I hear statements like these all the time:
◆ “The people at the top have no clue what we actually do.”
◆ “Sales keeps promising things and leaving us to figure out how to deliver them.”
◆ “Head office is completely out of touch with what’s happening on the ground.”
I’m sure I said things like this myself when I was a leader.
Drawing a line between “us” and “them” can create a powerful sense of belonging. Almost frighteningly so.
A shared enemy provides a remarkably quick answer to the question: “Who are we?”
◆ “We’re the ones left to deal with the fallout.”
◆ “We’re the ones who are closer to what’s really going on.”
◆ “We’re the ones who at least still know how to do the job properly.”
You know which side you’re on. And that creates cohesion.
Operations against Sales. Headquarters against the regions. Business functions against IT.
Having a common “other” reduces complexity and provides relief. It quickly becomes clear which side you belong to. You don’t have to articulate what you stand for. It is enough to know who you stand against. But then your sense of “us” is built on diminishing “them.”
And that comes at a cost. The other side increasingly becomes “the problem”. Differences turn into moral judgments. And it becomes easy to lose sight of your own part in the dynamic.
It is a fragile form of identity because it needs the other side to remain the problem in order for its own sense of “us” to stay intact.
That does not mean criticism of the other side is necessarily unjustified. There may be genuine conflicts of interest, poor decisions, or experiences that have caused real hurt. It becomes an us-versus-them narrative when specific criticism turns into a blanket “they are the problem”, and when the team starts building its own identity around that belief.
For leaders, this can be especially tempting. A shared sense of “those people over there” creates closeness with your own team while also allowing you to avoid taking a position of your own. A shared enemy provides identity without requiring you to take responsibility for articulating what your team itself stands for. To me, that is a way of giving away responsibility.
Leaders strongly influence what a team builds its sense of “us” around. What do we want to stand for? What is our shared contribution? What do we want to be proud of together? Including in the way we work with others.
Teams need an honest, shared story about who they are. Developing that self-understanding is a task for the whole team, and especially for its leader. A shared enemy should never become a shortcut to identity.
