We know it when we see it. Leadership effectiveness on the brink. We hear the sympathetic words—how sad… they used to be so strong… or, they could be great… But they are not, not now.

It is often evident to stakeholders that a leadership team is less than effective. Once observed and named, the leadership team has a choice: take stock, get clear about what’s going wrong, and take steps to correct the path. Or, do nothing, and risk underperformance.

But here’s what’s often invisible to the leadership team itself: executive leadership is a team sport and they’re not actually functioning as a team. They’re a group of talented individuals operating in parallel, sometimes at cross-purposes. The CEO runs strategy. The CFO manages financial risks. The COO handles operations. Each person excels in their domain, but when it comes to the collective work of leadership—setting direction together, making tough tradeoffs, navigating major change—they haven’t developed the ability to operate as one high-performing unit.

Think about your favorite basketball team. The coaches who know how to bring out the best in the team are as celebrated as the players themselves. Players practice until their free throw percentage is consistently over 80%. A savvy assist gets the ball to the open player who can sink a three-pointer. All of this happens in fractions of a second on the court—because everyone knows their collective capabilities and can read the exciting momentary opportunities of the game together.

Now imagine: What if leadership teams could operate with that kind of collaboration? With that kind of field awareness?

Why Leadership Teams Fail to Function as Teams

Early in my career, I watched a promising acquisition fail. A scrappy tech firm with innovative ideas was acquired by a large multinational that wanted the R&D capability and faster design cycles. Both companies had talented leadership, but the combined leadership team never learned to function as a team. They had no process for making strategic decisions together, no shared understanding of how to surface and resolve competing priorities, no way to leverage both organizations’ strengths. Fueling these disparities: different assumptions about planning, target markets, and development lifecycles. Within months, tension replaced optimism. The opportunity to create something that neither could build alone was lost. Within a few years, the division shut down and the building was sold. Market opportunity missed, jobs lost, investments not recovered.

Looking back, I now see what was missing: that leadership team needed what championship sports teams have—dedicated time to develop their purpose and direction, their collective capability, their patterns and processes for operating as one unit under pressure. They needed to work on their leadership—not just in it.

How Leadership Team Coaching Helps

Championship teams don’t just practice individual skills—they practice together, learning to read each other, to anticipate moves, and to respond as one unit. Eventually, teams develop a kind of collective awareness and a capacity to leverage each other’s strengths, both strategically and tactically. Team coaching emerged from a realization that individual approaches such as executive coaching, leadership training, organization development and others all had their place, but the best outcomes resulted from a systemic approach that responded to the team’s specific needs. Piecemeal approaches rarely deliver decisive business results. Leadership teams need dedicated time and expert support to develop their collective capability. With the right support, they can strengthen how they work together, make better decisions, and navigate complex challenges as a team.

We work with leadership teams to help them function more effectively, both collectively and individually. We do it at a pace and with a focus that makes sense to the team. We use a variety of approaches to help leadership teams:

Understand their collective capacity—the strengths, gaps, and patterns that show up when they work together

Build trust and psychological safety—not solely because it feels good, but because genuine collaboration is essential to leadership effectiveness

Strengthen how they engage in critical leadership work—strategic planning, problem solving, decision making, conflict resolution, and navigating change

Develop real-time awareness—like that basketball team, learning to read each other and the situation so they can respond with agility

We pay attention to how leadership teams work together, and because we know these processes inside and out, we can help each team develop the capacity to work on their leadership behaviors and skills, while they are simultaneously working on the business.

What Changes When Leadership Teams Work Well

When leadership teams function as true teams—aligned on direction, clear about how they make decisions together, able to surface and resolve tensions productively—organizations become places where people genuinely want to work. Strategy gets executed more effectively because the top team is aligned. Change happens more smoothly because leadership speaks with one voice. Trust cascades down through the organization. And as a result, the organization can flourish.

We believe that great organizations begin with leadership teams that operate as high-performing, high-value-creating units. Great leadership teams work on the business, often in the business, and importantly, on the team itself.

When I describe what I do in casual conversation, the typical response is: “We need you in my organization—you can’t always see the need, but the workforce feels it.”

If you’re seeing signs that your leadership team could be more effective—if there’s untapped potential, undesirable turnover, significant change in the wind, unproductive conflict, or simply a sense that things could be better—let’s talk.