Pinches, Crunches and the Myth of “Drawing a Line Under It”

Don’t ignore the pinches, or they’ll turn into crunches.

I spend a lot of time with teams where I often hear something like, “We just need to draw a line under it and move on.”

Usually, “it” is a conflict that’s already gone to a formal HR process. On paper, the case is closed. The letters have been sent. The meeting notes are filed. But emotionally?

That’s often when the real work begins.

Pinches, crunches and everything in between

The Pinch/Crunch model, developed by John Sherwood and John Glidewell, offers a simple way to think about conflict in relationships. Serious “crunch” moments usually begin as small “pinches”. Minor disappointments, misunderstandings or misaligned expectations that we tell ourselves to let go of.

In teams, pinches sound like:

• “That meeting didn’t sit right with me, but I’ll leave it.”

• “I felt undermined in front of the group, but they probably didn’t mean it.”

• “I don’t agree with that decision, but everyone else seems fine.”

  
  

Left unattended, those pinches don’t vanish. They stack up. Eventually they harden into a crunch: a blow-up in a meeting, someone going off sick, a grievance, or a breakdown in a key working relationship.

The temptation at crunch point is to throw a process at it, get through the formal steps, and then ask everyone to “get back to normal.” But normal has changed. Trust has been dented. People have taken positions and sides. The story has grown legs.

Why one-to-one space matters before team work

When I’m invited in to support a team after a conflict, I rarely start with the whole team.

Instead, I start with individual conversations.

One-to-one space gives people:

• A chance to be heard without interruption or judgement.

• Time to make sense of what’s happened in their own words.

• A place to start to be challenged, to separate facts, assumptions and emotions.

• Support to work out what they need now, not just what went wrong then.

  
  

If we skip this step and go straight to a team workshop, what often happens is:

• People stay guarded, because they don’t feel safe (or ready) to be open in front of others.

• Only the “polished” version of events is shared, and the real issues stay underground.

• Those who feel most hurt or marginalised re-experience that in the group, and the crunch deepens.

  
  

By slowing down and giving each person a chance to process, we’re not dwelling on the past, we’re preparing the ground so that any team conversation has a better chance of being honest, constructive and forward-looking.

“The process is over” vs “I’m still in it”

I often hear leaders say, “We need to move on now, the HR process is finished.”

But the fact a process has ended doesn’t mean the emotional fallout has. For some people, the formal stage is only one part of the story:

• They may have felt they couldn’t say everything they wanted to in a formal setting.

• They may feel vindicated, or they may feel silenced. Sometimes both.

• They may still be working closely with the person or people involved, with no chance to reset the relationship.

  
  

When we rush to “draw a line under it”, we risk:

• Pushing feelings underground rather than resolving them.

• Sending a message that performance and process matter more than people and relationships.

• Creating a culture where people learn to stay quiet and keep their heads down.

As leaders, it helps to recognise the difference between procedural closure and emotional closure. One is about paperwork. The other is about people.

Communication: clear, honest and human

At the heart of this work is communication – not in the sense of slick messaging, but in the sense of being able to talk to each other as humans.

That might mean:

• Saying, “That meeting didn’t land the way I hoped – can we talk about it?”

• Naming that “something feels off” before it becomes a complaint.

• Being willing to give – and receive – feedback that is both kind and clear.

Many leaders I work with have grown up in cultures where conflict is seen as something that's bad and should be avoided. The result is a polite surface and a lot of unspoken tension underneath.

Reframing conflict as very normal and human is an important shift to make. Conflict gives us information about how we are working together.

A pinch is often an early warning light. If we can talk about it while it’s still small, we have more options and less drama.

Resetting how we work together

Once people have been heard individually, we can begin the team work: resetting expectations, rebuilding trust, and co-creating new ways of working.

This might involve:

• Revisiting roles, responsibilities and decision-making so that expectations are clearer.

• Agreeing how you want to give and receive feedback as a team.

• Naming the pinch points in your day-to-day work like deadlines, handovers, communication habits, and agreeing how to handle them better.

• Talking explicitly about psychological safety: what helps people speak up, and what shuts them down.

Rebuilding psychological safety isn’t about never having conflict again. It’s about being able to disagree, challenge and surface concerns without fear of blame or humiliation. It’s about being able to say, “We hit a crunch last time. What do we need to notice earlier, so we can stay at the pinch stage and address things sooner?”

Paying attention

If you’re leading a team right now, you might ask yourself:

• Where are the current pinch points in our relationships and ways of working?

• Who needs a one-to-one conversation before we bring this into the room as a team?

• What would it look like for us to talk about this earlier and more openly next time?

Ignoring the pinches doesn’t make them go away. Giving them space – first in one-to-one conversations, then in the team – is how we prevent the next crunch and start to build a more honest, resilient and psychologically safe culture.