It started in a meeting.

Thandi wanted to move fast. Ship it, test it, fix it on the way.

Pieter wanted to get it right first. Check the numbers. Then check them again.

Neither of them was wrong. That was the problem.

The disagreement didn’t blow up. It went quiet. Which is worse.

Pieter stopped copying Thandi on emails. Thandi started “just running things past” two colleagues before meetings. Small things. Reasonable things, if you asked either of them.

Within a month, there were three teams sitting at one table. Thandi’s side. Pieter’s side. And the team they were all supposed to be on.

I’ve started calling these The Hidden Teams: the unofficial teams that form inside the real one when people stop trusting each other’s intentions.

Nobody joins one on purpose. You just find yourself nodding a little more at one person’s comments. Running something past the same people before the meeting. Keeping the peace by keeping your distance.

And the work pays for it.

Every decision gets negotiated twice: once in the meeting, once in the corridor. Good ideas die because of whose idea they are. (Nobody puts that on a timesheet.)

Here’s what struck me.

Thandi and Pieter weren’t fighting about the project. They were fighting about each other.

She read his caution as distrust. He read her haste as carelessness.

In YQ, we talk about how none of us is special, but each of us is unique. Once you accept that someone is unique, and not just difficult, a different question becomes possible.

Not “Why are they like this?”

But “What do they see that I don’t?”

So we started YQ’ing it.

Each person looked at their funnels and filters: what they notice first, and what they filter out.

Thandi’s filter was momentum. She sees the cost of standing still.

Pieter’s filter was risk. He sees the cost of getting it wrong.

Put that on a whiteboard and the room shifts. Someone laughs.

This team doesn’t have a Thandi problem or a Pieter problem. It has two of its most valuable assets pointed at each other instead of at the work.

But seeing the difference wasn’t enough. They had to stand on something.

That’s where grounding came in.

Underneath our filters sit our values. For Thandi, it was progress. Doing nothing felt like letting people down. For Pieter, it was integrity. Putting out something flawed felt like breaking a promise.

When they said it out loud, the story changed.

He wasn’t slowing her down. She wasn’t cutting corners.

They were protecting something they cared about.

They didn’t have to share each other’s values. Just accept them. Meet each other where they are. A stronger foundation.

From there, the fix wasn’t a truce. It was a role.

Thandi drives the pace. Pieter owns the checkpoints.

And each knows the other isn’t doing it to them.

The Hidden Teams didn’t disband overnight. They steadily lost their reason to exist.

When people share a language for their differences, and respect what sits beneath them, they don’t need a side to stand with.

YQ provides that new language. My role is to help teams forge theirs. Their unique code.

Most business units have Hidden Teams somewhere.

Usually small. Usually polite. Always dragging progress back.

Are any forming in yours?

And what might change if, instead of asking “Why are they like this?”, you asked:

“What are they protecting — and what do they see that I don’t?”