Say Goodbye to These Five 'Harmless' Team Habits in 2025

Write your team's story for 2025: Heaven or hell? – your choice

Sam Wong/ Unsplash

The most dangerous team habits hide in plain sight. As teams settle into 2025 routines, certain behaviors become so normalized that we stop questioning their impact. Silent disagreement, constant firefighting, and defaulting to meetings – to name a few – can erode team performance.

Throughout my practice coaching teams across multiple industries, I’ve seen how these subtle patterns can quickly harm collaboration.

Here are five seemingly harmless habits to retire before they become your 2025 default pattern.

1. Saying Yes to Everything

Teams often mistake a can-do attitude and willingness to take on any challenge for collaboration. They fear being labeled as “not a team player” simply for saying no to a new request.

However, saying yes to everything means saying no to excellence.

Research shows that constantly switching from one task to another reduces performance by 20% through ‘attention residue’ – our mind gets stuck on the previous task. McKinsey reports that effective …