Episode Summary
In this episode of The Leadership Pause, we explore the concept of the double bind in workplace leadership, those contradictory messages that leave employees frozen and confused. We discuss how leaders unintentionally create these situations, the psychological toll on employees, and practical strategies for leaders and team members to navigate these challenging dynamics.
What is a Double Bind?
The double bind is a concept from psychoanalytic and family systems psychology that describes contradictions in communication. It typically involves an authority figure sending mixed messages, saying one thing while their actions or body language communicate something entirely different. For example, a manager might say "I'm really interested in what you're saying" while appearing closed off and distracted. Over time, these mixed messages create psychological strain as people receiving them freeze, uncertain whether to respond to what they're hearing or what they're experiencing through actions and consequences.
The Reality Behind Workplace Messages
We explore how familiar organizational mantras contain hidden double binds. When companies say we're family, the unspoken counterpart is often we'll lay you off when we have to. Bring your whole authentic self to work really means conform to our norms and don't be too different. Your voice matters comes with the caveat that disagreement can be career-limiting. Work-life balance is our priority exists alongside expectations to work weekends and respond to late-night emails. And take risks and innovate is shadowed by the reality that failure could be punished.
These contradictions often become apparent during the transition from recruitment to employment. Neil shares a memorable example from his early career with the British military, where recruitment commercials showed soldiers skiing, parachuting, and diving, creating a glamorous image that bore no resemblance to the reality of basic training. This disconnect between promise and reality is a classic setup for the double bind.
Real-World Examples from the Field
Taylere shares a coaching example of a leader who was given a mandate to increase efficiency and get things done quickly, but then received pushback when team members complained that she wasn't prioritizing how people felt about their work. This created a classic double bind where she was expected to deliver on contradictory priorities simultaneously. Through coaching, she learned to pivot and focus on what was actually being rewarded in the organization rather than what was being stated, ultimately finding success by prioritizing relationships and explaining delays in terms of relationship-building wins.
Neil describes working with a leader who believed she was an empowering, progressive manager who had embedded distributed decision-making within her team. However, she kept losing team members. When they explored what empowerment actually looked like in practice, it became clear she was creating a double bind. She would ask team members to rethink processes, but when they returned with their ideas, she would shut them down by saying "there's no way the CEO will go for it." The unspoken messages were that while employees were supposedly empowered to make decisions, she retained final authority and there were constraints she wouldn't share upfront. Team members who pushed back were seen as lacking initiative or not being culture fits.
The Psychological and Organizational Consequences
When employees find themselves trapped in double bind, whether by economic necessity, benefits, or career investment, the consequences can be severe. Neil describes working with an organization that recently redefined its leadership standards and invested heavily in coaching senior leaders on new behaviors. When leaders adopted these new behaviors as requested, some were shut down, leading to disengagement, disillusionment, and withdrawal. These leaders stopped showing the desired behaviors and retreated to focusing on tasks within their immediate remit.
Taylere explains that this shutdown mirrors what happens clinically when children experience double binds with parents, they withdraw and start planning their exit. In organizational settings, the psychological contract breaks. In the best case scenario, employees simply start managing their own expectations, recognizing that their loyalty must be to themselves rather than the organization. However, when there's less maturity or self-responsibility, double binds can drive counterproductive work behaviors and organizational deviance, ranging from minor acts like taking office supplies to more serious sabotage. The degree of offense or personal shame experienced determines the severity of the response.
Beyond individual consequences, double binds create stress, self-doubt, cynicism, and eventually burnout. They erode trust between individuals and can lead to the formation of shadow cultures, informal systems that emerge when people feel trapped and powerless within the formal organizational structure.
Navigating Double Binds as an Employee
For individuals caught in double binds, the first critical step is recognizing that the situation exists. This can be particularly challenging because people who experienced double binds as children may find themselves reenacting those patterns at work, making it difficult to trust their own perceptions. Talking with a coach, friend, or someone outside the organization can help validate the experience and clarify whether the contradiction is real or imagined.
The second step is assessing severity, determining whether the situation is merely annoying or truly intolerable. As Taylere puts it, is this a matter of a company asking you to bring your whole self to work when they really can't accommodate that, or is it something more fundamental? Sometimes the solution is simply creating a work persona and understanding that certain organizational mantras are more aspirational than actual.
The third step involves managing or resetting your psychological contract, the unspoken expectations about what you give and what you receive in the employment relationship. This means honestly assessing what you're actually getting from the organization, how you can navigate the contradictions, whether it's worth staying, and if not, planning your exit. The key insight Taylere offers is to focus on adapting to what you're experiencing rather than rebelling against it, because rebellion often hurts both the organization and your own career.
Due Diligence and Healthy Skepticism
Both hosts emphasize the importance of healthy skepticism, particularly during hiring processes. When a prospective employer makes promises about autonomy, empowerment, or culture, test those claims with specific scenarios. Ask exactly what "responsibility for strategy" looks like in practice, who you'll need to collaborate with, and under what circumstances your autonomy might be limited. Taylere adds that it's worth considering whether the promises being made even make sense from a business perspective. It's unrealistic for everyone to be fully empowered to make decisions.
Perhaps most tellingly, as Taylere observes, your communication experience going into an organization will be your communication experience at the organization. If there are red flags during recruitment, inconsistencies, evasions, or contradictions, those patterns will likely continue once you're hired.
Leadership Responsibilities
While individuals must protect themselves, leaders bear significant responsibility for reducing double binds. Neil emphasizes that leaders should make the implicit explicit, throwing out trite phrases like "we're family" in favor of detailed explanations of how the organization actually works. This includes working through tensions and polarities, because every organizational culture contains paradoxes. Leaders need to name these contradictions and discuss culture at the actual level rather than the aspirational level.
For example, a leader might say: "Yes, we hold a value that your time is your own outside of work, and there will be times when you'll have to work late or come in on weekends to meet deadlines. Both of these things can be true." This kind of honesty helps people form realistic expectations rather than feeling betrayed when the nuance emerges later.
Leaders should also create permission for discussing contradictions without penalty. When employees raise inconsistencies, don't label them as complainers,have conversations about the contradictions and work to either reconcile them or help people understand how to live with them. Taylere adds that leaders shouldn't underestimate their power to influence peers and senior leadership around the importance of congruent communication, framing it as essential for driving business forward rather than just avoiding difficult conversations.
Maintaining continuity from hiring through employment is crucial. The recruitment experience should reflect the organizational reality to prevent violations of the psychological contract. And when organizational realities shift, when the company that called itself a family needs to do layoffs, or when the democratic startup needs to implement hierarchy, leaders must go back and correct the messaging rather than simply moving forward and leaving employees confused.
A Final Word
The episode concludes with a powerful reminder: don't take double binds personally. Organizations create these contradictions often unintentionally, through communication breakdowns rather than malicious intent. For both leaders and employees, the work is about recognizing these patterns, addressing them directly, and finding ways to adapt effectively rather than simply reacting emotionally or disengaging entirely.
Contact
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