In high-pressure situations, particularly in small teams, interpersonal dynamics can take unexpected and damaging turns. One such dynamic is scapegoating — the unfair blaming of a single person for problems that are usually systemic or collective. In small teams, where every individual’s contribution and behavior is magnified, scapegoating can be particularly corrosive. Understanding its causes, signs, and solutions is essential for any project manager or team leader who wants to build a resilient and fair project team.
What Is Scapegoating?
Scapegoating is a psychological and social phenomenon where one person (or a small group) is blamed for a problem, failure, or dysfunction in a team — even when they are not primarily responsible. The scapegoat becomes the focus of frustration, anxiety, or anger that would otherwise have no clear target.
In small teams, scapegoating can escalate quickly due to the intimacy of working relationships and the limited number of roles, which heightens the visibility of any mistake or conflict.
Common Causes of Scapegoating in Small Teams
1. Ambiguity in Roles or Responsibility
When it’s not clear who owns a task or outcome, failure often leads to finger-pointing. Scapegoating fills the vacuum of lack of accountability.
2. Leadership Avoidance
Team leaders who fail to take responsibility or manage conflict may allow (or even subtly encourage) the team to project blame onto someone else to avoid addressing deeper problems.
3. Group Stress or Threat
Under high stress — such as tight deadlines, resource constraints, or external scrutiny — teams instinctively look for a pressure release. The scapegoat becomes a sacrificial outlet for collective anxiety.
4. Cognitive Biases
Teams often unconsciously single out individuals who are different in communication style, personality, or background. Implicit biases (e.g., gender, age, race, or neurodiversity) can shape who gets blamed.
5. Conflict Avoidance
Rather than engage in difficult but necessary conversations about underperformance, strategy misalignment, or leadership flaws, teams may converge on a single “problem person” to avoid addressing more systemic or interpersonal issues.
How to Identify Scapegoating
Behavioral Indicators:
Disproportionate Blame: One person is repeatedly blamed for problems even when they are tangentially involved — or not involved at all.
Isolation: The scapegoated individual is left out of informal communications or collaboration.
Narrative Rigidity: The team forms a fixed narrative about the scapegoated person ("They're not a team player", "They always mess things up"), regardless of recent behavior.
No Recovery Path: Even when the scapegoated person performs well, the perception of blame persists.
Passive Leadership: Team leaders consistently fail to correct unfair narratives or defend the team member.
Emotional Signals:
Anxiety or Fear: The scapegoated individual shows signs of anxiety, defensiveness, or withdrawal.
Group Smugness or Moral Superiority: The rest of the team shows a shared self-righteousness or unity that is dependent on contrasting with the scapegoat.
How to Prevent Scapegoating
1. Establish Clear Accountability Structures
Define who is responsible for what, and ensure that failures are reviewed in terms of process, not personality. Tools like RACI matrices and postmortem templates can institutionalize this.
2. Encourage Psychological Safety
Teams that feel safe discussing mistakes openly are less likely to default to blaming. This includes setting norms for respectful feedback, admitting leadership mistakes, and modeling vulnerability.
3. Monitor Narrative Drift
Project managers should actively listen for consistent patterns of negative talk about a single individual. Repeated scapegoating language should raise a flag even if it’s said “jokingly.”
4. Decouple Behavior from Identity
Train the team (formally or informally) to distinguish between behavior and character. Saying “John’s report missed the deadline” is different from “John is unreliable.”
5. Foster Cross-Team Empathy
Encourage job shadowing, pair work, or empathy-building exercises so people better understand each other’s constraints and strengths.
How to Stop Scapegoating Once It Starts
1. Conduct a Structured Intervention
Have a neutral third party (e.g., a coach, facilitator, or external manager) run a retrospective or facilitated dialogue to unpack team dynamics. Focus on process failures, not blame.
2. Publicly Reframe the Narrative
A project leader must step in and publicly clarify misunderstandings or misattributions. This might sound like:
“We’ve been unfairly associating our missed deadlines with Jordan’s work. The timeline issues were systemic. Let’s look at the real process gaps.”
3. Support the Target
Check in privately with the scapegoated person. Offer validation, invite feedback, and — if appropriate — restore their standing by explicitly valuing their contributions.
4. Address the Team’s Underlying Stressors
Often scapegoating is a symptom, not the disease. Audit the root causes: Is the team understaffed? Poorly aligned? Operating without clarity? Trying to achieve unreasonable timelines? Fix those to reduce the pressure that breeds scapegoating.
5. Institute Reflective Practices
Adopt weekly or bi-weekly rituals (e.g., retros, after-action reviews) where team members are encouraged to name tensions and patterns, reducing the buildup that leads to groupthink and scapegoating.
Final thought
Scapegoating is a failure of collective responsibility. In small teams where interpersonal dynamics are magnified, it can be especially damaging. Left unchecked, it poisons team culture, drives out talent, and obscures the real causes of team dysfunction. But with proactive awareness, clear accountability, and a commitment to psychological safety, teams can prevent and recover from this toxic pattern.
If your team is struggling with scapegoating, before jumping to the conclusion to replace the targeted team member, use the above outline to determine what the root causes are and how to fix them.
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