Is Mystification the Hidden Force Behind Repeated Mistakes in Your Team?

As a Fractional COO working with financial advisory firms and agencies, one of the most common frustrations I hear from leaders is this:

“Why do my team members keep making the same mistakes over and over again? I’ve explained it. I’ve trained them. I’ve reminded them. But it’s like the lesson never sticks.”

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Repeated mistakes aren’t always about incompetence or laziness. Often, they’re about something much deeper: a hidden psychological pattern called mystification.

What is Mystification?

The late John Bradshaw, in his groundbreaking book Homecoming, defined mystification as what happens when a child’s reality is consistently denied, distorted, or invalidated by their caregivers.

Imagine a child who sees that a parent is angry and asks about it, only to be told, “I’m not angry. Everything is fine.” Or a child who is hurt and told, “You’re not really hurt. Stop being dramatic.”

Over time, this repeated denial of reality teaches the child not to trust their own perceptions, feelings, or inner compass. They grow up learning to second-guess themselves, doubt their instincts, and rely on others to tell them what’s “real.”

On top of this, the child’s amygdala — the emotional alarm center of the brain — creates a powerful negative belief fueled by their own negative emotions: “I am worthless.” Bradshaw called worthiness the “granddaddy of all unmet needs.” When a child’s worth is mystified and denied, the belief of being worthless takes root. This core wound can echo for decades, shaping how a person shows up at work, in relationships, and in life.

How Mystification Shows Up in the Workplace

Fast forward into adulthood, and mystification doesn’t just disappear. It seeps into how people work, communicate, and lead.

In a team context, mystification can look like:

• Inconsistency: A team member says they understand what’s expected but delivers something different, again and again.
• Vagueness: They struggle to articulate goals, plans, or progress clearly.
• Avoidance: They don’t fully complete assignments, or they procrastinate until someone follows up.
• Surface-level compliance: They nod in agreement during meetings but fail to translate agreements into concrete, sustained action.
• Fragile confidence: They collapse under constructive feedback, interpreting it as proof of inadequacy rather than an opportunity to improve.

When mystification is running the show, a team member can hear the correction, understand it intellectually, and still not integrate it. Why? Because deep down, they don’t trust their own perception. Their internal operating system is wired to doubt, hesitate, and defer — which leads to repeated mistakes.

Why Training Alone Doesn’t Fix It

This is why repeated mistakes can be so maddening for leaders. You think, “We already covered this. Why are we back here again?”

The problem is that mystification isn’t a knowledge gap. It’s not that your team member doesn’t know the process, the script, or the expectation. It’s that their internal wiring is scrambled. Their perception has been conditioned to distrust itself.

So instead of confidently taking the next step, they hesitate. They second-guess. They unconsciously sabotage their own progress. And the result looks like inconsistency, procrastination, or chronic “dropping the ball.”

A Real-World Example

I recently worked with a financial advisory team where one member, let’s call him Chris, was repeatedly failing to complete client follow-ups on time. The system was clear. The expectations were clear. The deadlines were clear. Yet every week, the same mistakes resurfaced.

On the surface, it looked like carelessness. But through coaching, it became obvious that Chris wasn’t careless — he was mystified. As a child, whenever he spoke up or showed initiative, he was told he was “wrong” or “not good enough.” His reality was invalidated.

Now, as an adult, each follow-up task triggered that same old wiring. His amygdala whispered: “If you do this wrong, you’ll be exposed. Better to stall. Better to stay vague. Better to wait until someone else reminds you.”

It wasn’t laziness. It was mystification — still operating decades later.

The Cost of Mystification in Teams

When mystification goes unaddressed, it creates ripple effects in your organization:

• Productivity drains: Repeated mistakes waste time, money, and energy.
• Leader frustration: You spend mental bandwidth rehashing the same corrections.
• Team morale hits: Other members pick up the slack, leading to resentment.
• Stalled growth: A mystified team member cannot step into higher responsibility (e.g., moving from service advisor to lead advisor) because they don’t trust themselves to seize the opportunity.

Left unchecked, mystification quietly erodes your culture. You may even lose top performers who get tired of working alongside someone who won’t step up.

Breaking the Cycle

So, what can you do as a leader? Here are three practical approaches:

1. Name the Pattern (With Compassion)

Don’t just correct the mistake. Help the team member see the pattern. For example:
“I notice you’ve missed this follow-up three weeks in a row. We’ve covered the process, so I don’t think it’s about knowledge. What do you think is making it hard to follow through?”

By naming the pattern, you shift the conversation from compliance to awareness.

2. Replace Vagueness with Specificity

Mystification thrives in vagueness. The antidote is specificity.

• Instead of: “Do better with follow-ups.”
• Say: “By Friday at 3pm, update CRM with the status of all client calls.”

Then ask the team member to repeat it back in their own words. This helps retrain their brain to connect perception → clarity → action.

3. Build a Culture of Trusting Perceptions

Encourage your team to trust their observations and instincts. Celebrate when they take initiative. Reinforce that mistakes are opportunities to learn, not evidence of inadequacy.

The more you normalize clarity and self-trust, the weaker mystification’s grip becomes.

The Leader’s Role

Here’s the truth: if you have a team member who keeps repeating the same mistakes, you have a choice. You can label them as lazy or incapable — or you can look deeper.

Sometimes, what looks like incompetence is really an old family pattern playing out in the workplace. Mystification might not be your fault, but if it’s affecting your team, it is your responsibility to address it.

This doesn’t mean turning your business into a therapy session. It means understanding the psychology behind the values, unmet needs, and behavior, holding firm boundaries, and creating structures that reinforce clarity, accountability, and trust.

Final Thoughts

Mystification is an invisible saboteur. It trains people to doubt themselves, to stall, and to repeat mistakes. But once you understand it, you can spot it — and you can coach your team through it.

When you help a mystified team member move from vagueness to clarity, you’re not just fixing a productivity problem. You’re helping them reclaim their confidence, step into their potential, and show up as the leader they were meant to be.

And as I remind my clients: clarity is the opposite of mystification. Every time you create clarity in your culture, you’re building a team that learns, grows, and seizes the day.

The Best Leaders Hire Fractional Chief Operating Officers

The most effective leaders recognize that sometimes their team members need more than direction — they need in-depth coaching to dissolve mystification and rebuild their confidence from the inside out. That’s where a Fractional Chief Operating Officer can make all the difference.

Here’s how the process works when I partner with leaders to strengthen their teams:

Step One: Discovery Process
I meet one-on-one with the team member to confirm their strengths and areas to strengthen. In most cases, they themselves will identify patterns of inconsistency, vagueness, avoidance, surface-level compliance, and fragile confidence.

Step Two: Values and Behaviors Assessment
The team member completes a detailed assessment that provides objective insight into how they naturally operate — both at their best and under stress.

Step Three: Debrief and Inspirational Tipping Point
Together, we review their assessment results and connect them with the Inspirational Tipping Point Operating System. This framework clearly shows how their strengths can be leveraged and how their blind spots — including mystification — can be addressed. The assessment often highlights the same struggles: inconsistency, vagueness, avoidance, surface-level compliance, and fragile confidence.

Step Four: Coaching and Assignments
The team member is invited into a series of coaching sessions designed to dissolve mystification. With structured assignments and direct accountability, they begin strengthening from the inside out — developing clarity, resilience, and the ability to seize the day.

The outcome? A team member who no longer repeats the same mistakes, but instead shows up consistently, communicates clearly, and grows into the leadership capacity your firm needs.

✅ Call to Action:
If you’re leading a financial advisory team and you’re frustrated by repeated mistakes, let’s have a conversation. Often, the issue isn’t what you think — and with the right process, your team can dissolve mystification and step fully into their potential. Click here to schedule a complimentary conversation.