It was efficient, in a way. Nobody had to have the conversation. Information still moved. Decisions still got made, around the silence rather than through it. From the outside, the organisation looked functional.
Naming it in the room
We surfaced the pattern with all three present. One of them admitted it out loud. The question that followed was almost embarrassingly simple: Have you ever just asked them directly? The answer was no. In two years, no one had asked.
The leaders did not need a new process. They did not need a workshop on collaboration. They needed the thing they had been managing around to be said in front of everyone, once, by someone whose job it was to say it.
Naming the distrust is what created the trust.
Once the avoidance was visible to everyone, it could not quietly continue. The silence had been the strategy. We just made it impossible to keep.