Right now, I am observing the fourth case of a large company in Cyprus facing what they describe as a “communication problem” between leaders.
From my experience, communication is never the root cause. It is simply the first visible symptom of something much deeper: most leadership teams have never truly agreed on the RULES OF THE GAME.
What do I mean by “the rules of the game”?
Every organisation has its own game. It has its culture, traditions, unwritten norms, written norms, values, and ways of doing things. Yet beneath all of that lies something even more fundamental: the agreements between people.
The problem is that, in many organisations, those agreements are never fully articulated. They exist as assumptions.
- One leader believes they are accountable for a result but were never given the authority required to achieve it.
- Another spends weeks chasing information because nobody feels responsible for providing it.
- A third discovers that although everyone agreed on one process, the organisation actually operates according to an entirely different set of unwritten rules.
And so people begin to improvise. They try to figure out how the game works. They guess..
They guess how decisions are made, how performance is evaluated, and what behaviours are rewarded. And what is expected from them.
The less clarity exists, the more assumptions fill the gap. I call them ILLUSIONS.
Eventually, the operating system of the organisation becomes a collection of individual interpretations rather than shared agreements.
This is why many leadership teams are not struggling with communication.
They are struggling with competing versions of “reality”.
People are trying to collaborate while operating from entirely different mental models of how the organisation “plays the game”.
The solution is surprisingly simple, although not always easy.
Contracting.
Through a structured contracting process, leaders bring hidden assumptions into the open. They remove ambiguity, address unspoken expectations, and make explicit what has previously existed only in people’s heads.
And something remarkable happens.
The tension that once fuelled conflict begins to disappear. Accountability becomes clearer. Decisions accelerate. Productivity improves.
Perhaps most importantly, people begin to trust each other more because they finally understand the same game they are playing together.For the first time, they stop feeling like individuals protecting their own territory and start feeling like a team.
So, if you are a business owner, board member, or executive leader and have already invested in communication workshops, team-building activities, or leadership training, it may be worth looking deeper.
Into the real game 😉