When “Nice” Is Not Enough: Growing Teams Beyond Passive Harmony
“Passive harmony” is something I have been thinking about recently, particularly in relation to leadership and team culture in early childhood education.
During our Leading in the In-Between wānanga, we often talk about how great teams do not just happen. We cannot bring a group of kaiako together, call them a team and assume that strong relationships, shared responsibility and professional trust will naturally follow.
Growing a great team requires care, time and intentionality.
This thinking became particularly visible for me while working alongside several teaching teams. On the surface, kaiako appeared to be getting along. The words sounded right. Kaiako were polite. There was no obvious conflict.
Yet the tone did not always match the words.
There were eye rolls, sighs and the occasional hmph. There were glances exchanged across the room and conversations that changed when someone entered. The body language was communicating what the words were not.
In some teams, kaiako did not really like one another.
That might sound uncomfortable to say, but perhaps it is something we need to be more honest about. We do not have to be close friends with everyone we work alongside. We do, however, have a professional responsibility to treat one another with respect, communicate openly and contribute to a culture in which everyone can do their best mahi.
Appearing harmonious is not the same as being a healthy team.
When harmony becomes passive
Anthony Semann describe the idea of passive harmony. It can look deceptively positive. Everyone is “nice.” Conflict is avoided. Concerns are softened, delayed or discussed with someone other than the person involved. Meetings remain pleasant because the difficult things are left unsaid.
Yet underneath that surface, frustration, resentment, exhaustion and misalignment can quietly build.
Sometimes we tell ourselves that we are keeping the peace. But I wonder whether we are keeping the peace - or simply postponing the conversation.
Healthy teams are not teams without tension. When kaiako bring different experiences, cultures, personalities, values and perspectives to their work, there will be moments of disagreement. This is particularly true in early childhood education, where our decisions affect tamariki, whānau and one another.
Tension is not necessarily evidence that something has gone wrong. Sometimes it is evidence that people care deeply.
The question is not whether tension exists. The question is whether the team has the relational and professional capacity to work through it.
Kindness is not silence
Sometimes the most caring thing we can do as colleagues is to speak honestly, respectfully and directly with one another.
Not to blame.
Not to criticise.
Not to prove that our way is right.
But to understand, to create clarity and to strengthen our collective practice.
Kindness does not mean avoiding the conversations that matter. Nor does professionalism mean suppressing emotion or agreeing with everything that is said. In a healthy professional culture, we should be able to ask questions, express uncertainty, name concerns and offer another perspective without risking our sense of belonging.
An open-to-learn conversation begins from a different place than accusation. It asks us to hold our own perspective lightly enough to remain curious about someone else’s.
What might I not yet understand?
What is important to you here?
What impact is this having?
What do we want for tamariki, whānau and our team?
How might we move forward together?
These conversations are not always comfortable, but discomfort and harm are not the same thing. A respectful conversation may feel uncomfortable precisely because something important is being brought into the open.
Creating an ātea for honest kōrero
Te ao Māori offers another way of thinking about the relationship between tension, kōrero and kotahitanga.
The marae ātea is the open space in front of the wharenui. It is traditionally understood as the domain of Tūmatauenga and is a place where issues can be debated, concerns raised and kōrero expressed forcefully. The wharenui, by contrast, is associated with Rongo and with more conciliatory kōrero (Keane, 2016).
The ātea reminds us that maintaining unity does not require us to deny disagreement. There is a recognised place for difficult matters to be brought into the open, heard and worked through.
This gives greater depth to the idea of kotahitanga. Kotahitanga is sometimes translated simply as unity, but unity is not the same as uniformity. It does not require everyone to agree, think alike or remain silent when something does not feel tika.
Kotahitanga carries both collective responsibility and personal accountability. It asks us to consider what we each hold and what we hold together.
Kotahitanga is not the absence of difference. It is the strength to hold difference within a shared kaupapa.
Perhaps healthy teams also need an ātea: not necessarily a physical place, but an intentionally created relational space where people can bring forward what needs to be said.
A space with enough trust for honesty.
Enough tikanga to protect the mana of those involved.
Enough curiosity to listen beyond our first response.
And enough commitment to the collective kaupapa to remain in the kōrero when it becomes uncomfortable.
Without such a space, disagreement does not disappear. It moves into the corridors, the car park, private messages, exchanged glances and conversations held with everyone except the person concerned.
Creating an ātea does not mean encouraging conflict for its own sake. Nor does it mean that anything can be said in any way. Honest kōrero carries responsibilities. It asks us to speak with integrity, listen with openness and remain mindful of the mana and whakapapa each person carries.
The purpose is not to decide who has won. It is to bring what is beneath the surface into a space where it can be collectively understood and navigated.
In this sense, kotahitanga is not achieved by avoiding tension. It is strengthened through our willingness to meet tension with courage, care and a commitment to remain connected.
The cost of keeping the peace
Passive harmony can extend far beyond individual teaching teams.
In many systems, including education and care, compliance and agreement can become highly valued. Over time, people may learn that speaking up comes at a cost. Someone who questions a decision or draws attention to something that does not feel right may be labelled “difficult,” “negative,” “too emotional” or a “troublemaker.”
And so silence begins to feel safer.
But silence in the face of inequity, harmful culture or poor practice does not protect a team or a system. It protects what has become normal.
Healthy professional cultures should not require people to sacrifice their integrity in order to belong. Nor should kindness be confused with compliance.
Some of the most important progress in education has occurred because someone was prepared to question what had become accepted.
Speaking up ethically and courageously is not the opposite of professionalism. In many ways, it is professionalism.
Brené Brown (2018) reminds us that courage in leadership requires us to lean into vulnerability and have the conversations we might prefer to avoid. This connects with the much older Stoic idea that what stands in the way becomes the way (Aurelius, 2002).
Perhaps the tension we experience within a team is not always something to remove or work around. Sometimes it is the very place where the most important learning needs to happen. The conversation we keep avoiding may be the conversation that helps us understand one another. The difference we try to smooth over may reveal something our collective practice needs us to examine.
When we continually step around what feels uncomfortable, passive harmony can take hold. But when people feel sufficiently safe, valued and connected to a shared purpose, what stands in the way can become a pathway towards greater trust, clarity and collective growth.
Perhaps one of the questions we need to ask more often is:
What has our pursuit of harmony cost us?
Has it cost us clarity?
Has it cost us trust?
Has it allowed small frustrations to grow into resentment?
Has it prevented someone from feeling heard?
Has it stopped us from addressing practice that is not serving tamariki well?
Beginning with what is possible
When I worked alongside teaching teams where passive harmony had begun to take hold, I did not want to begin by asking them to identify everything that was wrong.
That would probably have generated defensiveness, blame or further silence. Nor did I want to lead another team-building activity that created a pleasant moment without changing the conditions beneath it.
Instead, we began with collective energy.
I asked:
When have we experienced energy and momentum as a team?
What were we doing, and what made that experience possible?
What did we notice about how people participated?
How might we create more of those conditions?
When I ask teams about moments of collective effervescence - that bubbling up of energy, connection and ideas - they will often describe something such as planning for Matariki.
One person offered an idea. Someone else added to it. Another remembered a story or imagined a possibility. Kaiako became animated. Ideas began to gather momentum, and something emerged that no individual had brought into the room alone.
At first, it might appear that Matariki was what created the energy. But beneath the event was something more significant:
the team had come together around a shared purpose.
They knew what they were creating and why it mattered. Kaiako could see a place for their contribution. There was room for different ideas, strengths and ways of participating. For that moment, the team experienced what becomes possible when purpose, autonomy, connection and hope meet.
The challenge is how we create those conditions more intentionally - not only when planning a special event, but within the everyday life of a teaching team.
Shared purpose: knowing what brings us together
Shared purpose is also central to kotahitanga. It reminds us that while we may bring different experiences, perspectives and ways of contributing, we remain connected by a kaupapa larger than any one of us. The purpose is not to erase difference, but to help us navigate difference without losing sight of what we hold together.
Kaupapa needs to be revisited, discussed and made visible through the everyday decisions of the team.
People need opportunities to explore what matters to them, what they hope for tamariki and how their individual contributions connect with something larger than themselves.
This is not about manufacturing agreement. A genuinely shared purpose is not something written by one kaiako or leader and then given to everyone else to follow. It is developed through conversation, participation and ongoing reflection.
Questions such as these can help bring it to life:
What do we want it to feel like to belong here?
What do we hope tamariki and whānau experience?
What legacy do we want to help create through this setting?
What do we hold together?
A strong shared purpose helps a team navigate difference. It gives kaiako something meaningful to return to when opinions vary or the way forward is unclear.
Autonomy: knowing that my contribution matters
A shared purpose does not require everyone to think, teach or contribute in exactly the same way.
In fact, collective energy depends upon difference. It needs kaiako to bring their ideas, strengths, experiences, cultures and curiosities. If the direction has already been decided and the leader is simply seeking agreement, participation can quickly become compliance.
Autonomy communicates trust. It says:
You have something valuable to bring.
Your professional judgement matters.
There is room for your way of contributing to our shared kaupapa.
This does not mean everyone works independently or that accountability disappears. Autonomy sits within relationship and shared responsibility. We may travel towards the same aspiration, but we do not all need to paddle in precisely the same way.
Shared purpose without autonomy can become compliance.
Autonomy without shared purpose can become fragmentation.
Healthy alignment creates enough clarity for kaiako to travel together and enough trust for them to contribute as themselves. For Educating Hearts and Minds this has been the power of PGC inquiries brought back into the collective space of quality improvement across the whole setting.
Hope: believing that together we can make a difference
Hope is also essential.
Hope is more than being positive or assuming everything will work out. It is the belief that what we do matters and that, together, we have some influence over what happens next.
For kaiako, hope is often connected to a deep sense of purpose - the belief that our relationships, decisions and ways of being can make a meaningful difference for tamariki and whānau. This belief helps sustain kaiako through uncertainty, change and the ordinary challenges of working closely with others.
A team without hope can easily become a team going through the motions. Meetings become about tasks. Professional expectations become things to complete. Kaiako conserve their energy because they no longer believe their ideas will lead anywhere.
When hope is present, possibility remains alive.
Hope allows a team to look beyond where it is now and imagine what it could become. Hope, inspiration and magic.
Making appreciation visible
We also need to make appreciation visible.
In a team experiencing passive harmony, kaiako may become acutely aware of what others are not doing. Frustration narrows our vision. We begin gathering evidence that confirms the story we have formed about someone else.
Making appreciation visible interrupts that pattern.
Whose contribution have I noticed recently?
What did they do, and why did it matter?
Who may not realise that their effort, presence or contribution is seen and valued?
This is not about offering empty praise or pretending that difficulties do not exist. It is about seeing one another more fully.
When kaiako feel unseen, undervalued or taken for granted, they may begin to withdraw. When their contribution is genuinely recognised, belonging and hope have more room to grow.
Support, challenge and curiosity
A healthy team cannot be built through appreciation alone.
One of the ideas we explore through our Growing Together reflection workbook that we use in wānanga is:
Support without challenge can keep us comfortable. Challenge without support can feel unsafe. Team growth needs both.
This may be where passive harmony becomes most visible. We provide support because support feels kind, but avoid the honest conversation that might enable growth. Or concerns remain unspoken until frustration takes over and the eventual conversation no longer feels supportive.
Curiosity can help us hold support and challenge together:
What am I not yet seeing?
What assumptions might I be making?
What can I learn from this perspective?
How can we challenge practice without diminishing the mana of the person?
These questions do not remove accountability. They allow us to approach accountability in a way that protects dignity, strengthens understanding and keeps the relationship open.
An open-to-learn conversation says, Something here needs our attention, and I am willing to examine my own thinking as well as invite you to examine yours.
That is very different from remaining silent to keep the peace.
Resilience is something we cultivate together
Resilience is often positioned as something individual kaiako need to develop so they can cope with increasing demands.
But research into teacher resilience and wellbeing in Aotearoa New Zealand reminds us that resilience is also shaped by the conditions surrounding kaiako. People-centred leadership, supportive relationships, a strong sense of purpose and a belief in our own capacity to make a difference can all help people flourish. Autonomy matters too. When kaiako are trusted to make decisions and exercise professional judgement, they are more likely to feel valued and genuinely part of the team.
This places a responsibility on leaders.
We cannot remove every challenge or prevent every disagreement. But we can intentionally help create a culture in which people:
know the purpose that connects them;
experience genuine belonging;
feel trusted to contribute;
see their strengths and efforts recognised;
can ask questions and offer another perspective;
receive both support and honest feedback; and
retain hope that, together, they can make a difference.
These are not simply the conditions that help kaiako cope when things become difficult. They are the conditions that help prevent silence, disconnection and passive harmony from becoming the team’s normal way of being.
Growing together with intention
These experiences became the birthplace of our Growing Together cards and Growing Together workshops.
We wanted to create something that would help teaching teams pause, reflect and have some of the conversations that do not always happen naturally. Not only conversations about curriculum, assessment or what tamariki are learning, but conversations about who we are together.
The reflections begin with collective energy and then invite people to consider:
What do I bring?
What do I need in order to contribute and flourish?
What do we hold together?
What do we need to navigate together?
What helps me experience genuine belonging within this team?
How can we create more of the conditions in which everyone can contribute?
The purpose is not to force harmony or make everyone think alike. It is to create openings: opportunities to notice, listen, become curious and understand one another more deeply.
Because growing together does not mean smoothing over every difference. It means developing the courage and capacity to remain in relationship when differences emerge.
Perhaps collective effervescence is what we glimpse when these conditions come together. It is not created by forcing enthusiasm or organising increasingly elaborate team-building activities. It emerges when kaiako feel connected to one another and to something meaningful - when their ideas are welcomed and they sense that together they can create more than any one person could create alone.
Great teams are not necessarily the teams that appear most harmonious from the outside.
They are teams that have created an ātea for honest kōrero - where people can be truthful without being unkind, curious without becoming defensive and accountable without diminishing one another’s mana.
They understand that kotahitanga is not the absence of difference. It is the strength to hold difference within a shared kaupapa.
Trust is not built by avoiding tension. It is built through what we choose to do with it.
So perhaps the question for each of us is not simply:
What has our pursuit of harmony cost us?
But also:
Are we merely trying to maintain harmony - or are we intentionally creating the conditions in which people can think, contribute, question, hope and grow together?
And one final question:
What is one way I will contribute to the team we are becoming?
References:
Aurelius, M. (2002). Meditations (G. Hays, Trans.). Modern Library. (Original work composed ca. 170–180 CE)
Brown, B. (2018). Dare to lead: Brave work. Tough conversations. Whole hearts. Random House.
Gallagher, M. (2017). Exploring resilience and wellbeing with mid-career primary teachers in Aotearoa/New Zealand: A strengths-based approach [Master’s dissertation, University of Otago]. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.18142.13123
Keane, B. (2016). Te kawa o te marae: Mythology and history of marae protocol. Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. https://teara.govt.nz/en/te-kawa-o-te-marae/page-3
Semann, A. (n.d.). Can we move beyond passive harmony? Semann & Slattery. https://www.semannslattery.com/free-resources/blog/can-we-move-beyond-passive-harmony