When Smart Problem Solvers Become The Problem
The interpersonal blindspots that hold back high-performing teams
Hey, it’s Mounica. Welcome to my newsletter on self-discovery, leadership, and bringing ambitious visions to life. I’ve been working on writing more for the corporate leadership audience for other publications. I’m cross-posting this article about teams here.
Your team's brilliance might be your biggest risk.
Nothing compares to smart people working together to solve a problem. Yet, some of the best teams feel like a race car in second gear—full of power but unable to reach top speed. Unspoken tensions and hidden friction keep them from achieving breakthrough results.
I’ve seen this firsthand. Years ago, as an engineer on a prototyping team, I worked alongside brilliant minds— engineers, architects, and product managers. We were a small, scrappy team tasked with delivering a highly ambitious and ambiguous new app. We moved fast: the senior engineer built an internal demo, the PMs mapped features to marketing, and the architect designed the foundation for a resilient product. Within three weeks, we had a working prototype. It was one of the most impressive teams I’d ever been part of.
But beneath the brilliance, cracks were forming that people didn’t see or admit. The senior engineer was frustrated by the unclear projects. The product managers, irritated by engineering pushback, bottled up concerns until the retrospective. The architect, brilliant but dismissive, gave others massive impostor syndrome. The team’s leader, overwhelmed with a big charter, had neither the eye nor the time to look at any of these cracks.
A few months later, the team disbanded. People moved on. And while leadership cited “business reasons,” one thing was clear: the team wasn’t invested in each other.
Such stories are common in the tech world and maybe across high-performing teams everywhere. Smart, driven people produce great work, but when interpersonal friction goes unaddressed, even the best teams become mediocre. People quit. Tensions grow. And all the dissatisfaction is pushed under the rug of a steady paycheck.
Why Smart Teams Miss Hidden Dysfunction
Just like individuals have blind spots, teams do, too. Specifically, smart teams develop group interpersonal blindspots— dynamics that quietly chip away trust, alignment, and connection.
Here are some common ones:
The Pushy Senior Effect: The team works around a dominant personality instead of addressing their behavior directly.
Weaponized Leadership Principles: When cultural values (“customer focus,” “excellence,” “disagree and commit”) are used to win arguments and justify overwork, perfectionism, or forced agreement.
The Meeting Spiral: Misalignment leads to endless meetings without any real decisions made.
Unlike technical projects, interpersonal issues have no clear metrics. They can’t be tracked with milestones or deadlines. They’re easy to ignore—until they aren’t.
How Smart Problem Solvers Create Group Blind Spots
The very skills that make high performers successful—problem-solving, pattern recognition, and rigorous logic—can backfire when applied to interpersonal dynamics.
When you set ambitious goals, your best move is to understand how you handle uncertainty. Whether your team aims to boost sales, multiply revenue in five years, or launch a new AI service, one thing is clear: Without a clear path to your goal, your team must face uncertainty.
When faced with uncertainty, smart people instinctively try to solve their way out of it. Problem-solving is right in their comfort zone. But human relationships don’t work like code, systems, or market trends. You can’t debug a dismissive personality. You can’t optimize away discouragement, anxiety, or that gut-tightening overwhelm. And no matter how brilliant your strategies are, you can’t preemptively ‘solve’ a conflict that hasn’t yet surfaced.
But when you explore the unknown, smart people do what they know best—oversimplify humans as rational with predictable behaviors. It’s like stocking up on toilet paper during the pandemic—it makes sense individually but not in the bigger picture. Here’s how this happens:
1. Solving Conflict Instead of Navigating It
A team I worked with needed a key feature deployed, but the production pipeline would take months. The team asked for a faster process, but the lead engineer—let’s call him John—pushed back. Known for being territorial, John often ignored external requests.
Instead of addressing the issue directly, the team spent weeks strategizing around him: deciding who should approach him and how to frame the request, even taking on extra work to avoid conflict. The real problem? The team lacked the skills to navigate difficult personalities and conversations.
Solution: Shift from Avoidance or Confrontation to Leadership
Instead of working around difficult people, teams need to develop the leadership skills to engage them effectively. That means:
Handling tough conversations with curiosity rather than defensiveness.
Learning to influence people in their vision without escalating conflict.
Training leaders to guide—not just manage—teams through interpersonal friction.
2. Right/Wrong Trap
During a coach training program, I felt frustrated with a peer’s challenging questions. To me, they seemed judgmental. I struggled with a sense of being misunderstood and unheard. When I brought this up with my coach and argued that this person was coaching me the “wrong way,” I realized I was stuck in a right/wrong mindset — labeling their approach wrong because it didn’t match my expectations.
Teams fall into this trap too. The right/wrong mindset can turn cultural values into weapons:
"Customer obsession" becomes a reason to justify burnout.
"Excellence" turns into unrealistic perfectionism.
"Disagree and commit" is used to silence dissent.
Feedback is used to point to others as incompetent instead of empowering them.
Solution: Build fitness to uncertainty
To break free from the right/wrong trap, teams must build what I call fitness to uncertainty—the ability to handle ambiguity and multiple perspectives without rigid judgment. One way to develop this is through team coaching and reflection exercises. Leaders can coach their team to address their fears, complaints, and hidden tensions.
I often guide teams through a clearing exercise to help them separate facts from their right/wrong interpretations. This exercise has four steps: First, each person shares their fears, concerns, or grievances respectfully. Second, they notice their automatic judgments and reactions to the unknown. Third, they examine the interpretative nature of their conclusions. Finally, they reframe their relationship to the challenges.
Developing this skill helps teams navigate tension without defaulting to blame or avoidance.
3. Success At Any Cost vs. Meaningful Work
Some teams look wildly successful from the outside—hitting goals, earning praise from leadership—but internally, people feel disconnected and drained. After years of working with a team as an engineer, I experienced this emptiness firsthand. I knew this wasn’t the norm—I had previously worked with teams with high connection and morale.
We were a marvel, meeting all the milestones and getting accolades from senior management. Yet, I felt like a robot: log in at 9 am, execute tasks, show up to meetings, brainstorm through blockers, and log off.
When I spoke to peers in nearby teams, I heard the same thing. We weren’t alone. As an executive coach, I have listened to many engineers and leaders say they feel alone, despite regular team lunches or off-site activities.
It’s like a symphony orchestra—technically perfect, but missing harmony. Everyone plays their part, but the music feels lifeless. This lifelessness affects the culture, where people don’t raise issues early and lack the rapport to support each other’s growth.
Solution: Prioritize Connection Alongside Success.
Teams thrive when people feel seen and valued—not just productive. That doesn’t mean forced team bonding or endless social events. It means integrating connection into how work happens:
Building a culture where people acknowledge and appreciate each other.
Creating space for meaningful conversations, not just project updates.
Encouraging team members to invest in each other’s growth, not just their output.
The Breakthrough For Smart Teams
Solving hard problems isn’t enough. New possibilities open when your team expands their comfort zone and develops skills to face uncertainty with courage and connection instead of problem-solving interpersonal dynamics.
That means:
Developing leadership at all levels, not just at the top.
Shifting from "problem-solving mode" to navigating complexity.
Recognizing that success isn’t just about outcomes—it’s about the experience of getting there.
In a world where AI can solve technical problems faster than ever, what will set teams apart is their ability to work with human complexity, not against it. That’s the new competitive edge.
The smartest teams won’t just solve problems. They’ll solve themselves first.
Other Things:
This book destroyed my current mental model of planning for highly-ambitious goals. It’s written by two AI researchers who argue that goals and objectives are actually obstacles to accomplishing something great. I agree with their argument, yet in my work with clients, I have seen that exploration can become a defense mechanism without a clear commitment. After hours of discussion with my husband, who is equally nerdy about personal development, I’m sitting with the paradoxical nature of commitment in exploration of possibilities. I’ll expand on this in the coming months.
I went mini-viral with this video on LinkedIn. I’m just starting to make videos, and this was a surprising source of encouragement. I never figured out the algorithm in my 3 years of writing on LinkedIn. Perhaps for the good, but I’m starting to gain some traction in creating conversation and community there.
I’m starting a podcast! Watch this space for more info.
If you’re working on something ambitious, that feels vague and impossible right now, I’d love to hear from you. What are you working on? What does it feel like? How do you find yourself reacting to uncertainty? Reply to this email and tell me!
There are several aspects of this that really stick out to me. "The right/wrong mindset can turn cultural values into weapons." This one is really stirring something in me. Thank you—so much to contemplate here.