This article is originally published on Forbes on 18 Dec 2025 [Link to original article]
Recently, I ran a poll with a client to understand what was getting their teams stuck. The responses were sobering. The most common words that surfaced were “waiting,” “lack of information,” “unclear instructions,” “overload,” “random tasks” and “delays.” This is not the vocabulary of a disengaged workforce. These words are the signals of a team experiencing friction, whether emotional tension, structural inefficiencies or behavioural abrasion. And when friction accumulates faster than clarity, teams freeze.
In my work with leaders across public and private sector clients, the pattern is unmistakable: Teams rarely get stuck because they lack intelligence, motivation or skill. They get stuck because the system they operate in makes movement difficult. In complex environments, “stuck-ness” is not a performance problem; rather, this sense of not being able to manoeuvre out of a chasm is a signal.
Stuckness And Systemic Friction
When leaders describe their teams as slow or unfocused, they often assume resistance or lack of clarity at the individual level, when the real issue is usually systemic. Stuckness emerges when structures create more confusion than clarity, more doubt than confidence and more noise than signal. Most teams are not disengaged; they are cautious, overloaded or emotionally exhausted, often trying not to make the wrong move because the system has not made the right one evident.
This is why teams hesitate when priorities shift weekly, roles overlap or decisions bottleneck at a single point. Complexity amplifies hesitation, and unaddressed hesitation becomes organisational inertia as the Theory of Success disappears from view. In this vacuum, negative reinforcing loops accelerate, dragging performance down even when the people themselves have not changed.
The Three Forms Of Invisible Friction Leaders Miss
Understanding friction is the first step in removing it. The types of friction slowing teams down are often invisible, especially to leaders operating at speed.
1. Emotional Friction
This is the friction created by fear, overwhelm or doubt. When people worry about judgment, mistakes or losing face, they hold back ideas and avoid taking initiative. Emotional friction is subtle, and it shows up as silence in meetings, careful phrasing or a tendency to wait for direction instead of acting. In the paradigm of Theory U, these can emerge from the Voice of Judgment, Voice of Concern and Voice of Fear.
2. Structural Friction
This emerges from the design of the organisation itself. Slow approval processes, unclear ownership, missing information and irregular cascades create drag. When employees say they are “waiting,” “pending a solution” or “unclear about next steps,” they are pointing at structural friction that the system has normalised. Structures drive behavior. Unless prevailing mental models are aligned, such friction will continuously show up time and again.
3. Behavioural Friction
This occurs when the norms of interaction become cautious rather than collaborative. People hesitate to challenge assumptions, ask for help or clarify expectations because the environment rewards compliance over curiosity. Meetings become polite rather than productive, and issues get escalated instead of resolved.
Most leaders are trained to address individual performance. Few are trained to diagnose and remove friction at the system level. Yet that is exactly what high-performing organisations require today. Leaders need a team that can overcome the behaviours that stem from the negative voices. The Fiends & Hero Model, drawing from team mechanics in roleplaying games, provides “hero party” compositions that can help address such phenomena.
How Systemic Leaders Can Cut Through Friction
Skillful leaders can remove friction not by pushing teams harder but by reshaping the environment so that the natural flow of work, and the natural courage of teams, can re-emerge. There are three leadership shifts that can help you unstick systems:
1. Create clarity faster than the system creates confusion.
In friction-heavy environments, clarity is oxygen. It allows teams to breathe, decide and move. Systemic leaders create clarity not by overexplaining but by simplifying what matters now, what can wait, what the team must achieve, what “good” looks like and how decisions will be made.
Clarity is a leadership behaviour, not a communication output. When you name assumptions, boundaries and success criteria early, friction can begin to dissolve.
2. Restore team energy by reducing emotional and task drag.
Overload is not only caused by volume. It is also caused by fragmentation, conflicting expectations and tasks that lack meaningful connection to purpose. When leaders reduce low-impact work, protect focus time and give permission to surface difficulties without embarrassment, emotional energy can recover. And when emotional energy recovers, teams can regain momentum.
3. Intentionally shift roles to match what the system needs.
Teams become stuck when leadership presence becomes one-dimensional. Some leaders default to being overly directive. Others become overly empathetic or focus too heavily on problem-solving.
Learn to shift roles based on the Fiends & Hero Model, deliberately based on what your team requires:
- Sometimes your team needs the Stabilizer: a calm, grounded presence when anxiety rises. The persona of the Tank fits this role by being a shield and defender.
- Sometimes your team needs the Restorer: someone to repair trust, acknowledge emotional reality and reduce tension. The characterisation of a Healer best encapsulates this: mediating and dialing down emotional tension.
- Sometimes your team needs the Clarifier: a leader who cuts through ambiguity, names the path forward and accelerates decisions. This is akin to the Damage Dealer, one who bashes through the resistance and gets the team to higher ground.
Movement returns when the leader’s behaviour matches the system’s need. And a high-performing team needs all the above three roles as they lower overall friction, improve communication flow and establish a rhythm of progress.
Getting Unstuck
Today’s organisations are hybrid, interdependent and constantly adjusting to volatility. Getting teams unstuck is not about motivation; it is about removing the barriers that make movement difficult. When leaders address emotional, structural and behavioural friction, teams can reengage, regain focus and find courage and conviction again.