Dominance loves the solitary conversation.

There, in the one-on-one, anything is possible. A promise with no witnesses, later never made. A threat with no trace, later never spoken. A reversal that later sounds like your misunderstanding, even though you are certain what was actually said. And the difficult part is that it often feels more intimate than a conversation in wider company, as if you are being given trust that others are not. As if you are special, singled out for a conversation only you and the leader are allowed to have.

But it is also a form of dependency. Because whoever speaks alone can also be isolated alone.

That is the heart of why the one-on-one conversation is such a powerful instrument within a dominant dynamic, and why it is so hard to recognise as an instrument while it is happening. It does not feel like isolation in the moment. It feels like special attention. Only afterwards, when you try to reconstruct exactly what was said and discover you have no witness, does it become clear what function the conversation actually served.

That is why one of the most powerful interventions in this entire series is almost unremarkable in execution, even though its impact is significant: you bring important conversations into the plural. You put them in the light, in the presence of others. Not to expose or embarrass anyone, but to make reality shared rather than dependent on two memories that may later disagree.

You notice the difference immediately in the air of a meeting once this happens. Instead of “he told me,” you get “we decided together.” Instead of whispered information circulating through informal channels, you get agenda information accessible to everyone. And with that, power shifts from relationship to role: it is no longer the bond you have with the leader that determines what happens to you, but the structure that applies to everyone.

Research into group dynamics and social isolation supports why this is so effective. People who feel isolated in a conflict, without witnesses or allies, consistently report higher levels of stress and self-doubt than people experiencing the same conflict in view of others. That is not merely an emotional effect. It also carries a practical consequence: isolation makes it easier for a dominant party to redefine reality, simply because there is no one else who can confirm an alternative version.

Psychodynamically, this is a correction to isolation, which is the oxygen of the rule of the strongest. Without isolation, dominance cannot sustain itself, because dominance depends on the ability to create different realities for different people, without those realities ever crossing paths. Plurality makes it harder to rewrite someone’s reality, simply because multiple people have now heard the same version. It also gives bystanders a position they did not have before: they no longer have to choose between you and the leader in a he-said-she-said dispute, but can choose a shared agreement that applies to everyone.

The difference between “he told me” and “we decided” is the difference between a vulnerable position and a shared reality.

Still, this intervention requires finesse, and that is an important nuance not to be skipped. If you say abruptly: I am no longer doing this one-on-one, that can be experienced as a public rejection, as a loss of face for the leader. And loss of face is a dangerous trigger in this kind of dynamic, one that can harden the situation rather than improve it. Work with normalisation instead of confrontation. Make it practical and feasible for everyone to go along with the change, without it feeling like a statement against the leader personally.

“Shall we do this with the three of us, so we all have the same information?” is a sentence that frames the change as efficiency, not distrust. “Let’s put this on the agenda, then we can decide faster” does the same: it frames the change as something that improves the process for everyone, rather than something specifically aimed at the leader. That framing is not dishonest. It is simply true, and it has the added benefit of making the change much easier to implement without provoking unnecessary resistance.

You can also organise this more structurally, not only on an individual basis but as a team-wide agreement. Teams agree that decisions are always reported back in the same setting, so there is no room for selective communication. That there is one decision list, accessible to everyone involved. That information does not travel through private channels, not because private conversations are forbidden, but because decisions affecting the work should never be reached exclusively through a private channel. That may sound small written down like this, but it cuts deep into the game dominance plays, because it cuts off the informal channels dominance depends on to function.

It is worth saying that this shift does not happen on its own, and that you will probably encounter resistance, sometimes open and sometimes subtle. A leader accustomed to the one-on-one conversation as an instrument will not move to plural without resistance. There may be attempts to force an informal conversation anyway, “just a quick word” outside the structure. The consistency with which you respond to that, by repeatedly referring back to the agreed setting, is what ultimately makes the difference between a one-off intervention that fades and a lasting change in how the team functions.

Choose today one topic you no longer want discussed in the wings, a subject that has repeatedly gone through informal channels these past months without ever really being recorded. Put it on an agenda, explicitly and visibly for everyone. Write one sentence about the purpose of that agenda item: what decision is needed, what criteria belong to it. And notice, within yourself, how it feels to step out of the shadows, to bring a subject that was always handled informally onto the table formally.

And ask yourself a question that is more honest than comfortable, one that lays bare the core of the dynamic: where do you feel most alone in this dynamic, and what does that say about where the power is actually hiding?

The answer to that question often points you precisely to the conversation that most urgently needs to be brought into the plural.

Notes for those who wish to read further:

1. Roderick Kramer, The Great Intimidators (2006, Harvard Business Review). On how dominant leaders use isolation and selective one-on-one conversations to maintain control.
2. Irving Janis, Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes (1972, Houghton Mifflin). Classic work on group dynamics and how isolating individual members affects the quality of decision-making and collective memory.
3. Amy C. Edmondson, The Fearless Organization (2018, Wiley). On how psychological safety depends on transparent, shared communication rather than isolated, individual conversations.
4. Bert Hellinger, Ordnungen der Liebe (1991, Carl-Auer). On systemic orderings and how isolated relationships within a larger system cause imbalance that spreads through the whole system.
5. Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live with Themselves (2016, Worth Publishers). On how diffusion of responsibility is facilitated by isolated, non-shared communication.