What We do with otherness
What The Traitors can teach us about difference, collective certainty and accountable disagreement
There is a particular dynamic that can develop in professional communities, partnerships and organisations. It rarely begins with a declared intention to harm. More often, it accumulates: a concern repeated before it is verified, an inference retold as fact, a frustration validated by sympathetic colleagues, and a succession of small decisions for which nobody feels wholly responsible.
By the time the consequences are visible, everyone has an explanation. Few people believe they caused them.
This is why collective misalignment is difficult to discuss well. The word mobbing can become an accusation of its own, and it should not be used to relabel disagreement, scrutiny or the legitimate exposure of poor conduct. Organisations need people who will challenge authority and say what others would prefer not to hear.
The harder question is how we preserve challenge… and make room for genuine difference… without allowing social certainty to outrun evidence. It is not a question for “good people” to ask about “bad people”. It concerns ordinary human tendencies that become more powerful when belonging, reputation or livelihood feels at stake.
What The Traitors reveals
The TV show Survivor taught a generation to understand alliances as strategy: build a coalition, manage the numbers and vote out the threat. The Traitors takes the idea somewhere more psychologically revealing. Most contestants lack reliable evidence, yet they must identify a hidden enemy. Suspicion becomes the organising principle of the group.
The show is compelling because viewers know what the participants do not. We watch confident accusations attach themselves to incidental behaviour. Someone is too quiet, too vocal, too calm or too defensive. Once a theory gains supporters, contradictory information can be made to fit it. The round table converts uncertainty into a vote, and the vote provides the emotional satisfaction of action… even when the majority is entirely wrong.
It would be comforting to imagine that we would see through this if we were sitting at the table. The show repeatedly suggests otherwise. Intelligence, experience and sincerity offer no immunity from confirmation bias. Faithful contestants can be truthful about what they observed and still be mistaken about what it means. Traitors can justify deception as simply playing the role assigned to them. Bystanders may doubt the prevailing view but remain quiet because opposing the group makes them newly conspicuous.
The roles are not fixed moral identities. They are positions within a system of incentives and incomplete information. Under different circumstances, any of us can become the faithful, the traitor, the confident accuser, the strategic ally, the silent observer or the person unfairly banished.
That is the show’s more uncomfortable cultural insight. It does not reveal that other people are easily manipulated. It reminds us that we are.
In the game, the presenter eventually reveals the truth. In business, there may be no equivalent moment. A mistaken collective judgment can enter the informal record, reshape relationships and influence decisions long after the group has moved on.
How groups change the moral calculation
Individual responsibility becomes less distinct when action is distributed. One person raises a concern, another repeats it, someone else interprets a silence or ambiguous event, and others add their agreement. Each contribution may feel too small to carry the weight of the eventual outcome.
Research on moral disengagement helps explain how decent people participate in conduct they would resist if it were presented plainly. We soften language, diffuse responsibility, minimise consequences and attribute blame to the person affected. “I said this” becomes “concerns were raised”. “We do not know” becomes “everyone is saying it”. Passive language does more than describe collective action; it can conceal the individual choices within it.
Yet the opposite error is also possible. A person facing justified scrutiny may experience accountability as persecution and interpret corroborated concerns as a campaign. Fair process must therefore protect two things at once: the ability to raise genuine concerns and the right of every person to know and answer the substance of what is alleged. Neither scepticism nor empathy should be reserved for only one side.
Research into workplace dynamics points not only to individual behaviour but to organisational culture and conditions: role conflict, ambiguity, work constraints, weak leadership and hostile climates. Context does not remove personal agency, but it can make certain behaviours easier to rationalise and harder to interrupt.
Scarcity changes the social weather
When markets tighten, people experience more than reduced revenue. Work becomes scarcer, clients more cautious and once-expandable opportunities begin to look finite. The pressure can reach identity as well as income: Am I still relevant? Is there room for me? Who is gaining influence while I am losing it?
Research links job insecurity with poorer wellbeing, reduced commitment and impaired performance. Some studies associate insecurity with hypercompetitive attitudes and, through them, intentions to harass. This is not a simple causal rule. Most people under economic pressure do not mistreat colleagues, and commercial competition can coexist with generosity and integrity.
But scarcity can change how we interpret one another. Another person’s success may begin to feel like our exclusion. A disagreement about direction can carry unspoken anxiety about status, clients or control. Principle and self-interest are rarely separated as neatly as we imagine… especially in smaller economic ecosystems where the same people may be competitors, collaborators, referrers, governors and friends.
The useful question is not whether someone has interests; everyone does. It is whether those interests are visible enough to be examined, including our own.
Certainty is contagious; evidence is slower
Groups are efficient at producing confidence. They are not automatically efficient at producing truth.
Repetition can resemble corroboration even when every account traces back to one source. Shared frustration can feel like independent proof. Once we become invested in a narrative, correction may feel less like useful information and more like a threat to the group… and to our own judgment.
Empathy also narrows under conflict. We understand the intentions, pressures and fears of people on our side in rich detail. We explain the other side more simply: ego, malice, incompetence or dishonesty. The discipline is to reverse the lens. What are we excusing in our allies that we would condemn in an opponent? What pressures or legitimate interests might we be refusing to see elsewhere?
Research on workplace incivility shows how small discourtesies can escalate. Bystander studies add that colleagues and managers often remain passive. Silence is not always cowardice; it may reflect uncertainty, risk or a wish not to inflame matters. But repeated silence can still become part of the environment in which harm continues.
How do we deal with other people’s otherness?
Beneath many professional conflicts lies a quieter question: how do we deal with other people’s otherness?
Otherness is not limited to identity or background. It can be a different communication style, professional discipline, appetite for risk, understanding of loyalty, cultural reference point or way of exercising authority. Difference creates value because it introduces information and possibilities that a like-minded group cannot generate for itself. It also creates friction. The person who communicates directly may experience another’s caution as evasiveness; the cautious person may experience directness as aggression. A challenger may see professional courage where others see disloyalty. Two people can act in good faith and still unsettle one another.
The ethical task is neither to romanticise difference nor to eliminate it. Otherness does not exempt anyone from evidence, conduct or accountability. Nor should unfamiliarity be converted into defect. Professionalism requires us to distinguish between what is genuinely harmful, what is merely inconvenient and what may be valuable precisely because it challenges our preferred way of seeing.
This matters particularly in New Zealand. Our commercial and professional networks are small, relationships overlap and reputations travel quickly. Maintaining a relationship can therefore become confused with avoiding difficult conversations; equally, “being direct” can become permission to neglect the relationship. The better standard is more demanding: address the issue clearly, protect the dignity of the people involved and leave open the possibility of working together again.
That is not softness. It is value creation. When difference can be expressed without being punished or personalised, organisations retain knowledge, surface risk earlier and make better decisions. The objective is not agreement at all costs. It is enough trust and discipline to keep producing value while disagreement remains.
Accountable disagreement
The answer is not enforced harmony or a demand that every disagreement have two equally valid sides. It is a culture capable of challenging both the claim and its own preferred interpretation.
Before joining, circulating or dismissing a serious concern, we can ask:
What do I actually know? Separate direct knowledge, documentary evidence, inference and repetition.
What would change my view? If the honest answer is “nothing”, I am defending an identity, not conducting an inquiry.
What difference am I turning into a defect? Discomfort with another person’s style or perspective is not evidence of poor character.
Has the person had a fair opportunity to respond? Natural justice protects legitimate accountability; it does not obstruct it.
What part of this action is mine? Collective support does not remove personal responsibility for accuracy, fairness and foreseeable consequences.
Am I applying the same standard to my allies and opponents? Loyalty, status, commercial pressure and past conflict can influence any of us without making us consciously dishonest.
Leaders must also examine the conditions around a disagreement. Are responsibilities clear? Are decisions and evidence documented? Can concerns be raised without retaliation? Can someone question the prevailing account without being treated as disloyal? Psychological safety must protect the person who speaks up, the person who asks for proof and the person required to answer.
Every professional community has values. Their meaning is tested when money is tight, status is unsettled and relationships divide. The difficult discipline is to slow down when our own group feels certain, verify what we are predisposed to believe and remain curious about the humanity… and the otherness… of someone we oppose.
The healthiest organisations are not those without conflict. They are those in which none of us is permitted to use the group as an alibi, including ourselves.
