How to handle the (inevitable) drama at your startup
Tips for diagnosing, stopping, and even preventing drama at work
Recently, I’ve been coaching someone who just stepped into a larger role at a startup and is now managing multiple teams. Inevitably, various people issues have cropped up as they’ve made this transition. As we were discussing yet another personnel topic, they asked me “Does drama happen at all companies? Or is this unique to us?”
I had to stop myself from laughing, and instead, I said “It’s definitely not just you.” I went on to explain that yes, even at mission-driven startups with brilliant people, drama is common. They bubble up in different ways — sometimes showing up as small hiccups that can be swept under the rug, and sometimes as large, widespread issues that can derail productivity and culture.
The key isn't trying to stop all drama from happening. Rather, it’s about catching the signs early, identifying the underlying causes, and making systemic changes.
What is drama
Drama doesn’t just mean interpersonal issues. Rather, drama within a company is usually shorthand for interpersonal conflict that’s emotionally charged or feels political, or even toxic. Oftentimes, it starts to feel like the situation is less and less about solving a problem and more and more about blame, ego, or control. Sometimes, drama gets so advanced that it’s obvious it’s happening. However, if we’re savvy about monitoring our team, we can also catch drama early on before it becomes a big problem.
Early signs that drama is brewing
To keep an eye on high conflict, interpersonal dynamics, aka drama, watch out for these yellow flags on your team:
Repetitive conversations: The same person or issue keeps coming up across multiple teammates or scenarios. You might hear different criticisms, but they all relate to the same person. Or you might keep hearing a specific area of the business or team is having issues. I think of it like a spidey sense where if you’ve heard about the same person or team multiple times, it’s time to investigate. If I have a feeling of “not this again” when listening to a teammate talk, that’s when I know this is happening. It starts to feel particularly dramatic when folks are sharing complaints but not suggestions or paths forward.
Inappropriate timing and channels: Another clue is if you’re getting pinged at weird times or in unexpected ways. This might look like a late night Slack message about an issue that doesn’t actually feel urgent, or it might entail someone reaching out to talk ASAP on a regular basis. This type of communication tends to signal that emotions are running high.
Blurring personal vs. professional feedback: Sometimes teammates have a hard time surfacing what’s going on in explicit detail. Instead, they might share vague feedback like that person is “a bit hard to work with.” Or note that their communication “can land the wrong way.” When feedback starts to get vague or toe the line between professional and personal — like saying someone is “catty” or "aggressive" — it’s also a signal that something more might be going on, and you should investigate what’s happening.
Group tension and avoidance of conflict: This symptom can be harder to notice as it can emerge more subtly where team meetings start to feel more tense. Attendees may start to have separate meetings where they have more candid conversation while the main meeting becomes more performative for one or two teammates.
If you’re nodding your head as you read along, then it’s likely that interpersonal drama is brewing on your team. Before taking action like restructuring a team or letting someone go, start by trying to diagnose the underlying systemic issues.
Diagnose before you treat
Drama, since it is inherently people related, often leads to conversations like “We just need to let that person go” or “Just ignore them, that’s how they’ve always been.”
However, in most — though not all — situations, people problems are systems problems. The best part about systems problems is that you may not need to remove anyone from the team to solve them. The worst part is that the underlying issues can take more work and thoughtfulness to resolve. One thing to beware of though is that sometimes teams turn people problems into systems problems by avoiding taking action or giving feedback.
Getting context
To begin, start by diagnosing what’s going on. I find it helpful to write these few questions down or chat through them live with someone else who is aware of the situation.
Who is involved? Start with mapping out all the teammates, even ones who seem tangential like a person who passed along what has been happening or a client who might be external but actually was the trigger for the situation.
What is the situation? Get clear on what's actually happening, not just what people are saying is happening. In other words, focus on the facts, not interpretation. This might look like saying a project has missed its deadline, the designer said that one engineer is not doing their work, or the team is discussing one teammate amongst themselves. What isn’t helpful to include here is things you don’t know for sure yet, like whether the teammate is performing poorly or whether one teammate is picking on another.
What specific symptoms made me flag this as drama? Be concrete about what you've observed. Again, try to focus on facts here. For example, you might say, it feels like drama because no one is taking action to resolve the issue — it’s just gossip. Or, it feels like drama because folks are making snide comments or insulting one another. Or, I’m hearing about it in late night slack messages instead of normal 1:1 conversations.
Digging deeper
From here, you can start to dig a little deeper to identify the root cause. This part will likely involve talking with teammates or investigating in documents or other places. I like to start by writing down what questions I have and then what information I need to know for sure what’s happening. It varies by situation, but research questions might include:
Is anyone not performing their role the way I would expect?
Is anyone's personality causing friction with others that isn’t explained by performance?
Is anyone misunderstanding what's happening or why something is happening, but I have a good explanation?
Is there something going on with a specific relationship between two individuals (or more)?
Zooming out
I also find it helpful to take a step back from the specific situation and ask questions that relate to how the team is engaging overall, pulling from the Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
Do the team (or teams) trust each other generally?
Is the team able to engage in healthy conflict when needed?
When decisions are made, does the team stick to them?
If the team misses a deadline or work doesn’t happen as expected, are teammates held accountable?
Does the team have clear goals and measures of success? Are they meeting them?
If this sounds like a lot of work, don’t stress. In many situations, answering these questions can take just 10-15 minutes. And, if you don’t know the answer, the discovery process can pay huge dividends for better understanding the team and preventing drama in the future.
Solutions by root cause
Once you’ve gotten an understanding of what’s happening, then you can start to look at solutions. The key here is to treat both the symptoms and the causes.
Performance issues
If, after research, it becomes clear that one (or more) teammate isn’t doing their job in the way you’d expect, then you have a performance issue. Be sure your research has uncovered unbiased examples vs. individual perceptions.
Treating the symptoms: The first step is to provide clear, objective feedback about what needs to change. Focus on specific behaviors and outcomes rather than personality traits. Make sure to question whether the person has been asked to take on too much for their time or experience level.
Treating the causes: Performance issues that become drama often have gone unaddressed for some time. To help prevent that from happening again, make sure that everyone on the team has clear expectations and a regular time to receive feedback or coaching (e.g., in 1:1s).
Lack of Context
When doing discovery, you may find that people are misinterpreting a situation that you have context on. I’ve seen this happen when certain priorities aren’t shared broadly — people start to ask why someone is working on something, making assumptions about their personal motivations. In reality, it’s a business priority for them to do that work, but the team isn’t aware.
This is an example where someone is lacking context. And if one person lacks context, assume multiple people do.
Treating the symptoms: Address the topic in your next team meeting to get everyone on the same page.
Treating the causes: Build regular updates into team meetings to prevent information gaps from creating future drama, plus ask the team to come to you if they have questions about the work that’s happening.
Personal relationships affecting work
This seems obvious to call out, but sometimes drama doesn’t start during the workday — instead, people have formed a relationship outside of work, and the interpersonal issues from that are coming into work.
Treating the symptoms: Meet with each teammate to discuss professionalism at work and how to keep work and personal life separate. Discuss whether moving teams or working with different people is necessary.
Treating the causes: This one is tricky — it’s difficult to prevent people from becoming friends outside of work (nor do you necessarily want to). Still, setting clear expectations on the team for what professional interactions look like can help make future conversations easier.
Communication issues
What you may uncover is that everyone is doing their jobs well, but how some teammates communicate doesn’t sit well with others. I like to treat this situation as a subset of performance issues. Part of any person’s job is to get along well with their colleagues.
Treating the symptoms: Like performance, the first step is to provide clear, objective feedback about what needs to change. In this situation, it may be helpful to get permission from impacted teammates to share examples to help the person understand what’s happening. Be sure to keep in mind that multiple teammates may need coaching — it may not be just one person’s dynamic but rather how one person says things and how one person hears them.
Treating the causes: Like performance feedback, make sure that everyone on the team has a regular time to receive feedback or coaching (e.g., in 1:1s).
Broader team dysfunction
As you did your discovery, particularly the research related to the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, you may turn up information that points to broader issues on the team(s) related to how they do work and how they interact. In these situations, while addressing the proximate symptom or cause will be helpful, you may also need to fundamentally change how the team works.
To do so, you may need to adjust team expectations, goals, meetings, norms for collaboration and communication, and more — i.e., basically, everything is on the table. The key sign that you may need this type of reset is drama repeatedly emerging where it feels like you’re constantly playing whackamole. In these situations, leaning on resources from the Five Dysfunctions of a Team can be helpful. It can also be useful to directly set guidelines around discussing teammates and their work and specifically stopping gossip in 1:1s. Sometimes, drama starts at the top and role modeling that gossip isn’t a constructive behavior can help to drive change. The key ask for the team is to share feedback — either with you directly as the leader or with their teammate, instead of discussing things behind someone’s back.
The bottom line
Drama thrives in ambiguity and avoidance. The faster you diagnose and directly address the root causes, the less drama will spread and the less it will distract you from getting work done. In some ways, drama is an easy indicator that you’ve been investing too little in people and management.
There are two key take-aways from this post. First, to resolve drama, you must act. It’s not going to improve without action. Second, focus on addressing the underlying causes, not just the symptoms of what’s happening. Moving someone to a different team might stop the immediate drama, but it doesn't solve the underlying performance or interpersonal issue that will likely resurface elsewhere.
And remember, you’re not alone on this journey. People Operations, other senior leaders, and even advisors can provide good insights and support as you navigate these waters.
Drama is such a complex topic, so we’d love to hear if you have a specific situation where you’d like help diagnosing what’s going on or identifying next steps. Leave a comment or send us an email.
I also see this as startups go from tiny to growing. I always tell people, "Any group of more than two people has politics." It's best to get ahead of it early. Good advice here, Jen and Jean!