Why frustration and resistance escalates in groups and what we can do about it

Being part of many different groups throughout our lives, slowly increasing frustration and resistance within a group is something most of us have experienced, but we are often still puzzled about how we found ourselves in that situation and know even less how to get out of it.

I first heard about the ‘Resistance Line’ during a Deep Democracy training I followed, facilitated by Monique Janmaat from Perspectivity. The resistance line describes the behaviours that take place in a group when resistance is present and how they escalate over time. These behaviours were very recognisable to me based on my own experience with groups.

In this article, I will describe the feedback loop that causes this escalation of resistance and give suggestions on how to avoid getting trapped in this loop.

The feedback loop that drives the resistance line

Maybe initially, your group was making the effort to hear all voices and include them in decision making. Therefore everyone believed that their opinion will influence decision making and everyone participated actively in dialogue and shared their opinions. This meant that frustration was low and everyone was contributing to the goals the group had chosen together.

But at some point, decisions are being rushed and made based on the majority vote, instead of taking the time to find a solution that everyone can stand behind. This reduces the believe of the people belonging to the minority that their opinion will influence decision making and they start to feel a bit frustrated. This makes them less motivated to contribute to the goal defined by the majority. They start to make jokes, first light hearted, but over time becoming more sarcastic.

This starts to trigger resentment in the majority voice and instead of actively including the minority voice in the conversation, they now just listen reluctantly. This makes the minority voice reluctant to participate in dialogue and they begin to just repeat their opinion. As the level of frustration rises, the minority voice interferes more and more with the goal of the majority. Making excuses, gossiping and communicating poorly.

This further increases the resentment of the majority voice, they think that the minority voice is not being a good team player. They start to ignore the minority voice during group dialogue. The minority voice in turn stops to participate in dialogue and instead becomes more aggressive in how they state and repeat their opinion. As frustration nears the peak, the minority voices interfere with the goal of the minority by working slowly, disrupting work and striking.

Eventually the belief of the minority voice that their opinions will influence decision making becomes so low that they stop to attend group dialogues. The resentment of the majority voice becomes so high that they no longer care to include the minority voices and continue the conversation without them being present. Eventually the tension reaches its peak, leading to a revolt of the minority voice or their full withdrawal from the group.

If the minority leaves the group, you might think that now the remaining part of the group will function well, since “finally the naysayers are gone”, but that is usually not the case. If the group continues to have discussions and make decisions in the same way, a new minority is likely to emerge quickly.

Intervening when frustrations and tensions are very high is difficult. The group will likely need the support of an experienced facilitator to come back to a group dialogue where all voices are heard and taken into account for decision making. (If this is the case for your group, feel free to send me a message and I might be able to refer you to a facilitator from my network who is familiar with your type of context.)

Applying methods from Deep Democracy will allow the group to work through the existing tension and conflict. Learning the Deep Democracy decision making method will help the group to avoid falling back into the same loop.

Being familiar with the resistance line and the underlying reinforcing loop makes it easier to intervene early when you observe that your group starts to move along the resistance line. Ideally groups should put in place balancing feedback loops that stop the group from moving further along the resistance line.

For example, as soon as the number of sarcastic jokes increases, the group schedules a dialogue session to discuss the underlying frustration and make adjustments to their goals and way of working as needed.

At first using the Deep Democracy decision making method and intervening early when tension arises might feel like it is taking too much time, but ultimately, a lot more time is waste when part of the group starts to interfere with the goals the group is trying to achieve, because their voice is not being heard in decision making.