[Guide] Is your team suffering from Artificial Harmony?
In our previous post, we explored what artificial harmony is and why it's so damaging to team performance. Now comes the crucial question: how do you know if your team is actually caught in this dysfunction?
Unlike more obvious team problems like missed deadlines, personality clashes, or poor communication, artificial harmony is subtle. It masquerades as good teamwork while slowly undermining your team's potential from within.
However! Once you know what to look for, the signs become unmistakable. This guide will give you the tools to diagnose artificial harmony in your team and take immediate action to address it.
Signs of Artificial Harmony
What Happens in Your Meetings
Discussions are consistently polite and predictable. If your team meetings feel more like gentle information sessions than dynamic problem-solving sessions, you might have an issue. Teams that are genuinely engaged get animated when discussing important topics.
Decisions sail through without contest or challenge. When was the last time someone pushed back on a proposal or asked a probing question that made everyone think differently? Is one person being allowed to take control of the decision-making process while the wider team avoids conflict? If decisions routinely get approved without debate, you're missing crucial input.
Uncomfortable silence follows controversial topics. You know that moment when you bring up a sensitive issue and suddenly everyone finds their laptops very interesting? That's artificial harmony in action.
People rarely build on or challenge each other's ideas. In healthy teams, ideas spark other ideas. People say, "That's interesting, but what if..." or "I disagree because..." If conversations feel flat and linear, engagement is probably low.
Team Dynamics to Watch For
The real conversations happen after meetings end. Pay attention to what happens in corridors, private messages, or smaller groups. If that's where people finally share their honest opinions, your formal processes aren't working.
Team members express different views privately but not publicly. This is perhaps the clearest sign of artificial harmony. If people regularly tell you their concerns one-on-one but never voice them in group settings, fear is driving behaviour.
There's a pattern of agreement followed by poor execution. Everyone says "yes" in the meeting, but deadlines get missed, quality suffers, or people seem half-hearted in their efforts. This often indicates compliance rather than genuine commitment.
Small tensions get swept under the rug. Issues that should be resolved quickly instead get ignored, only to resurface later in more damaging ways.
Communication Patterns That Signal Problems
Passive language dominates conversations. Phrases like "whatever works," "I'm fine with anything," or "I don't have strong feelings either way" suggest people have opinions but aren't comfortable expressing them.
Feedback is rare and surface-level. If team members only share positive feedback or generic comments like "good job," they're probably holding back more specific thoughts.
People seem to be going through the motions. You can sense disengagement—team members contribute minimally, seem distracted, or lack the energy you'd expect for important discussions.
Diagnostic Questions for Team Leaders
Drawing from Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions framework, here are key questions to assess your team's health:
About Conflict and Debate:
Are our team discussions dynamic and passionate, or passive and predictable?
Do team members actively engage in debates about key decisions, or do they defer quickly to authority or consensus?
When problems surface, do they emerge early through healthy discussion, or have they been festering unspoken?
About Decision-Making:
Are decisions being made with genuine buy-in, or are people just going along to get along?
Can team members clearly explain why they support our major decisions, or do they seem unclear about the reasoning?
Do people challenge decisions they disagree with, or do they save their objections for private conversations?
About Trust and Safety:
Do team members feel comfortable admitting when they don't understand something or disagree with a direction?
Are people willing to say "I think this is a mistake" in group settings?
Is there evidence that team members trust each other enough to engage in productive conflict?
Self-Assessment for Team Members
If you're not in a leadership role, here are questions to reflect on your own experience:
Your Comfort Level:
Do you feel comfortable disagreeing with your colleagues in team settings?
Have you been holding back thoughts or concerns to "keep the peace"?
Do you feel your genuine opinions are valued and heard by the team?
Your Communication Patterns:
Are you more honest about team issues with people outside the team than with your actual teammates?
Do you find yourself having important conversations in private that should probably happen in group settings?
When you do share concerns, do they get genuinely discussed or quickly dismissed?
Your Engagement:
Do you feel energised by team discussions, or do they feel like something to get through?
Are you bringing your best thinking to team meetings, or are you holding back?
Do you trust that your team can handle disagreement constructively?
Moving from Diagnosis to Action
Once you've identified signs of artificial harmony, the key is to start small and build momentum. Here are immediate steps you can take:
If You're Leading a Team
Start with yourself. Model the vulnerability and constructive conflict you want to see. Share a genuine concern about a team decision. Admit when you're uncertain about something. Ask for pushback on your ideas.
Ask better questions. Instead of "Any thoughts?" try "What concerns do you have about this approach?" or "What am I not considering?" Questions that assume there might be disagreement often surface more honest responses.
Reward constructive dissent. When someone does speak up with a contrary view, thank them publicly. Make it clear that you value their input, even if you don't ultimately agree with their position.
Address what everyone's thinking. Identify one topic your team has been avoiding and bring it up directly. Say something like, "I think we need to talk about [issue] even though it might be uncomfortable."
If You're a Team Member
Speak up once. Choose one upcoming meeting where you'll voice a genuine concern or disagreement. Start small, but start somewhere.
Ask follow-up questions. When someone presents an idea, ask clarifying questions that might reveal potential issues: "How would this work if..." or "What happens when..."
Share a different perspective. Next time there's quick consensus, try saying, "Before we move forward, can I share a different way of looking at this?"
Have one difficult conversation. Identify one team issue you've been discussing privately and bring it to the appropriate group setting.
Building the Foundation for Healthy Conflict
Remember, artificial harmony is often a symptom of deeper trust issues. As we explored in our Five Dysfunctions guide, teams need vulnerability-based trust before they can engage in productive conflict.
Create psychological safety by establishing ground rules for disagreement. Make it clear that challenging ideas is welcome and expected, while personal attacks are not tolerated.
Distinguish between relationship conflict and task conflict. Help your team understand that debating approaches, strategies, and ideas (task conflict) is healthy and necessary, while attacking people's character or competence (relationship conflict) is destructive.
Practice with lower-stakes issues first. Don't start with the biggest, most contentious topics. Build your team's conflict muscles on smaller decisions before tackling major strategic disagreements.
Moving Forward
Diagnosing artificial harmony is like switching on a light in a dark room—suddenly you can see clearly what was there all along. The patterns become obvious: the careful language, the private conversations, the sense that important things are going unsaid.
Recognition is just the beginning though. Building a culture where healthy conflict thrives takes intentional effort and ongoing practice. It requires leaders who model vulnerability and reward honesty, and team members who are willing to engage authentically even when it's uncomfortable.
Your next steps:
Complete the diagnostic checklist above and identify which warning signs resonate most with your team's situation.
Choose one small action from the suggestions and commit to trying it within the next week.
Start a conversation with your team about this topic. Share these ideas and ask, "Do we see any of these patterns in how we work together?"
Focus on building trust within the wider team if your assessment reveals deeper trust issues.
The goal isn't to create a team that argues constantly, but one that can engage in passionate, respectful debate about the things that matter most. When teams can disagree constructively, they make better decisions, solve problems more creatively, and build stronger relationships in the process.
The question isn't whether your team will face conflict - it's whether you'll face it openly and constructively, or let it simmer in the shadows where it becomes much more destructive.
Ok, so how do you fix artificial harmony within your team?
Here’s one we made earlier! This post breaks down Lencioni’s five dysfunctions of a team in more detail and provides suggestions for fixing the issues - what more could you need? Check it out here.
