Introducing Team Truths: Naming What Really Shapes Teams

There is no shortage of advice for teams.

Frameworks. Models. Toolkits. Offsites. Personality profiles.
And yet, many teams still find themselves stuck, circling the same issues, having the same conversations, and feeling the same unspoken tensions month after month.

What’s missing is rarely knowledge.

What’s missing is truth.

Not the performative kind.
Not the polished, values-on-the-wall kind.
But the quieter, harder-to-name truths about how teams actually operate.

That’s why I’m launching a new weekly series for TEAMshift and LinkedIn called Team Truths.

Why “Team Truths”?

In my work as a team coach, I’ve noticed something consistent across sectors, roles, and organizational cultures:

Teams already know what isn’t working.
They feel it in meetings.
They sense it in moments of silence.
They carry it in their bodies after difficult conversations.

What they struggle with is naming it together.

Team Truths is about surfacing the realities that shape team dynamics but often stay just beneath the surface:

• The unspoken agreements that quietly govern behaviour
• The patterns teams protect without realizing it
• The emotional undercurrents that influence trust, accountability, and performance
• The systemic forces that keep teams stuck, or help them evolve

These truths are not about blame or diagnosis.
They are about awareness.

Because teams don’t change when they’re told what to do.
They change when they can finally see themselves clearly.

From Individuals to Systems

One of the most persistent myths in organizational life is that team challenges are caused by individual shortcomings:

“If only this person communicated better…”
“If only that leader were more decisive…”
“If only people spoke up more…”

But teams are not simply collections of individuals.
They are living systems.

Every behaviour makes sense in context.
Every pattern serves a purpose, even when it’s no longer helpful.

Silence often protects power or stability.
Over-functioning protects the team from uncertainty.
Avoidance protects relationships from rupture, at least temporarily.

Team Truths invites a shift in perspective:

From Who is the problem?
to What pattern are we part of?

This is where real development begins.

Truth-Telling as a Leadership Practice

Truth-telling in teams doesn’t mean saying everything that comes to mind.
It doesn’t mean being harsh, confrontational, or reckless.

It means developing the capacity to notice and name what’s happening in the system, with care, curiosity, and responsibility.

In high-functioning teams, truth shows up in small but powerful ways:

• Someone names the tension in the room instead of pushing past it
• A team pauses to reflect on how they’re working, not just what they’re doing
• A leader asks, “What are we not saying right now?” and stays present for the answer

These moments don’t just improve communication.
They build trust, psychological safety, and shared accountability.

Team Truths is designed to spotlight these moments and the principles beneath them.

What You Can Expect from the Series

Each Team Truth will focus on a single insight - short, clear, and intentionally provocative.

Not to provoke for the sake of reaction,
but to provoke reflection.

Some truths may feel validating.
Others may feel uncomfortable.
That’s part of the work.

Over time, the series will explore themes such as:

• Unspoken agreements and hidden norms
• Psychological safety as a team responsibility
• Conflict, avoidance, and the fear of aftermath
• Over-functioning, burnout, and “hero” dynamics
• Feedback as a relational and systemic process
• The role of emotion in team effectiveness
• How power and role shape what gets said and what doesn’t

Each truth is an invitation, not to agree, but to inquire.

Why This Matters Now

Teams today are navigating unprecedented complexity.

Hybrid work.
Constant change.
Increased pressure.
Greater awareness of power, inclusion, and psychological safety.

In this context, surface-level solutions fall short.

What teams need is not more content, but more capacity to reflect, to stay in dialogue, and to hold complexity together.

Team Truths is grounded in a simple belief:

The quality of a team’s outcomes is inseparable from the quality of its conversations.

And the quality of those conversations depends on what the team is willing to name together.

An Invitation to the Reader

As you engage with Team Truths over the coming weeks, I invite you to notice:

• Which truths resonate immediately
• Which ones create resistance or discomfort
• Which ones spark curiosity or new questions

These reactions are data.
They point to what matters most in your team system right now.

You don’t need to fix everything at once.
Often, naming one truth is enough to begin a shift.

Welcome to Team Truths

TEAMshift has always been about moving teams from intention to impact, from knowing to doing, from insight to practice.

Team Truths is a natural extension of that purpose.

A space to pause.
To notice.
To reflect on how we are really working together.

Because when teams tell the truth about how they operate,
they create the conditions for real change.

Welcome to Team Truths.