When Every Decision Feels Wrong: Double Binds in the Boardroom — and How to Lead Through Them!

1. Editorial Narrative: What Is a Double Bind?

Every board seeks clarity. Yet many of the most difficult moments in governance do not stem from a lack of information — they stem from contradictory expectations that cannot be resolved without consequence.

This is the territory of the double bind.

The term originates from the work of anthropologist and systems theorist Gregory Bateson, who used it to describe a particular kind of psychological trap — one in which any decision a person makes violates a key expectation. In a double bind, you are damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. Over time, this leads to confusion, anxiety, paralysis — not because people lack intelligence or intent, but because the system offers no safe move.

While Bateson explored this concept in the context of families and mental health, the idea remains relevant in the boardroom — where leaders often face layered, conflicting demands that are difficult to identify and even harder to navigate.

In the boardroom, double binds aren’t dysfunctions or exceptions. They are often embedded in governance structures.

Boards and CEOs are expected to:

▪ Be independent, but remain aligned

▪ Be challenging, but also supportive

▪ Act boldly, but remain within defined risk thresholds

▪ Move fast enough to seize opportunity, but slow enough to ensure oversight

None of these expectations is unreasonable on its own. However, when combined, they create a trapdoor of perception — one that sets directors and executives up to fail not because of incompetence, but because of contradictions without relief.

This is particularly acute in environments of high complexity — where answers are rarely binary, and where trust and perception matter as much as insight and process.

In such settings, boardroom leadership becomes a form of navigation through paradox. And what breaks isn’t strategy — it’s confidence. What fails isn’t the model — it’s the relationship.

“The boardroom doesn’t fail from bad strategy — it often fails from impossible expectations.”

And when these expectations are unspoken — or worse, unacknowledged — they become invisible saboteurs. They wear down confidence. They erode psychological safety. They fracture cohesion even in the presence of shared goals.

This edition begins here: by surfacing the unseen bind at the heart of so many boardroom breakdowns. Before we can lead through complexity, we must first name the conditions that often make leadership feel impossible.

2. Where Double Binds Emerge in Governance

Double binds in governance don’t arise from dysfunction. They emerge from the collision of multiple reasonable expectations — each valid in isolation, but untenable in combination. The result isn’t chaos, but confusion: a climate where trust erodes not through failure, but through no-win choices.

Let’s explore where these tensions most frequently surface.

The CEO’s Bind: Visionary, but Contained

CEOs are asked to lead boldly — to bring vision, conviction, and long-term perspective. Yet in the same breath, they are expected to stay within the comfort zone of a board that may not be equally aligned in ambition or risk appetite.

They must inspire ambition, but not overshadow the board. Be transparent, but never too vulnerable. Demonstrate clarity, but avoid overconfidence.

In the most difficult moments, it’s not the decision that gets scrutinised, but the tone. Confidence is misread as arrogance. Caution is seen as doubt. And the CEO finds themselves trapped — not by incompetence, but by contradiction.

The Chair’s Dilemma: Neutral, but Directive

The Chair is expected to be a neutral facilitator — creating space for diverse perspectives, drawing out insight, and managing tone. But when decisions stall or tensions rise, they are simultaneously called upon to guide the group, reframe debate, and drive clarity.

Support the CEO — but don’t be seen as captured. Challenge constructively — but never strain the relationship. Remain neutral — but still deliver outcomes.

This balancing act, if left unexamined, leads to quiet burnout. A Chair can become overstretched, absorbing tension without permission to name it — let alone resolve it.

The NED’s Tension: Independent, but Harmonious

Non-Executive Directors often sit at the heart of the paradox. They are expected to speak independently — to bring fresh thinking, constructive challenge, and an external lens. But they are also expected to maintain cohesion, preserve confidence in leadership, and “not rock the boat.”

This unspoken tension produces distorted behaviours:

▪ Silence when a challenge is needed.

▪ Challenge when psychological safety is missing.

▪ Oversight that feels performative rather than meaningful.

NEDs walk the line between governance and groupthink — often without clear guidance on where strength ends and disruption begins.

The DEI Trap: Diversity Without Disruption

Modern boards rightly champion diversity — of thought, background, and identity. But when new voices enter a boardroom still shaped by legacy norms and consensus culture, a new bind emerges:

▪ Encourage different perspectives — but keep the tone familiar.

▪ Welcome new directors — but preserve old rhythms.

▪ Invite difference — but don't change the dynamic.

Without active attention to power, trust, and cultural tone, DEI becomes another site of contradiction. The result: new voices hesitate. Old patterns persist. And governance gains appearance, but not traction.

The common thread across all these roles is this: Leaders are held to expectations that cannot be satisfied simultaneously. And when they try, the cost is not just individual stress — it’s collective confusion.

Because when everyone is trying to meet every expectation, no one moves with confidence.

Boards, then, must recognise: A double bind is not an individual failure. It is a systemic condition — one that requires awareness, not blame.

3. Symptoms of a Board in a Double Bind

Double binds do not announce themselves. They accumulate silently — not through overt conflict, but through subtle behavioural patterns that erode clarity, decision-making, and trust.

Boards caught in a double bind rarely recognise it immediately. The signals can look like personality clashes, weak leadership, or cultural mismatch. But at the core lies something deeper: a systemic contradiction that leaves the group without a safe or coherent way forward.

Here are the most telling symptoms of a board operating inside a double bind:

Decision Fatigue Disguised as Due Diligence

When every decision feels politically or emotionally charged, boards often default to delay. They request more information, commission another report, or “revisit at the next meeting.” The appearance is diligence. The reality is often avoidance — a reluctance to move because any direction risks violating a hidden norm.

Frozen Debates and Recurring Topics

Issues resurface, again and again, under different headings — strategy becomes structure; structure becomes performance; performance becomes risk. But the same core tension lingers unresolved. This repetition is a clue: the board is circling a problem it cannot name, let alone solve.

Passive-Aggressive Dialogue Patterns

Rather than open disagreement, frustration seeps into tone, body language, or backchannel conversations. The challenge is softened to the point of vagueness. Feedback becomes veiled. The room grows quiet — but not aligned.

High Individual Competence, Low Group Clarity

You’ll often hear: “We have great people, but somehow we’re not getting traction.” This is the hallmark of a system-level double bind. It’s not about who’s in the room — it’s about the impossible structure they’re being asked to operate within. Everyone is trying their best — and still, momentum stalls.

Leadership Avoidance

When the board senses contradiction but cannot name it, a quiet deferral sets in. Tough calls are postponed. Chairs hesitate to steer. CEOs become guarded. Directors look to each other to lead — and no one steps forward.

In each of these moments, logic is not the problem. Presence is.

Because in a double bind, leaders aren’t just unsure what to say. They’re unsure what they’re allowed to say.

The result is not argument — it’s paralysis. Not breakdown — but slow erosion.

And the cost is high:

▪ Strategy drifts.

▪ Alignment frays.

▪ Psychological safety weakens.

In high-stakes governance, silence doesn’t signal agreement. It often signals confusion — or fear.

4. Why Governance Architecture Creates Double Binds?

Governance is often thought of as structure — rules, roles, frameworks, and protocols designed to ensure accountability and stability. But structure alone does not produce clarity. In fact, some of the most confusing dynamics in boardrooms today are not due to personality conflicts or poor leadership — but to the very architecture of governance itself.

Double binds in the boardroom often arise because governance sends mixed signals — and then punishes leaders for responding to any one of them too fully.

Here’s how it happens:

▪ Role confusion is built in. Chairs are expected to be neutral facilitators and also directional leaders. NEDs are expected to speak truth to power and also maintain trust and discretion. CEOs are expected to own the strategy and also remain subordinate to the board. These aren’t poor boundaries — they are overlapping mandates.

▪ Lines of authority are blurred. Formally, the board holds ultimate oversight. In practice, the CEO often drives the tempo and tone of governance. But who owns the “culture” of the boardroom? Who manages the subtle dynamics between challenge and support? In too many boards, the lines of responsibility are vague, which makes accountability vague, too.

▪ Binary thinking dominates. Boards are often encouraged to think in opposites: risk vs. growth, challenge vs. support, independence vs. alignment. But real boardroom dynamics don’t follow binary logic. Strategy demands paradox. Decision-making requires contradiction. Yet the systems that boards operate within often don’t allow both/and thinking to flourish.

▪ Regulatory pressures reward conformity, not reflection. Much of governance reporting is about demonstrating compliance, not surfacing insight. This leads to performative dynamics — where board members are more focused on appearing correct than being curious. And when curiosity fades, double binds become chronic.

▪ Psychological safety erodes without visibility. When conflicting expectations exist, but no one feels safe to name them, silence becomes the dominant culture. Directors hesitate to speak up. CEOs self-censor. The conversation becomes politically correct rather than strategically honest. And soon, the very structure meant to protect the organisation becomes the reason it can’t adapt.

“When governance signals conflict, leaders don’t freeze because they’re weak. They freeze because they’re confused — and they don’t know which rule to break.”

These dilemmas aren’t dysfunctions — they’re design flaws in the system. And they don’t get solved by doubling down on process. They require a different level of awareness — a capacity for boards to name paradox, to create space for reflective tension, and to lead from a place that understands ambiguity not as a threat, but as the work.

This sets the stage for the next layer:

If the architecture creates double binds, and the culture avoids naming them, what happens next?

Let’s turn now to the deeper system — and explore why boards often repeat these patterns without realising it.

5. The Double Bind as Systemic Reality

Double binds are often misunderstood as interpersonal problems — the result of miscommunication or poor chemistry between individuals. But as Gregory Bateson and later scholars like Carlos Sluzki observed, double binds are systemic. They don’t arise from individual failure. They arise from the design of the environment itself.

In governance, the boardroom becomes a prime site for these invisible patterns.

Boards operate within multiple layers of injunction — each one reasonable in isolation, but contradictory when combined:

▪ Primary injunction: “Be a supportive board member.”Be collegial. Build trust. Work collaboratively with management.

▪ Secondary injunction: “Hold leadership to account.”Challenge assumptions. Push back. Demonstrate independence.

▪ Tertiary injunction: Don’t disturb the norms. Don’t appear political. Don’t threaten cohesion. Don’t make it personal.

The result is a tightly bound web: Directors and CEOs alike are told to be bold — but polite. Candid — but cautious. Decisive — but deferential.

And when these contradictions are felt, there’s no safe way to name them. Calling out the tension can be seen as confrontational, naive, or even politically dangerous. So what do leaders do?

They adapt.

▪ They self-edit.

▪ They say what they think will land well — not what they truly see.

▪ They retreat into performance — roles played convincingly, but without presence.

Bateson described this as a learning structure that teaches people how not to learn.

In the boardroom, it becomes a culture that teaches leaders how not to lead.

Over time, the pattern becomes chronic:

▪ Leaders stop bringing unfiltered concerns to the board.

▪ Boards stop asking the second question.

▪ Conversations stay “on track” — but miss what matters.

This is how paralysis happens. Not because no one is capable — but because everyone is entangled.

And the bind is self-reinforcing. The more tension is denied, the more psychological ambiguity grows. Leaders know something is off — but can’t name it, fix it, or flee it. So they freeze.

This is why so many high-performing boards still falter in moments of uncertainty. It’s not a failure of skill. It’s a systemic freeze — a product of hidden contradictions and unnamed tension.

Boards that understand this don’t try to "fix" the paradox. They learn how to work within it. They create new norms for surfacing complexity without assigning blame. They allow directors and CEOs to inhabit the tension, instead of forcing them to resolve it.

Because in modern governance, the goal is not clarity at all costs. It's maturity in the face of ambiguity.

6. Breaking the Double Bind: What High-Trust Boards Do Differently

If double binds are baked into the system, they cannot be “solved” by logic alone. The task is not to eliminate paradox — but to navigate it with maturity. And the boards that succeed are not necessarily the smartest. They are the ones who build trust strong enough to hold tension without collapsing into dysfunction.

In high-trust boards, the goal is not consensus at all costs. It’s clarity through conversation — even when the conversation feels uncomfortable.

Here’s how these boards behave differently:

1. They surface tensions early — and name them without blame.

Instead of quietly managing contradictions behind closed doors, high-trust boards make room to talk about how they’re talking. They acknowledge when multiple expectations are in play, and when no single move will satisfy all of them.

“We’re asking the CEO to be bold and risk-aware — that’s a legitimate tension. How do we want to hold that?”

By naming the paradox out loud, they reduce confusion and build shared language around complexity.

2. They create space for meta-dialogue.

High-trust boards reserve time to reflect not just on the content, but on the process of how decisions are made:

▪ What’s not being said here?

▪ Where might we be signalling two things at once?

▪ Is this hesitation about the proposal — or the tone in the room?

This kind of “dialogue about the dialogue” is not fluff. It’s the core of system intelligence.

3. They design for psychological safety — not politeness.

Safety is not about comfort. It’s about knowing that candour won’t be punished. In a boardroom trapped in a double bind, politeness often masks avoidance. High-trust boards reframe candour as contribution — and they treat challenge as a mark of maturity.

They normalise dissent without personalising it. They make disagreement safe, not rare.

4. They accept paradox as a permanent condition.

Support and challenge. Boldness and restraint. Independence and cohesion.

High-functioning boards stop seeing these tensions as failures to be fixed. Instead, they learn to lead within themselves. They hold both sides of the paradox without collapsing into binary thinking.

They don’t ask: What is right? They ask: How can we hold both, and still move forward with integrity?

5. They centre purpose — not control.

When the path is unclear, purpose becomes the compass.

Instead of managing ambiguity through rigid control, high-trust boards orient back to shared intent:

▪ Why are we here?

▪ What are we stewarding?

▪ What matters most right now?

This anchors decisions in collective clarity, not individual certainty.

In short, high-trust boards don’t eliminate double binds. They build the muscle to stay with them. They don’t force clarity too early or suppress contradiction to feel in control. They slow down. Reflect together. Ask better questions.

Because maturity in governance is not the absence of paradox —It’s the presence of collective courage.

7. Reflection Prompts for Boards: Navigating the Bind with Clarity

In high-stakes boardrooms, the most dangerous dynamics are often the ones that go unnamed. The following prompts are designed not to provoke judgment — but to invite reflection, clarity, and conversation.

Because when expectations conflict, silence is not neutrality — it’s erosion.

Use these prompts individually or collectively as a board reflection exercise. Consider not just the answers, but the feelings that arise in response. That’s where the learning begins.

Where are we holding two contradictory expectations of our CEO or Chair?

Are we asking them to be visionary and restrained? Transparent and unshakeably confident? Do they know where the boundaries truly lie — or are we expecting them to read a map we’ve never drawn?

When did we last name a tension — instead of managing it quietly?

Are we in the habit of surfacing paradox, or smoothing it over? Do we notice when we all feel stuck — and have we created space to ask why?

Are we rewarding alignment — or clarity?

Do we equate agreement with effectiveness? Are we unconsciously encouraging nodding heads over honest voices? What gets praised: challenge offered thoughtfully, or seamless consensus?

Where are we demanding confidence, but punishing conviction?

Have we created a space where boldness is truly welcome — or only palatable when it aligns with the board’s comfort zone? How do we respond when a leader takes a risk in tone, not just in content?

What kind of tension are we avoiding — and at what cost?

Every board has a “third rail” — the issue that gets deferred, deflected, or buried in process. What’s ours? And what would it take to bring it into the room without blame?

These questions won’t solve the double bind. But they will illuminate where it lives.

Because the opposite of dysfunction is not perfection. It’s awareness. And awareness, practised with courage, is the first step toward a more adaptive, resilient, and honest boardroom.

Final Insight: Influence in the Paradox — And the Resilience to Lead Through It

The most effective governance today isn’t about resolution. It’s about navigation.

In today’s boardrooms, leadership is no longer a matter of choosing the perfect answer from a list. It’s the ability to hold competing truths. To stay relational and reflective — even when the room feels pulled in multiple directions.

This is the paradox at the heart of modern governance:

▪ Directors are expected to be independent — and aligned.

▪ Chairs are asked to challenge — and preserve harmony.

▪ CEOs are told to lead boldly — but never beyond the board’s comfort zone.

No one is doing anything wrong. And yet, everyone feels the weight of contradiction.

The result? Tension rises. Dialogue becomes guarded. Trust quietly erodes. Not from malice — but from confusion.

But here’s the shift:Boards that try to resolve paradox miss the point . Boards that learn to lead within it unlock their deepest capability.

Because in complexity, clarity isn’t clean — it’s courageous. And influence isn’t about control — it’s about presence. The presence to stay steady. To ask better questions. To build trust that holds, even when the outcome is unclear.

This is where resilience truly lives. Not in the ability to withstand pressure alone — but in the capacity to remain coherent, connected, and clear together, under that pressure.

Resilience isn’t a buzzword. It’s a strategy. And when boards choose to meet paradox with influence instead of instinct, with curiosity instead of control, they begin to create something powerful:

A stronger relational core.A deeper sense of mutual trust.A leadership bond capable of holding the future, not reacting to it.

Because the future won’t be led by boards who avoid tension —But by those who learn to stay inside it — with wisdom, presence, and resilience.

If this resonates, explore our work further — not in theory, but in practice.

Inside the Boardroom Creativity Lab, boards don’t just talk about resilience, trust, and influence — they build it.

Not through lectures, but through lived experience.

Because governance today — and in the future — will not be led by certainty, but by creativity.

Creativity grounded in relational trust, strategic courage, and shared wisdom.