The Resistance Paradox

When teams fight psychological safety practices, celebrate.

The resistance reveals exactly where dysfunction lives.

Toyota learned this implementing the andon cord. Middle managers revolted.

"We'll lose productivity!"

"Workers aren't qualified!"

"This undermines authority!"

Translation: "This threatens my identity as the only decision-maker."

The intensity of pushback correlates directly with advantage size. The managers who resisted hardest were protecting systems that served their position at the team's expense.

But here's the twist—those same resistant managers, once they experienced the system, became its fiercest champions.

Why?

Because psychological safety made THEM safer too. They stopped being the single point of failure. Problems got solved without their constant intervention.

Here's my personal take on this...

"I used to wake up at 3 AM worried about what I didn't know. Now I sleep because I know problems will surface before they explode."

Teams that push through resistance don't get incrementally better.

They become intellectually antifragile—stronger from stress instead of weaker from avoiding it.

While competitors stay trapped in comfortable dysfunction, these teams systematically access collective intelligence.

You can feel the resistance in your own organization right now.

That discomfort?

It's pointing directly at competitive advantage.

Final question: How do you measure something that dies when measured?

This is Part 4 of 5 in "The Silence Tax"