A while ago, I was working with a leadership team where dysfunction was obvious to everyone. And maybe this will resonate with you: If your leadership team is broken, it didn’t just happen to you, because you are a part of it.
Often it can feel like this: Your regular leadership meetings are political theater (or are postponed).Decisions get revisited in hallways. Feedback is not given openly. People focus on their own goals instead of the collective ones needed.
Worse, everyone knows things are not working, but are not really addressing it.
But dysfunction in any team isn’t a “when we have time” problem. Because dysfunction doesn’t wait politely in line behind your priorities. It compounds.
And while you seem to keep moving fast on paper, the cracks deepen. Alignment slips. Trust erodes. Good people disengage. The organization actually slows down – not because of the market or the strategy, but because the top team can’t operate as one.
If your executive table is marked by avoidance, competition, or passive-aggression, it’s not a culture problem – it’s a leadership signal.
And the real work isn’t fixing the people “out there.”
It’s aligning the people up here.
It’s naming what’s not working, even when you’ve contributed to it.
It’s having the conversation you’ve been avoiding because it’s messy.
It’s modeling the behavior you expect from everyone else.
If it’s not healthy at the top, it’s chaos everywhere else.
So if this feels familiar, ask yourself: What are you allowing, avoiding, or excusing that’s keeping this in place?