What Hairy Elephants Are You Avoiding as a Team?

Every team has them — the ‘hairy elephants’. They’re the topics everyone’s talking about, just not together. You’ll hear them whispered in corridor conversations, mentioned during side chats over coffee, or shared via private messages. But rarely are they addressed in the room where they belong — the team meeting.

A hairy elephant is any significant issue that’s known but unspoken. It's out in the open informally, yet off-limits formally. And that silence can stall progress, erode trust, and diminish the team’s ability to lead with impact.

I recall a team I was part of where a hairy elephant loomed large. We all knew what the issue was, but it was too sensitive, too complex, too uncomfortable to raise directly. Over time, that avoidance bred frustration and a sense of futility. If we couldn’t tackle the obvious, how could we expect to address more strategic or systemic challenges?

Hairy elephants can take many forms:

• A team member’s behaviour that others find disruptive or disrespectful

• Persistent underperformance by someone in a key role

• A flawed system or process that no one wants to question due to sunk costs

• A new opportunity that’s shut down too quickly with, “We tried that before”

Each one represents a missed opportunity for clarity, alignment, and growth.

As an executive and team coach, I often support teams to bring these elephants into the room — not to assign blame, but to create the conditions for healthy, courageous conversations. The goal isn’t conflict. It’s candour. It’s a collective commitment to face what matters, together.

So, how can your team begin to tackle the hairy elephants? Here are three starting points:

1. Name It: Start by acknowledging that something’s not being talked about. Giving the issue a name — even if it’s just “the thing we’re not discussing” — breaks the pattern of avoidance.

2. Create Psychological Safety: Make it safe for team members to speak up. This doesn’t happen by accident — leaders must model vulnerability and curiosity, not just certainty.

3. Bring in a Facilitator: Sometimes an external voice can create the neutral space needed to surface and navigate tricky topics productively.

In the end, what’s left unsaid often has more power than what’s said aloud. And it’s the unspoken that can limit your team’s effectiveness, resilience, and results.

As teams grow and develop into the high performing team that they want to be, ‘hairy elephants’ appear less and are tackled front on.

So, I invite you to ask:What hairy elephants are we avoiding? And what would it take for us to talk about them — together, honestly, and constructively?