Teams are more than just the sum of their parts. They’re complex systems in which individual behaviors can trigger chain reactions that enhance or undermine team effectiveness. The concept of domino derailers reveals how one team member’s behavior under stress can cascade through an entire group, silently eroding team effectiveness and draining organizational energy. Yet when properly understood, these same patterns become powerful leverage points for effective teams.
On episode 123 of The Science of Personality, cohosts Ryne Sherman and Blake Loepp spoke with a panel of experts from the Hogan Coaching Network about domino derailers. The guests were Trish Kellett, executive advisor for strategic initiatives at Hogan Assessments; Rebecca Feder, principal consultant at Princeton HR Insight; and Rebecca Ghanadan, founder and principal at Aspis Coaching Group.
Kellett, who led the Hogan Coaching Network for 15 years, coined the term domino derailers from her experience facilitating team development sessions. “It’s not always their highest derailer that gets teams into trouble, but rather it’s the interaction of individual derailers,” she observed.
What Are Derailers, Exactly?
This takes us straight to the Hogan Development Survey (HDS), which assesses the dark side of personality for 11 different derailers. Derailers are negative behaviors that emerge when individuals stop self-monitoring, usually due to stress, complacency, or boredom. On a day-to-day basis, these are personality strengths, but they become problematic when overused. The HDS is grounded in reputational data, or how others perceive someone’s behavior. When it comes to team performance, people’s individual strengths reveal where and how the team can potentially derail.
“We all appreciate just how powerful the HDS is for individuals,” Ghanadan said. “Clients consistently say, ‘That’s so insightful. There’s no other place I’m getting that information.’”
For team members to understand themselves, they also need to recognize how their behavior impacts others. This understanding about how they individually contribute to a negative response spiral can build awareness about how to have a more skillful interaction with their colleagues. “Instead of triggering, you’re responding in a way that starts to build trust. Trust is efficient. Trust is effective,” Ghanadan said.
Feder agreed: “You can change the tone of these stress conversations to one that is supportive and helpful. You start leaning in on how you can help and how you can respond differently to people when they’re not at their best.”
How Domino Derailers Work
Teams are made up of individuals who have different potential derailers. A team can encounter conflict and become less effective without its highest shared derailer ever coming into play. One person’s derailer might trigger other people’s derailers, which creates a domino effect. “The team just starts spiraling from there,” Kellett said.
Kellett gave an example of a team whose highest collective derailer is the HDS Cautious scale. Suppose a high Imaginative team member shares an idea that reminds their high Colorful colleague of a story. Their animated conversation might trigger a high Reserved team member who withdraws or a high Bold team member who interrupts with a bigger idea. Cautious is nowhere to be seen; the domino derailers are the individual derailers.
It’s critical for effective teams to be aware of how they manage stress together. “When you interact with the concept of domino derailers, it reorients what you’re paying attention to,” Ghanadan said. “How am I building strategic self-awareness around my own patterns under stress? How do I choose how I’m responding to others?”
A Snapshot of Domino Derailers
Feder and Ghanadan narrated a detailed hypothetical interaction around the domino derailers concept. Day to day, Feder tends to be organized and planful. In a moment of vulnerability, she might exhibit high Diligence by jumping in to micromanage Ghanadan’s work. If this triggers a stress reaction in Ghanadan, she might exhibit her high Imaginative score and resist Feder’s expectations around structure. She might also show her high Reserved score by withdrawing.
The colleagues begin moving in completely different directions—Feder zooming in, and Ghanadan zooming out. As team members, they likely feel frustration and lose energy for their shared goals. Imagine if Ghanadan’s Reserved behavior triggers resentment in Kellett, whose high Leisurely derailer exhibits as passive resistance. It sounds like total dysfunction!
“These stress moments are real opportunity moments on a team,” Feder said. If Ghanadan had recognized Feder’s derailing response, she could have invited her to talk through the details and review the plan. “All of a sudden, we might actually be closer than if we hadn’t had a chance to build trust with each other,” Feder added.
Team effectiveness requires more than generalizable insights. In the case of this example, Ghanadan, Feder, and Kellett must work together to understand what motivates each one’s behavior and dark-side derailers.
Domino Derailers in Team Sessions
In debriefing leaders and team members on their Hogan assessments results, the three coaches find that people tend to show more feedback resistance about their dark-side behaviors. In a team session, a major objective is to minimize that resistance and facilitate a constructive dialogue about derailers.
Team effectiveness, especially under stress, can be very complicated, but the domino derailer model makes it understandable for team members. “At the end of the day, it simply boils down to take a pause, manage yourself, and create the space needed to show up for other people,” Feder said.
A Team Effectiveness Exercise
Feder explained a team session exercise around derailers that helps counter resistance and compliment the Hogan reports. Each participant fills out a self-assessment survey about derailers, puts it in an envelope, and passes it clockwise. Then, each team member rates how they see one another under stress, adding their feedback to the envelope in turn and passing it fully around the table. “At the end of this process, I get my envelope back and see how I thought I showed up under stress and the implications of how other people see me,” she said.
The participants then have a break to process what they learned. They regroup to share their risk tendencies and their needs. Everyone takes notes and thinks about their own reactions. “You can stop the dominoes from happening,” Feder said. “Any member of the team can show up and do that.”
Strategic Learning for Team Effectiveness
Once the team has a shared language to talk about derailers, having space for discussion is important. Ghanadan mentioned three main areas for real-time learning: (1) responding more effectively to colleagues to give them more of what they need, (2) understanding what’s going on beneath one’s derailers, and (3) gaining skills for interpersonal self-management in a team setting. Sharing these data-driven insights truly can change the outcomes of team performance.
Through the process of discussing the dark side, Feder sees teams gain hope. Simply put, the concept of domino derailers humanizes people. “It shifts from a primal emotional reaction to a thoughtful leadership moment,” she said. “We can either go up or down as a team. We can be annoyed and have distance, or we can build trust and be stronger.”
Ghanadan agreed: “We absolutely see trust growing and deepening in this type of team session. The Hogan assessments have always had a language that has catalyzed greater awareness—not judgmental, just descriptive.”
Listen to this conversation in full on episode 123 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts. Cheers, everybody!