Playbook Two: Dysfunction

The Dysfunction Spiral: Why Leadership Feels Like Firefighting—And How to Build a Self-Regulating Team

📌 This is a special edition of the Safe Space Rebellion Newsletter—your go-to field guide for leading beyond burnout and building teams that thrive.

Day Two of a Six-Day Blitz.

🚀 WELCOME TO YOUR LEADERSHIP FIELD GUIDE

Dysfunction Isn’t Random. It’s a System Failure.

You’ve seen it before. Your team keeps hitting the same roadblocks. Meetings go in circles. Accountability falls apart. And you feel like you’re constantly putting out fires.

Here’s the truth:

Dysfunction isn’t caused by bad employees—it’s the result of an unclear, unregulated system.

• Misaligned goals create friction.

• Unclear expectations fuel conflict.

• Fear-driven environments shut down problem-solving.

👉 If you’re spending more time managing drama than driving strategy, your system—not your people—is broken.

This playbook will show you how to break the dysfunction cycle by creating a self-regulating team that doesn’t need constant oversight to function.

🚨 THE REAL REASON TEAMS FALL APART

Dysfunction isn’t about people refusing to collaborate—it’s about psychological instability in the system. Research on psychosocial safety climate (Dollard et al., 2012) shows that workplaces with low psychological safety experience:

✔ Higher conflict and disengagement
✔ Chronic stress that leads to emotional exhaustion
✔ Decreased productivity and performance

When people don’t feel safe to communicate honestly, they default to self-protection:

❌ Avoidance: Issues get ignored, and silos form.
❌ Defensiveness: People resist feedback and shift blame.
❌ Over-reliance on leadership: No one takes initiative, so every decision bottlenecks at the top.

👉 A high-dysfunction team isn’t lazy—it’s stuck in a self-protection loop.

🔬 THE FIX? CREATE A SELF-REGULATING TEAM.

Instead of micromanaging, shift from control to co-regulation. Research from Banks & Maynard (2022) shows that behavioral integration is the key to effective teams. This means structuring your leadership to:

• Clarify roles and decision-making authority.

• Make feedback a norm, not a crisis.

• Shift leadership energy from firefighting to facilitation.

Here’s how to make it happen.

🚀 THREE SHIFTS TO DYSFUNCTION-PROOF YOUR TEAM

1️⃣ Replace Decision Bottlenecks with Distributed Ownership

If every problem lands on your desk, your system is failing.

TRY THIS:

✔ Implement decision-rights frameworks so people know what they own.
✔ Shift from permission-based leadership to trust-based autonomy.
✔ Establish clear escalation protocols so not every issue reaches leadership.

📌 Key Insight: When people know what they’re responsible for, accountability follows naturally.

2️⃣ Replace Authority with Psychological Safety

If people fear speaking up, dysfunction festers.

TRY THIS:

✔ Model non-defensive leadership—acknowledge mistakes openly.
✔ Normalize disagreement as progress, not conflict.
✔ Use structured feedback loops to ensure problems are surfaced early.

📌 Key Insight: Clarity beats control. The safer people feel, the fewer surprises you’ll deal with.

3️⃣ Replace Micromanaging with Coaching Leadership

If you’re solving all the problems, your team isn’t thinking for themselves.

TRY THIS:

✔ Shift from giving answers to asking strategic questions.
✔ Develop team coaching skills so people self-solve.
✔ Reinforce a problem-solving culture with real-time feedback.

📌 Key Insight: The more you teach your team to think, the less you’ll have to fix.

🔥 THE CHOICE IS YOURS

You can keep chasing fires—or you can build a system that prevents them.

Are you ready to stop doing fire patrols? 

You Can Join in Two Ways:

🔹 Join the Safe Space Rebellion Community → Get access to coaching, burnout-proof leadership strategies, and peer support.

🔹 Subscribe to the Safe Space Rebellion Newsletter → Get exclusive insights and action plans straight to your inbox.

🔥 See you inside the rebellion.

Trace

📚 REFERENCES (APA 7th Edition):

• Banks, G. C., & Maynard, M. T. (2022). The Relationship between Psychological Safety and Management Team Effectiveness: Mediating Role of Behavioral Integration. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, Article 9819141.

• Dollard, M. F., Opie, T., Lenthall, S., Wakerman, J., & Knight, S. (2012). Psychosocial Safety Climate as an Antecedent of Work Characteristics and Psychological Strain. Work & Stress, 26(4), 385–404.

• Porges, S. W. (2017). The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe. W. W. Norton & Company.