"We're way more aligned than I expected." The partner said it like she almost didn't believe it herself.
A partner group of a financial services firm. In the intakes, it was clear: they knew they were misaligned. But they'd never had the conversation, because they valued their harmony too much to risk it. No matter how superficial they deep down knew this harmony to be.
In preparation, I spoke to all partners. After the last intake, I had that old, familiar feeling: woah, this is going to be intense. So much frustration and suppressed anger, for all those years.
Then I remembered. Decades of facilitating top teams has taught me something that still surprises me: it's never as bad as it feels beforehand. Why? Because its people's fear: Fantasized Experiences Appearing Real. Not reality per se….
So, I went in. With a little twitch in my stomach, at the same time confident. Because I knew what to do. Building a container safe enough to hold what was coming. We made agreements up front: how we would work together, how we would listen, that everyone would get uninterrupted space to speak. I framed the 'breakthrough- question'. Then, simply, we went around the room.
By the end, after everyone had spoken and everyone had truly listened, there was a tangible sigh in the room. One partner said it out loud:
"We're way more aligned than I expected. I was afraid we'd never really get close, but we're already much closer than I thought."
That's the pattern, almost every time. What felt like an unbridgeable gap turns out to be mostly silence, years of unspoken assumptions people feared to be real disagreement.
The misalignment wasn't imaginary. But it was smaller, and far more workable, than the story everyone had been carrying about it.
What's a moment where "we're more aligned than I thought" showed up in your own team later than it should have?