When Respect Becomes a Wall: How One Nonprofit Team Rebuilt Trust

“We were so focused on being respectful of each other’s roles that we accidentally built walls.”

A team member said that to me a few months into a 6-month engagement with her nonprofit. It stopped me for a second, because it named something I’d been watching but hadn’t quite put into words yet.

The team wasn’t in conflict. There were no blowups, no obvious dysfunction. On the surface, things looked fine. But departments weren’t really talking to each other. 

Staff were making assumptions about each other’s roles instead of just asking. They weren’t working toward the same goals anymore – goals were handed down from management, not created collaboratively with shared commitments. 

When frustration built up, it didn’t go anywhere useful. It came out in side conversations, gossiping, and quiet resentment. The distance between teams grew out of people trying to be respectful and not overstep, rather than from direct conflict.

Good intentions had quietly created bad patterns.

One Workshop Wasn’t Going to Cut It

When I’m brought into a situation like this, the temptation is to start with a workshop. Get everyone in a room, name the issues, and leave with action items. And that was exactly why this client reached out: to facilitate a workshop that would help people talk to each other and to stop the side conversations.

Sometimes that works. In this case, the patterns were too ingrained for that.

People had learned to work around each other. A single workshop wasn’t going to undo that.

So we started a six-month engagement by focusing on communication, the foundation for better collaboration. We first focused on communication styles. Using the Everything DiSC® model, which is the foundational tool I often introduce to teams in conflict, we learned that much of the conflict was driven by misunderstandings about how people with different styles communicate, or don’t. In this case, some of the more dominant styles were shutting down ideas without even realizing it. And the quieter folks felt that disagreement from others meant their ideas weren’t valid or that the other person just didn’t like them, so they stopped voicing their ideas altogether.

When it became clear that these assumptions were incorrect, we focused on how to have conversations that were both uncomfortable for some and necessary for all. I helped them have one-on-one conversations when they had been avoiding direct communication. We looked at ways to offer and receive feedback without the other person feeling picked on or defensive.

Those conversations were hard. People said things they’d been sitting on. They began to ask questions they’d been avoiding. And some of them had to reckon with the fact that their assumptions about colleagues — assumptions they’d been carrying for a long time — were just wrong.

Maya, who went through this process, didn’t sugarcoat it: “The forced one-on-ones were painful but very necessary.”

Changing the Frame

Another thing we worked on was how the team discussed problems.

When something wasn’t working, the instinct was to make it about a person. A project stalled? Someone dropped the ball. Communication broke down? It’s because of that person on the other team. That framing made it almost impossible to actually fix anything, because the moment you named a problem, it felt like you were pointing fingers and naming a villain.

The shift we practiced — and it did take practice — was treating problems as work problems, not people problems.

Instead of “Why didn’t you do this?” it became “What got in the way?” Instead of “They never communicate,” it became “Where is our process breaking down?”

While these were simple reframes, they were not easy ones.

Once the team started using that language consistently, something opened up. Issues got raised earlier. Conversations got less defensive. People could push back on an idea without it feeling like a personal attack.

“The office feels better,” one team member told me. “We’re recognizing that the challenges are work challenges, not people challenges.”

What Was Different on the Other Side

None of this happened overnight. Trust that’s been worn down doesn’t come back in a single session.

But over several months, things began to shift. Departments that had operated in silos began partnering on shared work. People who had been going around each other started going directly to each other. Staff who had been quiet in meetings started speaking up. It became easier to disagree and explore alternative ideas and solutions together.

“We’re more willing to give each other the benefit of the doubt,” Nancy told me toward the end of our work together. “We’ve stopped the side conversations that were holding us back.”

And then, at some point, one of the team members said something I still think about:

“Literally everything is possible now — communicating, working together, contributing toward goals, and recognizing the strengths of others.”

That’s not a small thing. That’s what a team looks like when the work actually gets through.

What I’d Tell Other Leaders

Culture work is not a project with a finish line. It’s a set of habits your team either builds or doesn’t.

This team didn’t get anywhere by attending a retreat or hanging new values on the wall and then going back to the daily work, where their old habits took over again.t They got there by having conversations they’d been avoiding, over and over, until it stopped feeling so hard. They learned to treat problems as work problems instead of personal failures. 

If you’re recognizing something in this story — the silos, the side conversations, the collaboration that’s harder than it should be — the question worth sitting with isn’t “how do we fix this?”  It’s “What conversations are we not having?”

That’s usually where the work starts.

Let’s help you and your team start having those important conversations.

If your team is stuck in the same pattern — respectful on the surface, disconnected underneath — an Everything DiSC workshop is where I’d start.

Schedule a conversation and we’ll figure out if it’s the right fit.

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