A lone figure pushing the toppling letters of the word ‘friction’ up a rock slope, the sculpted words ‘the friction’ and ‘absence’ framing the scene.
Area 03  ·  Relationships & boundaries

The friction that never shows up until it shows up as an absence.

The costliest difficulties in an organisation are relational, invisible on any dashboard — and workable.

Arrange a conversation 07799 563910
A person standing small beside a monumental letter M whose centre has cracked and is crumbling into a heap of rubble.

Most of the friction that costs an organisation is relational, and most of it is invisible on any dashboard. It is the working relationship that has quietly gone wrong and now shapes every meeting the two of them are in. The team member who has taken on far too much and cannot say no, heading for a collapse no one saw coming. The manager and report who are locked in a pattern neither of them can name. None of it shows up as a problem until it shows up as an absence, a resignation, or a grievance.

The familiar response is a communication-skills workshop. It rarely moves anything, because the difficulty was never a lack of skill. People usually know exactly what they should say and do the opposite anyway, because the pattern is operating underneath the level of knowing — in old certainties about what closeness costs, what conflict leads to, what happens to people who take up space.

The words ‘communication-skills workshop’ in monumental type split down the middle by a deep crack in the ground, a lone figure standing at its edge.
A hand posting the toppling word ‘words’ into a slot in a box, the word ‘impossible’ sliding away beneath it.
A workshop teaches the words. It does not reach the thing that makes the words impossible to use.

Boundaries are the clearest case. The person who cannot hold one usually knows exactly where it should be. What defeats them is the wave of discomfort that comes when they imagine holding it — the guilt, the anticipated disapproval, the old sense that having needs is a risk. “Just say no” is useless advice to that person, because the words were never the problem. Until the thing underneath is addressed, the boundary collapses every time, and the person heads toward the depletion and quiet resentment that eventually take them out of the workplace altogether.

The word ‘boundaries’ bridging a chasm between two cliffs, a small figure standing at one edge as a hand lifts the final letter away.
A hand holding up a cracked slab of stone beneath the sculpted word ‘protection’, the stone splitting apart.

Real work here slows the pattern down enough to see what each move is actually protecting, and makes it safe enough that the protection is not always necessary. When the thing underneath can be worked with rather than enacted, the pattern loses its grip — the conversation that always stalled can move, the person who could never say no finds they can, without it costing them the relationships they feared losing.

Where the cost sits

For an organisation this is where a great deal of the real cost sits, and where a great deal is recoverable — not through team-building exercises but through work that reaches the actual mechanism of how people get stuck with each other.

Consultancy across London (117 Harley Street), Norwich, online and on-site.
Across a chasm, the words ‘a great deal’ and ‘actual mechanism’ on one cliff and ‘recoverable’ on the other, a figure sitting on the far edge.
A lone figure walking through a curved archway of light into shadow, the negative space forming a lowercase ‘a’.
Get in touch

Tell me where your provision sits.

admin@martinaldertoncounsellor.com 07799 563910