Diving Deep: A Leader’s Guide to Uncovering the Health of Your Leadership Team

As leaders, we’re always aiming for high performance. We set ambitious goals, drive our teams hard, and push for results. But there’s a critical factor we often overlook: the health of our leadership team. If that team isn’t healthy, the entire organization suffers. Poor dynamics within a senior team can stall strategy execution, lower morale, and even end a leader’s tenure.

Every senior leadership team has its own dynamics. But when you look closely, you’ll notice common patterns. Some of these patterns help teams thrive, while others pull them down.

Individual Ambitions Over Organizational Success

It’s no surprise that highly ambitious people make it to senior leadership roles. Ambition drives them to excel, to push their ideas forward, to claim resources, or to secure promotions. This competitive spirit is necessary for innovation and results. But if left unchecked, it can become toxic. Meetings turn into battlegrounds where personal agendas overshadow the organization’s goals.

Watch out for signs of unhealthy competition. Team members may start approaching the organization’s leader one-on-one to discuss issues that should be handled in team meetings. Or they may negotiate among themselves and engage in power struggles outside of meetings. These behaviors prevent open discussion and debate, which are essential for making key decisions.

The Trap of Mediocracy and Passivity

On the flip side of the coin is a different kind of dysfunction — mediocracy and passivity. This is where team members avoid conflict in favor of a misguided form of cooperation. Cooperation is vital to a healthy team, but it shouldn’t mean avoiding healthy debates. When teams sacrifice honest, robust discussions for a facade of harmony, performance suffers.

When harmony is the goal at all costs, meetings turn into echo chambers. Ideas go unchallenged, and decisions are made without deep evaluation. Teams like these miss opportunities for innovation and growth. They become trapped in an atmosphere of ineffectual niceness, where everyone agrees just to keep the peace.

A Balance of Competition and Collaboration

Sometimes, a leadership team fails on both counts — neither competing nor collaborating effectively. Team members lack the drive to boost their unit’s performance, and there’s little spirit of teamwork. They end up working in silos, which leads to duplicated efforts, wasted resources, and missed opportunities.

What Should a Leader Do?

The solution starts with clarity. A leader must have a clear vision and purpose. This includes setting clear expectations, establishing behavioral norms, and holding everyone accountable.

Most businesses have straightforward goals: increase revenue, reduce costs. Yet when you ask team members for ideas, you might get a long list. How do you know what’s most important? What needs attention now? Who can deliver on it?

The answer lies in “diving deep.” Think about the top-performing companies in the world. They didn’t reach the top by chance. They had leaders who weren’t afraid to dive deep. These leaders did not settle for comfortable meetings or flashy presentations. They sought answers from the ground up. They understood that true insights come from going beyond the surface.

Getting to the Root Cause

When it comes to issues like competitive or passive behavior, answers aren’t always obvious. Leaders may show harmony and support each other in meetings. They might agree on plans and leave the room aligned. But when you check back in six months, the results may not be there. Why? Because the real problems are hidden below the surface.

To uncover them, you must dig deeper. Go beyond the leadership team. Meet with the next layer of leaders. Go further down to the individuals who are executing the work. Skip the large town halls where people don’t speak openly. Instead, have one-on-one meetings. Ask for actual data, not opinions. Those doing the work have the most valuable insights.

Driving Change to the Bottom

It’s not enough to hold only the top leaders accountable. If you do, you risk ending up in a “round-robin of next ’s” — constantly switching leaders without making real progress. If you want to win, you must drive change all the way to the bottom of the organization.

A senior leader can’t focus on everything. Start by picking the top five priorities. Focus on these, and you’ll begin to shift the culture. You’ll learn who to trust, for what, and why. Then, move on to the next set of priorities. In a few years, you will have transformed the culture.

Making Sustainable Decisions

By diving deep, you gain a true understanding of the health of your leadership team. You learn where the problems are and how to fix them. And when it’s time to make changes at the top, you make decisions that stick. These are decisions that work for the long term, not just the short term.

The Deep Dive is Non-Negotiable

In pursuit of strong performance, don’t overlook the health of your leadership team. To make real, lasting change, you must dive deep. It’s the only way to uncover hidden dynamics, drive true accountability, and build a team that delivers results. Only then can you ensure not just survival, but true, sustained success.

Until next time, Cheers,

Amit