Misalignment has several potential causes such as conflicting priorities, unresolved decisions, and a lack of cohesion.
But beneath those symptoms is another cause I have seen play out that doesn’t get talked about enough:
Letting the past run the future.
About seven years ago, while facilitating a leadership team retreat, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Everyone was nice to each other and everyone participated. Everything seemed fine on the surface. But the team felt guarded and cautious.
And then a past wrong that had happened months earlier suddenly came rushing into the room like it had just happened that morning, and the lid blew off.
That team wasn’t reacting to what was happening in the room. They were reacting to what had never been resolved. And until grace showed up, nothing was going to change.
In The Four Passes framework, which I share in my keynotes and retreats, Grace is the pass that says you are enough, that you don’t always have to have it all together.
Grace doesn’t mean pretending the past didn’t happen, minimizing pain, or excusing behavior. It doesn’t reduce accountability. And sometimes trust needs to be earned back consistently over time.
Grace does mean refusing to let the past keep running the future, for ourselves and for others.
Sometimes that means releasing the score even when we feel justified in keeping it.
The problem is when we withhold grace:
- Mistakes never die
- We keep score
- Old stories show up in new conversations
The result is predictable: team cohesion suffers, alignment weakens, and execution slows because we’re dragging yesterday’s hurt and disappointment into today’s work.
This isn’t about fixing everything or letting everything go.
It is about noticing what we’re carrying and deciding to carry it differently.
So, who needs grace from you so that something better can finally move forward?
