The elephant in the room no one sees

“It’s nothing personal. It’s just business.”

I have never heard this in exact wording — but I have heard it between the lines.

And being part of different IT companies, and now working as an individual and team coach, shows that there are other misconceptions — even limiting beliefs — that affect business development and transformation. I invite you to dive deep into this topic with me.

Chip and Dan Heath in their book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, operate with the terms Elephants and Riders, where Elephants describe emotions, and Riders — rational thinking.

The authors say: “If you reach the Riders but not the Elephants, people will have understanding without motivation.”

In other words, logic alone never moved anyone. Ever. Yet we keep telling ourselves the opposite story.

Why emotions never really leave the workplace

We say, “let’s be rational about this.” We say, “keep it professional.” We write it into culture decks. We repeat it until it sounds true.

But here is what actually happens:

• A person feels uncertain — and makes a decision from that feeling without naming it.
• A person feels embarrassed — and over-explains in the next meeting without knowing why.
• A person feels unsure — and communicates through a third party instead of directly, because the direct conversation would require sitting with discomfort for ten minutes.
• A person feels more correct to evaluate the “half plan” as “not a reliable plan” — avoiding acknowledging an immature ability to delegate, because the ability to trust feels like a threat. 

The emotion didn’t stay outside the room. It made every decision. It just did so invisibly.

“It’s nothing personal. It’s just business.”

Everything is personal. People get furious, excited, frustrated, hopeful, hopeless, disappointed, fearful, embarrassed — all in the confines of business meetings. Everybody is caught up in their feelings, making decisions based on how they feel.

The Elephant — our emotional side — provides the energy for every action we take. The Rider provides the direction. Remove the Elephant and nothing moves. Ignore the Elephant and it moves in the wrong direction without anyone understanding why.

“What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.”

“What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.”

“What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.”

Switch: How to change things when change is hard

Each of these sentences describes a moment where someone read behaviour at face value — and missed the emotional reality underneath it.

Diversity of culture. But what about diversity of emotion? 

Organisations invest in cultural diversity. We learn about communication styles, hierarchy, directness. We build programmes, run workshops. Yet, the same organisation will run a team workshop with one format for everyone — and wonder why half the room is silent.

The person who says nothing is not disengaged. They may be processing. They may need silence to form a precise thought. They may simply not be wired to think out loud in a group they don’t yet fully trust. Silence in a meeting is not absence; it is often the most active thinking in the room.”

Asking “how do I get everyone to participate?” is the right question. But it carries a hidden assumption — that participation looks the same for everyone. It doesn’t.

Connecting the dots between coaching and change

The ACMP Standard for Change Management states that effective communication must answer one question for every individual affected by a change: What’s in it for me?

Not the company. Not the customer. Me. Personally.

This is not a soft requirement. It is written into the standard as a condition of successful adoption. You cannot answer that question for another person without first understanding what matters to them. And you cannot understand what matters to them without a real conversation — one where emotion is present, acknowledged and worked with rather than politely ignored.

What’s in it for me? is one of the strongest questions in coaching. When something feels personally relevant, the brain connects it to your identity and experience — and that is how new thinking patterns form. Logic informs. Personal relevance moves.

But how well do we actually listen? 

Co-Active Coaching describes three levels of listening. The lowest — and most common in professional life — is listening to yourself while the other person speaks, filtering everything through your own reaction and judgement.

At this level, the Elephant in the room is never seen. Only the Rider is addressed. And as the authors show clearly — that is not enough.

A coaching conversation creates a different kind of space

It reaches what a workshop rarely does — what a person actually feels, fears and wants. Not the professional answer. The real one.

The question is not, "What do you think about this initiative?" which invites a performance of engagement. The question is, "What would make this genuinely valuable to you personally?" which invites truth.

The difference between those two questions is the difference between compliance and commitment. You cannot build an inclusive culture by using the same format for everyone and hoping different people will find their way into it. Inclusion is a design choice — made before the meeting starts, not managed during it.

I am not suggesting we cry in the boardroom 

Something smaller. More specific.

Name the feeling before you act on it. Ask what it would cost to say something directly — and what it will cost the other person if you don’t.

Before labelling someone’s behaviour as resistance or laziness — ask what feeling might be driving it that hasn’t been named yet.

That pause. That question. Ten seconds of sitting with what is actually happening.

That is where change begins.

“It’s nothing personal. It’s just business.” Is the sentence we say when we most need to do the opposite.

Think about this the next time you’re having a discussion: What would shift in your next conversation if you chose to hear what wasn’t being said?

Partly AI supported; human-validated

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