You know the feeling. Your team is struggling—meetings feel unproductive, deadlines slip, and there’s an undercurrent of tension you can’t quite put your finger on. So you do what most leaders do: you focus on the people problems. You organize team-building exercises, facilitate difficult conversations, or bring in consultants to work on communication and trust.
But what if you’re solving the wrong problem?
The Real Reason Teams Struggle
Richard Beckhard, one of the pioneers of organizational development, discovered something counterintuitive about team dysfunction. Most teams that appear to have “people problems” actually have structural problems that create interpersonal friction as a symptom, not a cause.
His GRPI model—standing for Goals, Roles, Processes, and Interpersonal relationships—reveals why so many well-intentioned team interventions fail. We’re treating the fever instead of the infection.
How GRPI Works: The Sequential Foundation
The genius of the GRPI model lies in its sequence. Each element must be solid before the next can be effectively addressed:
Goals: The North Star That’s Often Missing
Before anything else, your team needs crystal-clear, shared objectives. Not the vague mission statement from your strategic planning retreat, but specific, measurable outcomes that everyone can visualize and commit to.
When goals are fuzzy or conflicting, everything else becomes harder. People make different assumptions about priorities, waste energy on work that doesn’t matter, and inevitably clash over resource allocation. What looks like personality conflicts are often just goal conflicts in disguise.
Roles: Who Does What (And Who Doesn’t)
Once goals are clear, roles become definable. Each team member needs to understand not just their own responsibilities, but how their role interfaces with others. Where does your authority begin and end? Who has final decision rights? What happens when roles overlap?
The magic happens when role clarity eliminates the friction of constantly negotiating who should do what. Energy previously spent on territorial disputes gets redirected toward the actual work.
Processes: How Work Actually Gets Done
With clear goals and defined roles, you can now establish the workflows, communication protocols, and decision-making processes that enable smooth collaboration. How do you prioritize competing demands? What information needs to flow where? How are conflicts resolved?
Many teams skip this step, assuming good people will naturally figure out good processes. But without explicit agreements about how work flows, teams resort to ad hoc coordination that burns out high performers and frustrates everyone else.
Interpersonal Relationships: The Cherry on Top
Only now—with goals, roles, and processes established—does it make sense to focus on interpersonal dynamics. When the structural elements are solid, relationship issues often resolve themselves. People trust each other more when they’re not constantly confused about priorities or stepping on each other’s toes.
When interpersonal work is needed, it’s far more effective because it’s addressing genuine relationship challenges rather than structural frustrations masquerading as personality conflicts.
Why This Sequence Matters for Leaders in Change
As a leader navigating organizational change, the GRPI sequence becomes even more critical. Change disrupts all four elements simultaneously—goals shift, roles evolve, old processes break down, and relationships get strained by uncertainty.
Most change efforts fail because leaders assume that if they can just get people aligned and enthusiastic (focusing on relationships), everything else will fall into place. But enthusiasm without clarity is just organized confusion.
Instead, use GRPI as your change navigation system:
- Start with Goals. What specifically are you trying to achieve? Not just the business outcomes, but the behavioral and operational changes required. Be specific enough that people can visualize success.
- Redesign Roles. How do responsibilities need to shift? What new capabilities are required? Who needs to let go of what? Don’t leave people guessing about their new reality.
- Rebuild Processes. Your old workflows won’t work in your new reality. Explicitly design new ways of working before problems force improvised solutions.
- Then Tend Relationships. With the structure clear, you can address the real interpersonal challenges that change creates—grief over what’s being lost, anxiety about new expectations, or excitement about new possibilities.
The Diagnostic Power of GRPI
Perhaps most valuably, GRPI gives you a diagnostic framework when teams struggle. Instead of jumping to team-building exercises, ask yourself:
- Are our goals truly clear and shared, or are people working toward different outcomes?
- Do people understand their roles and how they interface with others?
- Do we have explicit processes for how work gets done, or are we making it up as we go?
- Only then: Are there genuine interpersonal issues that need attention?
More often than not, you’ll discover that what seemed like a relationship problem is actually a structural problem with an easy fix.
Your Next Step
The next time your team hits a rough patch, resist the urge to immediately focus on the interpersonal dynamics. Instead, work backward through GRPI. Start by examining whether your goals are truly clear and shared. You might be surprised by what you discover.
Sometimes the best team-building exercise is simply getting clear on what you’re building together!
Download our free summary of the GRPI tool to use with your team.