One reason is that […] people aren’t fully aware of the mindset they are actually in. In your own organisation, I’m guessing you heard other leaders (perhaps your boss?) use language that espouses openness, cooperation, and the sharing of accountability between peer members of a team, but when you listen to or watch the same leaders in challenging situations, they seem to be guided by an opposite mindset, unilateral control, without recognising the discrepancy.
[…] A second reason leaders stay stuck, clinging to a unilateral control, one-leader-in-the-room-approach, is the difficulty of imagining a workable alternative. Everyone knows that opening up a decision making to the team can get the group stuck because people have conflicting ideas and conflict is inevitable, uncomfortable, and painful to deal with.
Roger Schwarz — Smart Leaders Smarter Teams