MIDORI INSIGHT

A toxic dynamic at work in organizational crisis: entrapped power, poorly supported change, implicit leaderships

Matthieu Poirot

Psychologist and PhD in Management, expert in organizational psychology

www.midori-consulting.eu

Our interventions during organizational crises reveal a particularly toxic systemic dynamic, structured around three interdependent phenomena: the progressive entrapment of formal power, inadequate support for transformations, and the compensatory emergence of implicit leaderships. None of these three phenomena is sufficient on its own to explain the crisis; it is their mutual reinforcement that locks the organization into a state of permanent latent conflict. This Insight describes this mechanism, the systemic psychological debts it generates, and the three-level regulation approach that makes it possible to break out of it.

The entrapment of formal leadership power

The first phenomenon concerns the leader personally. In most of the crises we accompany, the leader displays the characteristic signs of a progressive entrapment in a position of power that has become defensive. This dynamic can be read through several converging indicators: unilateral decision-making, without prior consultation of those who will have to implement the decisions; a clear difficulty in acknowledging leadership or steering errors, even minor ones; and the systematic avoidance of situations involving any degree of vulnerability or public questioning, an open exchange with the teams, an unfiltered question session, a critical remark received without counter-attack.

Let us state it clearly: this entrapment is almost never the product of a defective personality. It is an understandable defense against a real anxiety. Leading in times of crisis exposes one to an insecurity that is easily underestimated: fear of losing control, fear of losing face, the structural loneliness of the role, the feeling of being attacked personally when it is the role that is being contested. The work on the hidden side of leadership, notably that of Kets de Vries, shows this well: under threat, power ceases to be a tool in the service of the collective and becomes a refuge to be protected. The problem is not that the leader defends themselves; it is that this defense becomes the engine of the crisis.

For this entrapment generates a self-protective vicious circle of formidable coherence: the more the leader perceives contestation, the more rigid their positions become; the more rigid the positions, the greater the distance from the teams; and the more this distance sets in, the more it fuels precisely the resistance the leader seeks to control. The accounts we collect almost always converge on one point: a noticeable behavioral shift since the first organizational tensions emerged. « They were not like this before » comes back like a refrain. This observation is precious: it indicates that we are dealing with a situational, and therefore reversible, dynamic, not an immutable character trait.

Diagram 1. The self-protective vicious circle: the leader's defense feeds what it seeks to control.

Poor change support as a revealing factor

This defensive posture of formal leadership finds its most problematic expression in the support given to organizational transformations. Reorganizations are increasingly imposed without change pedagogy, without co-construction of meaning, and without anticipation of human impacts, particularly those related to psychological and identity-based safety needs. Organization charts, scopes and tools are changed; no one takes care of what people are losing, of what they understand, or of what they can still master.

This technocratic, top-down approach to change reveals an instrumental conception of the managerial relationship: employees are treated as adjustment variables rather than as actors of the transformation. One must measure what this implicit message produces. Telling teams, through acts if not through words, « your opinion does not count, your experience does not count, your buy-in is not necessary », means breaking the psychological contract on which engagement rests: I give my energy and my intelligence, and in return I matter to someone. This breach mechanically generates resistance, which is not a whim but a healthy response to a relationship that has become instrumental.

The trap then closes: this resistance, produced by the method itself, is interpreted by the leader as « bad will », even as confirmation that imposing was necessary since « they are against everything anyway ». This reading reinforces the leader's entrapment in a control-oriented logic, which further degrades the support for change. It is in this sense that inadequate change support is a revealing factor: it is not only a cause of the crisis, it is the visible symptom of the defensive posture of power. It is difficult to co-construct the meaning of a transformation when one can no longer bear to be questioned.

The compensatory emergence of implicit leaderships

Faced with this deficiency in formal leadership, organizational nature abhors a vacuum. Figures of implicit leadership naturally emerge, channeling collective frustrations and proposing counter-organizational narratives: « here is what is really going on », « here is why we cannot cope anymore », « here is who is responsible ». These « default » leaders, a charismatic team member, an employee representative, a respected veteran, gain a legitimacy that is inversely proportional to the loss of credibility of official leadership: each clumsy move by the leader increases their audience.

One must understand what the group is doing through these figures. A team that no longer feels heard or protected by its formal leadership delegates its anger and its need for meaning to those who agree to carry them. The implicit leader fulfills real psychological functions: putting words on a confused experience, offering an explanation for the disorder, restoring a sense of belonging through opposition. This is why confronting them head-on is always a strategic error: disqualifying them means disqualifying what they carry for the group, and therefore binding the collective even more tightly against management. Implicit leadership is not the problem; it is the symptom of a function that formal leadership no longer fulfills.

This dynamic nevertheless creates a particularly destructive organizational polarization: on one side, an isolated and rigidified formal power; on the other, informal powers fueled by opposition and contestation. Each camp draws strength from the existence of the other. This configuration prevents any constructive resolution of tensions and keeps the organization in a state of permanent latent conflict, preventing it from completing its transformation. It should also be noted that this position is costly for the implicit leaders themselves: carriers of the collective anger, they often exhaust themselves in a role they did not choose and from which they can no longer exit without « betraying » the group.

Mechanisms of mutual reinforcement

These three phenomena reinforce one another according to an implacable systemic logic. The leader's entrapment produces inadequate change support, which fuels resistance and legitimizes the emergence of oppositional implicit leaderships. The very existence of these leaderships, in turn, reinforces the formal leader's sense of being contested, further intensifying their defensive entrapment. The loop is closed, and it runs on its own: no external event is needed anymore to sustain the crisis, the system produces it continuously.

This configuration generates what we call systemic psychological debts: each actor develops subjective claims against the others, within a negative-sum game in which no one can win. The formal leader feels misunderstood and unfairly challenged, while believing they carry the weight of the transformation alone. Implicit leaders feel legitimate in their opposition, since they are defending an abandoned collective. Employees feel instrumentalized and unrecognized, caught between contradictory injunctions. Each actor expects from the others a repayment that will never come spontaneously, because each considers themselves the creditor and never the debtor.

This is what makes these situations so resistant to the usual solutions. A team-building seminar, a new internal communication campaign, an adjustment to the organization chart do not touch the structure of the game; they are, moreover, often reinterpreted by each camp as a maneuver by the other. As long as the crossed debts are not named and acknowledged, every initiative is absorbed by the polarization. And if nothing is done, the evolution is predictable: exhaustion of the most exposed actors, departure of the most solid members who refuse to choose a camp, individual decompensations, and a transformation that remains durably unfinished, with its economic and human cost.

Diagram 2. The toxic triangle: three interdependent phenomena producing systemic psychological debts.

Breaking the deadlock: a three-level regulation approach

Breaking out of this impasse requires external intervention capable of untangling these dysfunctional triangulations and restoring constructive dialogue between the different levels of leadership, both formal and informal. This recourse to a third party is not a luxury: it is structurally necessary. By construction, no internal actor is perceived as equidistant; any initiative coming from one camp is read as a maneuver by the other. Only a third party with no stake in the game can name the dynamic without being suspected of serving it, and it is precisely this position that makes speech possible again.

The intervention unfolds on three simultaneous levels, because acting on only one displaces the problem instead of solving it.

• Support for the team, to work through the lived experience, understand the systemic dynamics at play and the transformation context. The aim is to move from a reading in terms of culprits (« it is the leader's fault », « it is the resisters ») to a reading in terms of system: each person discovers that they are both actor and victim of the dynamic. This work restores to the team its capacity to think, which polarization had confiscated, and enables it to re-own the transformation instead of enduring it.

• Support for the leader(s), to help them break free from power entrapment, restore legitimacy with their teams, and develop more flexible managerial behaviors adapted to the context. This work requires a confidential space where the leader can set down what they can say nowhere else: the fear, the loneliness, the sense of injustice. It is by securing the leader that one obtains what pressure will never obtain: their willingness to acknowledge a share of error, to reintroduce consultation, and to tolerate contradiction again. A secure leader becomes more flexible; an attacked leader becomes more rigid.

• Support for the organization in its social dynamics and in the adjustment of working conditions. Systemic debts are not settled only in people's minds: they are also settled in the reality of work, workload, resources, role clarity, dialogue bodies. Concrete and visible acts of adjustment are worth more here than any speech: they are the tangible proof that something has changed in the way the organization treats its members.

The condition for success is the articulation of these three levels within a common frame, with explicit rules of confidentiality and restitution. It is this frame, held by the third party, that progressively transforms the negative-sum game into a negotiation space: the crossed debts are named, acknowledged on both sides, and converted into reciprocal, verifiable commitments. Mutual recognition does not eliminate disagreements; it makes them discussable again.

Diagram 3. The regulation approach: an equidistant third party, three simultaneous levels of support.

Conclusion: regulate the system, do not designate a culprit

In these configurations, the temptation is always the same: identify the person responsible. Replace the leader, neutralize the implicit leader, « bring the teams back into line ». Our experience is constant on this point: these solutions by elimination fail, because they treat an actor when the problem is a game. A new leader will inherit the same polarized system; a sidelined implicit leader will be replaced by another, often more radical; teams brought back into line will convert their opposition into silent presenteeism.

The demanding but effective path consists in regulating the system itself: securing formal power so that it can become more flexible, acknowledging what implicit leaderships express on behalf of the collective, and repairing the change relationship by reintroducing pedagogy, co-construction and anticipation of human impacts. This is the heart of our conception of sustainable performance: an organization does not hold together through the control it exerts, but through the quality of the bonds and regulations it maintains. Crises are no exception to this rule; they reveal it.

Practical guide

Recognizing the entrapment of formal power

• Unilateral decisions without prior consultation of those who will have to implement them

• Clear difficulty in acknowledging steering or management errors, even minor ones

• Avoidance of situations involving vulnerability or public questioning

• Noticeable behavioral shift since the first tensions emerged

• Any criticism read as a personal attack rather than as a contestation of the role

Recognizing poorly supported change

• Reorganizations announced without pedagogy or co-construction of meaning

• Human impacts not anticipated, particularly on psychological and identity-based safety

• Employees treated as adjustment variables rather than as actors of change

• Resistance interpreted as bad will rather than as a signal

Recognizing polarization through implicit leaderships

• Emergence of « default » figures channeling collective frustrations

• Circulation of counter-organizational narratives (« here is what is really going on »)

• Informal legitimacy growing with each clumsy move by official leadership

• An organization split into two camps that reinforce each other

Principles for action

• 1. Do not look for a culprit. The problem is a systemic game, not an actor; elimination displaces the crisis instead of resolving it

• 2. Call on an equidistant third party. No internal actor is perceived as neutral in a polarized organization

• 3. Secure the leader rather than accuse them. It is security that enables flexibility, never pressure

• 4. Listen to what the implicit leaders carry. They express a function that formal leadership no longer fulfills

• 5. Act simultaneously on the three levels. Team, leader, organization: acting on only one displaces the problem

• 6. Convert debts into reciprocal commitments. Name the crossed claims, acknowledge them, make them verifiable

What never works

• Replacing the leader and hoping the system changes with them

• Neutralizing or disqualifying the implicit leaders

• Responding to polarization with more top-down communication

• Organizing a team-building seminar without addressing the structure of the game

• Waiting for the transformation to « get through » with time

The sentence to remember. In an organizational crisis, no one created the situation intentionally, and no one can get out of it alone. A negative-sum game is not repaired by changing a player: the rules of the game must be changed, with the help of a third party.

vendredi 18 septembre 2026

A toxic dynamic at work in organizational crisis: entrapped power, poorly supported change, implicit leaderships