Why Teams Misunderstand Each Other Even When Everyone Is Working Hard
“We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior.”
Everyone on the team may be working hard, and yet everyone is still a little frustrated with everyone else.
One person keeps asking questions when the rest of the group is ready to move forward.
Another throws out a new idea just when the team thought they had finally landed on a plan.
Someone else points out every possible problem.
The person who wants to build momentum is tired of talking, while the person quietly tracking everything that still needs to get done is wondering why no one else seems nearly concerned enough about the deadline.
It is easy to look at these dynamics and conclude that someone is being difficult, disengaged, overly critical, scattered, impatient, or simply not pulling their weight.
But sometimes the problem is not effort at all. Sometimes everyone is contributing in the way that makes the most sense to them—and misunderstanding what everyone else is contributing in the process.
That is one of the reasons I find the Working Genius framework so useful with teams. It gives people language for something that is often already happening beneath the surface:
We tend to assume that the way we naturally approach work is the way other people should approach it too.
And when they don't, we start making assumptions about why.
A QUICK TEAM CHECK-IN1. THE QUESTIONS
Who asks questions the rest of us are ready to move past?
2. THE IDEAS
Whose creativity feels energizing—and whose feels disruptive?
3. THE MOMENTUM
Who is usually pushing everyone else to move?
4. THE FOLLOW-THROUGH
Who notices unfinished work before anyone else does?Hard Work Doesn't Always Look the Same to Each Team Member
Most of us carry an internal picture of what a strong team member looks like. Maybe good team members take initiative. Maybe they think carefully before acting, come prepared with ideas, support other people without being asked, move quickly when a decision needs to be made, or follow through until every last detail is complete.
There is nothing inherently wrong with those expectations.
The problem comes when we unconsciously turn our preferred way of contributing into the standard for everyone else.
That is when differences in how people approach work can start looking like differences in commitment. The person asking another question becomes an overthinker. The person generating another possibility can't stay focused. The person evaluating the idea is negative. The person pushing for action is impatient. The person waiting for a clear request before jumping in is not proactive enough.
Notice what has happened: we have moved from observing someone's behavior to assigning meaning to it. Once that happens, a difference in working style can quickly become a judgment about character or motivation.
And those judgments have a way of changing how we work with one another.
The Story We Tell about Someone Else’s Behavior
Psychologists have long studied attribution—the explanations we create for why people behave the way they do.
One of the important ideas to emerge from this body of research is that our interpretation of someone else's behavior may overemphasize something about the person while underestimating the circumstances surrounding the behavior.
You can see this play out on teams all the time.
Imagine that a colleague doesn't immediately volunteer to help with a new project. One interpretation might be, "She isn't much of a team player."
But there are other possible explanations.
She may already be overloaded.
She may not understand what kind of help is needed.
She may respond readily when someone asks directly but not naturally insert herself into undefined work.
Or this particular kind of task may require significantly more energy from her than anyone realizes.
The behavior is the same, but the story we tell about it can be very different.
This is where a good team assessment can help—not because an assessment explains everything about a person, but because it can interrupt the interpretation we were already making and give us another possibility to consider.
Working Genius Gives Teams Another Interpretation
One of the things I appreciate about Working Genius is that it does not simply ask what someone is good at. It looks at the kinds of work that tend to give people energy, the work they can do competently without necessarily being energized by it, and the work that tends to create frustration.
The six types of Working Genius—Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity—describe different contributions needed as work moves from an initial question or opportunity all the way through implementation and completion.
Each person has two areas of Genius, two areas of Competency, and two areas of Frustration. You can read more about the model and how I use it with teams on my Working Genius facilitation page.
That distinction between ability and energy is especially important for teams. You can be capable of doing something without experiencing that work the same way someone else does. And when teams don't understand that difference, it is surprisingly easy to make inaccurate assumptions about one another's motivation.
The Working Genius model describes some of this dynamic in terms of guilt and judgment. We may feel guilty because a certain kind of work is difficult or draining for us, particularly when it seems easy for someone else. At the same time, we may judge someone else for struggling with the kind of work that comes naturally to us.
That dynamic can become a quiet source of tension on otherwise healthy teams.
Instead of asking, "Why doesn't she ever just do this?" the more useful question may be, "What might I be misunderstanding about how she experiences this part of the work?"
When Someone's Genius Looks Like a Problem
The irony is that sometimes the contribution a team most needs is also the one people find frustrating.
Someone with the Genius of Wonder may keep asking whether the team has identified the right problem when everyone else is ready to move forward.
An Inventor may generate another possibility just when the group thought it had made a decision.
Discernment may raise concerns about an idea that everyone else is excited about, while Galvanizing may push the group toward action before everyone feels ready.
These differences can create friction, but that doesn't necessarily mean the contribution itself is the problem.
It turns out there’s research behind this, too. Studies of teams with different ways of thinking suggest that those differences can create friction—but how a team handles that friction matters. When teams are better at working through conflict, different approaches are much less likely to get in the way of working well together.
That’s part of why shared language can be so helpful. The goal isn’t to get everyone to approach the work the same way. It’s to help people understand the differences well enough to work with them.
Working Genius gives teams practical language for doing that. It can help people pause before treating difference as resistance and ask whether a behavior that feels frustrating might also represent a contribution the team needs.
We Often Judge People Harshly for What Comes Easily to Us
This may be one of the most useful things to notice on a team.
If you have Tenacity, following something all the way through may feel so obviously necessary that it is difficult to understand why other people lose energy once the creative part is over. If Enablement comes naturally to you, you may notice someone's need for help almost immediately. When a colleague doesn't do the same, it can look selfish or disengaged.
If you have Invention, possibilities may come quickly, and you may wonder why someone else rarely brings new ideas to the table.
If you have Discernment, you may have a strong sense of what is likely to work and become frustrated when other people need you to explain an intuition that arrived almost instantly.
When something comes easily to us, we can underestimate how much effort it requires from someone else.
Our areas of Genius can quietly become the measuring stick we use for everyone else's contribution.
When someone doesn't measure up, we may assume they aren't trying hard enough rather than considering that the work requires a very different kind of energy from them.
Over time, that kind of misunderstanding can become relational. A difference that started with "we approach this work differently" can eventually become "I don't trust you to do your part."
Understanding Difference Does Not Mean Excusing Everything
This distinction matters, because assessments can be misused.
Working Genius should never become shorthand for, "That's just how I am." A Tenacity frustration doesn't mean you don't have to finish things. Having Invention doesn't mean someone else is always responsible for the details. And Discernment isn't permission to criticize every idea in the room.
That isn't self-awareness. It's using self-awareness to avoid responsibility.
Every role includes work that doesn't come naturally. Teams still need accountability. Deadlines still matter. Difficult conversations still have to happen.
The value of understanding Working Genius is not that it excuses people from doing hard things. It gives the team better information for deciding what is really happening.
Maybe someone needs more support. Maybe responsibilities could be distributed differently. Maybe two people should partner in a different way. Maybe the meeting structure is rewarding one kind of contribution while consistently overlooking another. Maybe the team has a genuine gap in one stage of work.
Or maybe the expectation is completely reasonable, and someone simply needs to follow through.
The framework gives you information. The team still has to decide what to do with it.
That is also why I believe the conversation after an assessment matters as much as the individual results. I've written more about that in How to Turn Team Assessment Results Into Lasting Change.
Try this Quick Team Pulse Check
When I work with teams, one of the most useful shifts is simply slowing the interpretation down.
Before deciding that someone is disengaged, difficult, or uncommitted, it can help to ask:
What exactly am I observing?
What meaning am I assigning to that behavior?
What other explanations could be possible?
Is this a recurring performance issue, or could it reflect a difference in how this person approaches the work?
Is the team asking this person to spend a disproportionate amount of time in work that consistently drains them?
Is there a contribution this person is making that we tend to overlook because it doesn't look like our own?
You may still arrive at the conclusion that there is a performance issue. Sometimes there is.
But it is worth making sure you are solving the right problem.
Shared Language Can Change the Conversation
One of the most valuable outcomes of a team assessment isn't the individual report. It's the language the team gains for discussing things that were already happening.
Instead of, "You're always shooting down my ideas," a team member might say, "I do want your Discernment here, but could we stay in possibility mode a little longer before we evaluate?"
Instead of allowing resentment to build around unfinished work, someone might say, "We're leaning heavily on the same people for Tenacity again. How do we want to distribute the completion work on this project?"
The labels aren't magic. What matters is that the team now has a less personal way to talk about the work.
This connects with Amy Edmondson's research on psychological safety in work teams. In her foundational study of 51 work teams, psychological safety—the shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking—was associated with learning behaviors such as seeking feedback, discussing mistakes, and experimenting.
Psychological safety doesn't mean eliminating disagreement or making every conversation comfortable. Teams still need to challenge ideas, raise concerns, admit mistakes, and disagree about what to do next. But people need to be able to contribute what they see without every difference becoming personal.
Shared language can help make those conversations easier.
A framework like Working Genius won't eliminate misunderstanding, and it won't remove the need for accountability or difficult conversations. What it can do is give a team another way to interpret and discuss what they're experiencing.
Before frustration becomes personal, we can ask what someone may be contributing that we don't naturally see.
Before assuming a motivation problem, we can consider whether there might be another explanation.
And before deciding someone simply isn't trying hard enough, we can get curious about whether the work that comes easily to us feels very different to them.
Those questions won't eliminate every team conflict. But they can change the quality of the conversation—and often, that's where better teamwork begins.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Team misunderstandings aren't always caused by poor intentions or a lack of communication. People can interpret the same work differently based on their strengths, roles, experiences, and expectations. When teammates assume their own way of contributing is the normal or best way, differences can easily be interpreted as lack of effort, negativity, indecision, or disengagement.
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Working Genius can give teams shared language for discussing how different people contribute to work, where they gain energy, and where they experience frustration. The assessment itself doesn't improve communication automatically. The value comes from applying those insights to real conversations about meetings, roles, projects, delegation, collaboration, and conflict.
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The six types are Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity. Together, they describe different contributions involved in moving work from an initial question or opportunity through generating and evaluating ideas, building momentum, supporting implementation, and completing the work.
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Guilt can arise when people feel inadequate because certain kinds of work are difficult or draining for them. Judgment can occur when people assume that another person's struggle reflects a lack of effort, intelligence, or commitment. Understanding areas of Genius and Frustration can give teams another way to interpret those differences.
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No. Understanding someone's Working Genius doesn't remove accountability or mean employees should only do work they enjoy. It gives leaders and teams additional information for deciding how to structure work, where support may be needed, and whether recurring difficulties reflect motivation, skill, workload, role design, or a mismatch in the kind of work someone is being asked to do.
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Teams can certainly take the Working Genius assessment without a facilitator. Facilitation can be especially useful when a team wants to move beyond individual results and examine patterns across the whole team—where work stalls, where people misunderstand one another, where certain contributions are missing, or how roles and responsibilities align with the team's natural strengths.
You can learn more about my approach to Working Genius facilitation and team consulting.
Help Your Team Understand What's Really Happening
If your team is full of capable people who are working hard but still experiencing recurring frustration, the answer may not be another communication tip.
You may need a better conversation about how the work is actually getting done, what each person is bringing to it, and where your team may be misunderstanding difference as disengagement.
In my Working Genius and team building workshops, I help teams move beyond individual assessment results to examine the patterns shaping their real work. We look at where Genius and Frustration show up, how the team communicates and makes decisions, where work tends to stall, and what practical changes could make collaboration easier and more effective.
If you're looking for a Working Genius facilitator who will help your team do more than simply understand their results, I'd love to talk. Tell me what's happening on your team, where the friction is showing up, and what you'd like to be different. We can figure out the right next step from there.
Or schedule a free consultation and tell me a little about your leadership development needs. We can talk through what's happening, what you'd like to accomplish, and which approach might be the best fit.
Dr. Bethany Peters is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and leadership expert who helps individuals, teams, and organizations grow through leadership coaching, executive development, team facilitation, and evidence-based assessments. Whether she's coaching one-on-one or leading a workshop, Bethany creates practical, engaging experiences that help people communicate better, lead with confidence, and create lasting change.
