One of the red flags I’ve learned to look out for when dealing with organisational change of any complexity is consensus. This might sound counter-intuitive, after all surely consensus is a good thing, right? Well, yes and no; true consensus is good and should be celebrated, but too often what appears to be unanimous agreement is actually an illusion. Either people have different understandings of what has been agreed, so any kind of agreement is superficial, or people are holding back on discussing their concerns. Or perhaps an entire group has been missed, so a vital set of perspectives hasn’t been considered.
There’s a lot to unpack here, and the specific element I want to examine in this article is the idea of illusory consensus where people are holding back their true thoughts and feelings. This happens more than you might think, I can remember in the dim and distant past self-censoring my views as anyone who didn’t echo the prevailing corporate narrative was not seen as a ‘team player’. When constructive dissent isn’t welcomed it doesn’t disappear, in my experience it just gets repressed, with those repressing it now carrying an extra burden.
The Honest Elephant Model
A while back I came across the phrase ‘dishonest harmony’, I can’t remember where, but it resonated with me and it seemed a handy shorthand for situations where there is the type of illusory consensus referenced above. I started to think about the different potential dimensions implied by the phrase ‘dishonest harmony’, and on a scrap of paper I drew the following diagram. I’ve found this helpful, so even though this is very much a v0.1, I was keen to share it in case it is helpful to others. The reason I have given this model the working title of ‘the honest elephant’ will become clear as you read on…
Let’s explore some of the quadrants:
The Tragedy of Dishonest Harmony
There are probably multiple ways of defining ‘dishonest harmony’, but for me this exists when there is surface level agreement, but disagreement festering. Perhaps ideas are repressed, shot down, or there are organisational or cultural norms which means that certain people aren’t able to express their true opinions about a topic, project or idea.
This happens in organisations, social groups, and probably everywhere where there are human beings. A metaphor that might help illuminate this idea is ‘the elephant in the room’. There’s a (metaphorical) elephant in the room, everyone can see it, but nobody is talking about it. Everybody knows, deep down, that there’s disagreement—but that conflict is never directly addressed. Everyone dances around the elephant, and in an extreme case there might be politely choreographed dances that people do specifically to avoid the conflict surfacing.
You’ve probably seen this choreography in your personal and professional life. Whether it’s the ‘sham procurement’ process that takes place (Everyone knows a decision has already been made by a senior leader, but the process has to look objective, and everyone does the mental gymnastics to justify the situation to themselves). Or perhaps it’s the (hypothetical) awkward extended-family gatherings (Auntie X and Uncle Y hate each other, Sibling A is always late and Sibling B never finishes their cup of tea. Nobody wants to be there, so everyone engages in vanilla smalltalk peppered with the occasional passive aggressive dig to avoid actually addressing the issues. They talk without talking, are present without actually being ‘present’ in any meaningful sense of the word).
Sadly, conflict tends to age like milk, not like fine wine. That is to say it festers and gets more putrid over time. Not only this, but if a group continues in a direction that one or more people truly feels is wrong, and that person doesn’t feel they can raise their concerns, they are likely to get more and more disengaged. Also, I would assume the impact on autonomy/agency could often have an impact on mental health. And surely people miss having the opportunity to actually form genuine, meaningful connections?
So why do teams and groups of people get stuck here? In my experience, it’s because the alternative is too effortful to stomach.
People aspire to drag the situation from “dishonest harmony” to “honest harmony”
My hypothesis is that there’s a typically human desire to seek a quick fix. Referring to the model above, this would be to create some kind of intervention that moves the situation from ‘dishonest harmony’ to ‘honest harmony’. The trouble is that this is hard to do, and virtually impossible to do without some difficult discussions and soul-searching in the meantime. Getting to ‘honest harmony’ will require introspection as individuals and as a group; and if people aren’t ready for that then things are unlikely to change.
What might happen instead is that a brave person sees the dishonest harmony and genuinely wants to change it. It is so obvious (to them). They call out the elephant in a way that is so out of kilter with the group’s norms: “Hey, there’s an elephant there… we can all see it…. we’re literally dancing around it…. surely that’s not right!”. The group considers them to be far too bold, to be making a scene, even though that definitely wasn’t their intention.
Rather than transitioning the situation to ‘honest harmony’, arguably what they have actually done is move themselves into ‘honest disharmony’ where the rest of the group is still in ‘dishonest harmony’. They are ready to move, but others aren’t. Perhaps their colleagues or friends aren’t ready to admit publicly that the elephant is there yet. If people aren’t ready to create space for discussion, then the chance of change being co-created seems minimal. And the person bravely raising the issue is likely to get pretty bruised in the process, and might even get marginalised.
On a different scale, you might have experienced this kind of dynamic in your own personal life. Being told that (say) you have high blood pressure, are overweight, are drinking too much can be hard to hear. You might know that the person is right, but it’s very easy to carry out the mental gymnastics to avoid change. It’s easy to stay in a place of dishonest harmony; in this case it’s dishonest harmony with the facts (rather than with other people). Only when a person is ready to accept the honest disharmony of the situation, and to do the work of making a change, can change really happen. I believe that is generally true whether we are discussing individuals or groups of people.
Incidentally, I am definitely not suggesting that we shouldn’t call out the metaphorical ‘elephant in the room’. Quite the contrary. However, I am suggesting that in most cases we should anticipate and create space for honest disharmony. (There are, of course, always exceptions. Cases of extremely bad or toxic behaviour may require a completely different approach).
The Importance of Honest Disharmony
Situations that are in ‘dishonest harmony’ may have been there for years. To co-create any kind of change will require everyone (or at least a few/enough people) to be simultaneously honest and vulnerable. It requires someone to act as a catalyst, but to accept that the change is going to take time, and different perspectives will likely need to be heard and explored. To draw parallels with Transactional Analysis (a field I am only superficially familiar with), perhaps the group is agreeing to be “OK not being OK” in the short term, with a shared goal of finding a better way of moving forward. But a key thing being that (based on the definition I am using here) the team is either implicitly or explicitly agreeing to move to honest disharmony. Iit requires some kind of event or intervention, and acceptance by those members of the group to be vulnerable, open and to move towards something they define as ‘better’.
Honest disharmony needs to be a temporary state to be effective. This is where people are exploring what they agree and disagree on. And—let’s be realistic here—it won’t always resolve things. Sometimes, people who benefit from existing power structures will do everything they can to drag stuff back to dishonest harmony. Sometimes people benefit from the elephant being there, and they’ll do everything that they can to keep it. Others, due to their personalities, will feel they have to ‘control the narrative’. If they can’t let go, they’ll likely drag the group back to dishonest harmony in the medium term because it suits them.
However, if the group does reach an agreement that they can all live with, then their practice will start to blur into the ‘honest harmony’ quadrant in the model.
Honest Harmony
It’s a cliche, but most 2×2 models have a ‘panacea’, and in this model ‘honest harmony’ is the closest thing to a panacea. This is where groups allow—and encourage—constructive dissent. Working relationships are usually good and in my experience communication is usually concise and efficient.
To give you a recent example, I’ve worked with two close colleagues who I know well, and for whom I have an extremely high level of trust and respect (which I hope is mutual!). It is totally fine, in this group dynamic, to say “I think that’s wrong”… and sometimes one of us might say something like that in a slightly more…”colourful”….way. Because we trust each other and know that we’re critiquing ideas not each other it’s easy, and we welcome the feedback.
Any kind of dynamic like this takes effort to maintain, and keeping an open dialogue is important. The maintenance of ‘honest harmony’ will depend a lot on the context, and is likely a topic for a completely separate article.
So What?
The sixty four thousand dollar question is “so what?”. At the moment, I’m exploring these sets of ideas and testing them against experiences in the real world. I have written this mainly to get clarity in my own head. And yes, before someone points it out, I know there’s a quadrant I haven’t explored in this article (‘dishonest disharmony’), but I figured I’ve used up enough words already 😊, so perhaps I’ll revisit that in a future article.
So far, I’ve found this model useful in making sense of situations in both a whole range of contexts. It won’t be universally applicable, but is something I’m actively ‘mulling over’.
If you’ve found this interesting/useful, or have something to add, please let me know.
What are your views? Please add a comment below, and let’s keep the conversation flowing!
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About the author:
Adrian Reed is Principal Consultant at Blackmetric Business Solutions, an organisation that offers Business Analysis consulting and training solutions. Adrian is a keen advocate of the analysis profession, and is constantly looking for ways of promoting the value that good analysis can bring.
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