Friday Forward - Dissonant Bubbles (#455)

When your thoughts and your actions diverge, the result is always unsustainable

In last week’s Weekend Conversations episode of The Elevate Podcast, I explored the idea of alignment—in both personal and professional contexts—building off last week’s Friday Forward about psychological safety.

Psychological safety often leads to alignment for the people on a team. On great teams, people feel safe to say what’s truly on their minds, rather than holding back their opinions out of fear of judgment or punishment. If they have an idea, they share it. If they think of a concern, they don’t just keep it to themselves.

A great visual analogue for this relates to the thought bubbles and speech bubbles found in cartoons.

Imagine a cartoon where a person is speaking in a meeting. What they say out loud is in a speech bubble, but what they are really thinking—which just so happens to contradict what they’re saying—is visible in a thought bubble.

This is a case of what I’d call “dissonant bubbles”—the speaker either lacks the confidence to speak their mind or feels pressure to say things they don’t really believe. Similarly, they might say one thing and then do something entirely different after the meeting.

This misalignment between thought, speech and, eventually, action isn’t just frustrating for the individual; it also affects the entire team’s performance and culture. I’ve seen dissonant bubbles create dysfunction in many relationships, teams and entire organizations.

Dissonant bubble issues often start small, with minor misalignments: for example, a team member who says they want feedback but is defensive whenever they’re critiqued, or team members who think an idea is bound to fail but express support to avoid ruffling feathers.

One recent example involves employees who felt pressured to strongly endorse certain DEI initiatives within their organizations, even though they privately worried those particular approaches were harmful or counterproductive to creating a more equitable workplace. But this same dynamic tends to be found in nearly every organizational issue or scandal—there are always people who mentioned to their peers that they knew the company was headed for trouble but decided not to speak up.

Dissonant bubbles ultimately create a culture where everyone goes with the flow, while deeper issues fester into unbearable dissonance. There are usually two ways this dissonance resolves itself, neither of which is particularly healthy.

The first resolution is a blow-up where the truth comes out eventually. When the real opinions finally surface, they’re often unfiltered and unrestrained, leading to emotional fallout and damaged relationships.

The second outcome is even worse: people simply choose to live with the dissonance, compromising their values to maintain harmony. This go-along-to-get-along approach comes at a high personal cost, as individuals end up suppressing their true beliefs to fit their environment, rather than shaping their environment to align with their authentic selves or finding a place that better fits their values. Over time, this leads to a lack of authenticity and passion among leaders that inevitably erodes the whole organization.

This same dynamic of dissonant bubbles often plays out in our personal lives as well. We all have times where what we think and what we say don’t fully align. We’ve often experienced it from friends or family members in the form of passive aggressiveness—when people make indirect comments or drop hints about their frustrations, rather than sharing how they feel and initiating a productive dialogue. Passive aggressiveness never makes a relationship better—it only creates confusion, misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and sometimes even the end of the relationship.   

To live in alignment, you need to limit your dissonant bubbles and live in a way that reflects your core beliefs and values. While saying what you think can be daunting, that short-term discomfort is a small price to pay to avoid the long-term pain of being inauthentic and misaligned in your work and most important relationships.

Where in your life do you have the most dissonant bubbles? What’s causing the dissonance, and what can you do to resolve it?

Quote of The Week

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” - Mahatma Gandhi

New For Premium Subscribers

• Don't Call Your Company A Family

• Do Your Leaders Grow Talent, Or Fear It?

• Cultivating Vulnerability on Your Team