around they go. It would be easy to conclude: “We need to communicate better.” But seeing the pattern gives them something far more useful.
What changes when teams recognise their patterns
Once a team can see the cycle, it can agree on small, specific ways to interrupt it. For example, they might:
Build in a deliberate challenge round before making a decision, rather than reopening it afterwards.
Agree what new information would justify revisiting a decision.
Notice when robust challenge has tipped into defending positions.
Get explicit about when debate ends and everyone commits.
That’s what makes pattern recognition so powerful. If we only notice individual incidents, we tend to respond to them individually. But when we start joining the dots — what keeps happening, what triggers it and what we tend to do next — we can see where to start.
What keeps happening in your team?
Think about a frustration your team has discussed more than once. What usually happens just before it? How do people respond? And what do those responses make more likely the next time around?
If you’d like another lens on those dynamics, my free 4-minute Team Dynamics Diagnostic offers a Team Health Score and a starting point for identifying patterns worth exploring.