Invisible Agreements: Reset the Expectations You Never Spoke About

Jan 30, 2026 • 7 Min Read

Source:
Drazen Zigic from Freepik

The decisions that quietly change after everyone leaves the room

Teams rarely unravel because of the big, obvious stuff. They fray at the edges through a thousand small disappointments.

For example…

The email that goes unread.

The decision that is made in the room and then quietly reversed outside it.

The late-night message that was ‘just a quick one’, until it became a pattern, then a silent test of loyalty.

These moments add up: who responds after hours, what “good” looks like, how conflict is handled, who gets consulted, how fast things move, and what counts as going the extra mile.

Over time, these unwritten rules become invisible agreements.

In research terms, this sits inside the psychological contract¹: the beliefs people hold about mutual obligations in the employment relationship, beyond what’s written in a contract or position description.

The start of the year is the perfect time to surface these expectations and make them explicit.

Because if you don’t reset invisible agreements, you don’t start 2026 fresh. You start it with 2025’s assumptions, resentments, and quiet scorekeeping.

A Story You Might Recognise

A senior leadership team I worked with (details disguised) prided itself on being high-performing and ‘all in’.

Over time, three invisible agreements took hold:

Responsiveness equals commitment. If you replied quickly, you were seen as reliable. If you did not, you were seen as disengaged.
Decisions happen in the room. Except increasingly they did not. They happened in side conversations, MS Teams threads, and in the car park after the meeting.
Going the extra mile means saying yes to everything. Yes to extra projects, last-minute changes, and unrealistic timeframes.

No one declared these behaviours and expectations as ‘rules’. No one discussed the impact. Yet the impact was real.

One leader had caring responsibilities and stopped responding at night. Another started protecting deep work time and replied in batches. A third tried to slow down execution to avoid burnout in their team.

Behaviours changed, but the expectations did not.

The result wasn’t open conflict. It was subtler, more corrosive. Silence became disrespect. Decisions turned political because ‘the real decision’ happened elsewhere. Workloads felt unfair, but nobody wanted to challenge because they feared being seen as not committed.

When I was brought in, trust was low. Not because anyone had bad intent. The team was running on a psychological contract that had quietly drifted out of alignment.

When that happens, it’s a psychological contract breach, and it’s the sensemaking that follows (i.e the stories people tell themselves afterwards) that turns a missed expectation into a feeling of betrayal.

Why Invisible Agreements Erode Trust When Breached

When expectations are explicit, people can negotiate them.

When they are implicit, people can only guess.

We are not neutral guessers. We fill gaps with stories, usually self-protective ones and often ones that veer towards the negative:

“They ignored me because they do not respect me.”
“They changed the rules because they are power-playing.”
“I’m the only one carrying the load.”

That is why invisible agreements are so dangerous. The breach is often ambiguous, but the emotional impact is real.

Professors Elizabeth Wolfe Morrison and Sandra Robinson’s work² makes a useful distinction: breach is the cognitive perception that a promise was not met; violation is the emotional experience that follows.

Once a violation takes hold, you tend to see predictable downstream behaviours: withdrawal, reduced discretionary effort, cynicism, and malicious compliance (doing exactly what is required and no more).

Research consistently links perceived violations to lower trust and poorer attitudes toward the organisation.

Underneath it all is a social exchange: people give effort, care, and commitment, and they expect fairness, respect, and reciprocity in return.

The Questions to Explore

So the question is not “Did I technically do anything wrong?” It is, “What did people believe I was asking of them, and what did they believe they could expect from me?”

To reset expectations, start with yourself. This is crucial because invisible agreements usually form because leaders signal priorities through behaviour, not announcements.

Challenge yourself and consider:

What expectations did you set implicitly rather than explicitly last year? Look at your calendar, reactions, and rewards and consider what you showed your team matters.
Where did your team have to guess what you wanted? Consider where you were ambiguous with requests or instructions, and then got frustrated with the outcome.
Where you changed expectations without naming it? For example, speed, quality, availability, decision rights, autonomy, risk tolerance, etc.

That last one matters more than most leaders realise. A shift in context can justify a shift in expectations, but it does not remove the need to declare the shift.

After you answer those questions, go deeper.

While every team has its own flavour, I find three themes show up repeatedly: availability, decision rights and what counts as going the extra mile.

Which of these apply in your context?

Availability – Who is ‘on’ after hours? What is truly urgent? What is the expected response time?

If you do not define this, people will default to their personal norms, then judge others against them. The fastest responder sets the pace for everyone else, whether they intended to or not.

Decision rights – How are decisions made here? Consultative? Consensus? Leader decides? Who gets a voice versus a veto?

When decision rights are fuzzy, politics fills the vacuum. Not because people are petty, but because uncertainty makes people seek control.

What counts as “going the extra mile” – Is it extra hours, higher quality, greater creativity, proactive risk management, better stakeholder engagement or something else?

If the only visible reward signal is who sacrificed the most, you will see sacrifice, but you will also get burnout, resentment, and a talent pipeline that quietly opts out.

Resetting Expectations

Source: Jcomp from Freepik

To get a clean start in 2026, do not rely on vague intentions like ‘better communication’ or assume the issues and tension points will sort themselves out. It is far more effective to be deliberate and take the time to do an official expectations reset.

Invite your team members to this conversation and be sure to frame it clearly. That framing does something important: it normalises the issue by telling them that this is not a blame session. It is the maintenance needed to build and sustain a high-performing team.

You can say something like…
“As we start 2026, let’s check in on how we’re working together. It’s likely we’re carrying unspoken expectations from last year, and some may no longer serve us. Today is about making the invisible visible. We’ll name what worked, surface what felt unclear or unfair, and reset agreements so we’re not guessing. Let’s set ourselves up for a strong year.”

There are three core steps to work through with your team.

1. Appreciate what worked
Firstly, appreciate what worked in how your team worked together. This is not a compliment circle; it is a precision exercise. Appreciation anchors the conversation in capability rather than deficiency. It also reduces defensiveness, which is critical if you want honesty later.

For example, ask:

What did we do in 2025 that made work smoother, faster, or more effective?
Where did we show up well for each other under pressure?
What should we protect going into 2026?

2. Surface what felt unclear or unfair
Next, surface: what felt unclear or unfair. This is where you do the work of naming the invisible agreements without blaming.

This is where psychological safety is crucial. Teams speak truth when it is safe to do so, and when leaders respond with curiosity rather than correction.

You want to talk in patterns, not blaming or finger-pointing. For example, “Here’s what I noticed” lands better than “Here’s what you did.”

For example, ask:

Where did expectations feel unclear?
What became an unspoken rule that we never agreed to?
Where did we create extra friction for each other?

3. Explicitly agree on agreements
Lastly, and this is step three, explicitly agree on what you want 2026 to be. This is where the conversation earns its keep. Resetting means making explicit agreements that reduce guesswork.

This conversation covers three areas: availability, decision rights, pace and priorities.

Availability:

What is urgent, and who decides?
What response times do we expect, by channel?
What boundaries do we respect (even when we are busy)?

Decision rights:

What types of decisions require consultation?
What decisions are delegated?
How will we communicate decisions so there is no second-guessing later?

Pace and priorities:

How will we handle trade-offs when everything feels important?
What does good enough look like in different situations?
What will we stop doing to protect capacity?

You close off this section by identifying and agreeing on the agreements you will make – individually and collectively – about how you will work together in 2026.

Be sure to make these statements behavioural and observable, not just aspirational.

Set Your Team up for Success

Cleaner expectations mean less politics and more energy for what matters.

When expectations are unclear, people spend energy managing impressions, decoding signals, and protecting themselves. That’s where politics and, in time, resentment and frustration, grow.

When expectations are clear, people invest energy in the work and the right kind of relationship building.

This is one of the most underappreciated performance levers available to leaders. Not another tool. Not another initiative. Just the quiet discipline of naming what you expect, checking what others expect, and renegotiating when context changes.

Make the invisible visible. Step ahead, step up, and give your team the gift of a clean start in 2026.

Republished with courtesy from michellegibbings.com.

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