Everyone nods. Nothing moves.

In meetings, people agree. Afterwards, progress stalls. Concerns surface in corridors, not the room. Promises drift.

If you lead teams in local government, you know this pattern.

That's polite resistance. A quiet, self-protective force that slows delivery.

Once you have language for the pattern, you can see it happening rather than just sensing something's off.

The Polite Resistance Index is a five-minute reflection tool. It shows you where you are fuelling it.

The Five Conditions

Five conditions. Each one can build momentum or create friction.

• Speak Without Fear – Concerns raised openly, not in corridors
• Shared Ownership – Responsibility taken, not pushed back
• Confident Action – People act without waiting for permission
• Follow Through – Promises turn into delivery
• Keep the Rhythm – Progress sustains when things get hard

They work on each other. Weaken one and the others get harder to hold. Speak Without Fear is where I'd start – if people won't say what they think, everything after it is guesswork – but there's no fixed order to this.

The PRI shows you which one is dragging.

This is how I see it. You might see it differently.

What You Get

What You Get

• Where it's dragging: which condition is slowing the wheel, based on how you answered
• A reflection written from your answers: what you said, read back to you, alongside your reading of the team
• Three things to try this week: drawn from your actual answers, not a standard list

The reflection is written by AI from your specific responses. Nothing is stored against your name. The assessment is anonymous.