Decidable and Concealed Goals
Here, the playing field of concealed interests lie. Concealed interests pursue goals, hidden, without communication and in the background, where, actually, they ought to be decided jointly as team goals. The list of reasons and motives, as to why interests can remain concealed, is very long.
• People’s motives: Here, feelings of fear, guilt and shame play a significant role. The people concerned are not necessarily aware of these emotions. Nevertheless, they have an effect on behaviour through reticence, manoeuvring, through supressing and forgetting, through avoiding contact, through manipulation, through boycotts and very much more. Such motives can usually only be exposed through coaching, rather than through management.
• Reasons in the team: Interaction patterns in teams are often characterised by taboos. Taboos are very effective as communication barriers. They can relate to certain contents within topics (“No criticism of IT!”), or also to certain forms of communication (“We always agree here!”) and also to certain people (“No criticism of Meier!”).
• Reasons in the organisation: The organisation, also, can have reasons for concealing goals, in order to prevent open discourse on these goals within the team. Amongst these could be fear about premature resistance, demotivation consequences or possible dismissals.
• Organisational culture: Taboos can also rule in the organisational culture, just like in the interaction patterns of teams, when they classify decidable goals, and goals in need of a decision, as non-debatable. Everyone is familiar with this.
In summary, the problem of this combination is not the concealment things, which could be totally sensible. The problem is the fixation on the concealment. This loss of freedom weakens the ability to decide, when this might be necessary. Therefore, for the reflection upon the guiding process goal setting, the occupation with that, which is not being said, is often very important.