4. Are leaders tired of psychological safety?

If you are a senior leader, there’s a reasonable chance that you’ve heard the phrase psychological safety, maybe more times than you can count. And while it explains an awful lot, it’s still hard to know how that actually helps.

Well that kind of fatigue is legitimate. Because knowing that psychological safety matters is not the same as knowing HOW to build it, without exposing yourself in ways that feel genuinely risky.

Google’s project Aristotle, which studied 180 teams, identified it as the single most important condition for team effectiveness. The evidence is overwhelming. So the real question is not whether it matters. It’s how you get there from where you are.

And if you want, you can build on Project Aristotle in a safe way.

With your current colleagues, talk about your own experiences elsewhere, outside your current team. When did you feel safe as part of a team somewhere else? And when didn’t you feel safe? And the objective is not to change anything, just to start sharing those experiences and having that kind of conversation.

3. Are there any signs of low safety in your team?

There are behaviours that show up in senior leadership teams that are easy to misread: someone who over-prepares for every meeting; a colleague who has become quietly detached, not quite present in the room; an anxiety that sits just under the surface, showing up as irritability or excessive caution.

These aren’t personality quirks or performance issues, they’re signals. And what they’re often signalling is that someone in the team doesn’t feel safe enough for people to show up as they really are. And a CEO might be observing these behaviours in their team or experiencing them personally without ever having connected them to what’s actually going on underneath.

So to explore this yourself, practise looking for what’s underneath those behaviours. For example, if someone is being too detached or too careful, what are they protecting themselves from?

2. Your team’s real business isn’t being done as a team

The real conversations in most senior leadership teams aren’t happening in the meeting. They’re happening in one-to-one calls beforehand, in corridor exchanges afterwards, in messages sent that evening. And everyone in the team and beyond knows it

That matters because those conversations, however honest and necessary they feel, can’t be worked with collectively. They fragment the team and the rest of the organisation along fault lines that never get directly addressed.

And there’s a personal cost too. Sustaining the performance in that leadership room day after day, while the real dialogue happens everywhere else is quietly exhausting.

If you want to explore this some more, start with your own examples. When have you short-circuited what should really have been a whole team conversation for the sake of speed, convenience, or brevity?

1. Your team looks functional; but is it all just an act?

Many senior leadership teams look functional from the outside. Meetings happen. Decisions get made. People are professionally courteous with each other, but that’s often exactly what it is. Just an act, a performance. And the gap between the performance and the reality underneath it is costing the organisation more than most people realise.

When the team space becomes performative, the rest of the organisation reads it and reads it accurately. The misalignment that nobody’s naming in the room doesn’t stay in that room, it travels. And what looks like a well-functioning leadership team at the top can be quietly generating confusion, mixed messages, and lost momentum all the way down.

You can explore this in one-to-one conversations with colleagues and staff. Take one real live project and ask people their views, especially about what they believe it’s designed to achieve. Any misalignment or lack of clarity often shows up very quickly here.

Why Leadership Team Problems Quickly Become Organisational Problems

We know that the senior leadership team shapes the clarity and priorities that everyone else will adopt. So why does what starts in that room, with those senior leaders, travel so quickly across the organisation? Why do problems at the top rarely stay at the top? And what should you do about that?

In this article and the video that accompanies it, I explore why problems in the senior leadership team tend to spread so quickly, why senior teams are often surprised by that, and what leaders can do to spot the effects earlier.

Why don’t problems in the leadership team stay contained at the top?

The senior leadership team has such a disproportionate influence. People take their cues from their leaders: what they see them doing, and what they hear them saying.

Any small top team issues then get amplified as they move through the system. Uncertainty at the top creates a lot of uncertainty as it spreads below.

How do leadership team problems spread through the organisation?

This is very interesting. Boston Consulting Group did a survey a few years back called When Leaders Say They Are Aligned, but They Aren’t. They looked at 3,000 senior leaders. What they found was that those leaders often leave having made a decision, but with very different takes on what was actually agreed.

When Leaders Say They Are Aligned—But Aren’t

https://www.bcg.com/publications/2021/when-leadership-say-they-are-aligned-but-company-leaders-are-not

So the messages to their teams become inconsistent.

What feels settled in the room often turns out not to be settled at all.

Why are senior leadership teams often surprised by how quickly those problems grow?

I think the surprise comes from the fact that the spread of those problems is indirect at first. People below the senior leadership team are responding to that lack of clarity, or that uncertainty about what was actually agreed. And they compensate for that. They fill in the gaps with their own priorities, or their own views of what should have been agreed.

By the time the effect of all of this becomes obvious, it is already embedded more widely across the organisation.

Another reason senior leadership teams are often surprised by how quickly those problems have grown is that they continually underestimate just how visible they are. Everybody else’s eyes are on that senior leadership team.

So what can leaders do about this?

Take one real, live project or priority, and go and listen a bit to what people around the organisation are saying about it.

Explore questions like these:

  • Do people seem to know what the priority is?
  • Do they know what success would look like?
  • How well do they feel able to lean into that priority?

If the answers you are getting back are vague, mixed, or hesitant, that tells you something about how well aligned your senior leadership team is. It may be that they have left the room thinking they agreed on something, but as that BCG survey suggests, it was not that clear after all.

About me

I’m Nick Robinson. I work with senior leadership teams who sense they’re not yet working well enough together.

My programme The Shift is a development experience that helps leadership teams strengthen trust, alignment and how they function together, so the organisation benefits from clearer decisions, stronger collective leadership and better overall performance.

What Happens When the Senior Leadership Team Isn’t Aligned?

We’ve already looked at how a lack of alignment in the senior team rarely stays contained at the top. Even when the disagreements amongst that senior team are subtle, the effects tend to spread very quickly through the organisation.

In this article and the video that accompanies it, I explore what tends to happen when the senior leadership team is not well aligned, and what leaders can do to spot the effects before they spread more widely.

So what does happen? And more importantly, what should you do about it?

What are the first signs that a senior leadership team isn’t well aligned?

One of the first signs is that those leaders appear to agree when they’re together in the room, but then pull in different directions afterwards. Mixed messages begin to appear. The priorities that the rest of the organisation thought had been agreed start to feel much less clear.

Those unresolved differences sit underneath what, on the surface, look like very polite conversations. You may start to see a return to silo working. And the tension all of this creates is often visible in very small ways, before anybody names it directly.

How does a lack of alignment in the leadership team show up across the organisation?

Different parts of the organisation start getting different messages, so they begin to pull against each other. People become much less sure about what really matters.

And the decisions that flow from the big priorities get slower. They get revisited again and again. People’s uncertainty and caution increase.

Why can even small misalignments at the top create big problems elsewhere?

Those small differences at the top tend to become amplified as they move through the organisation. People fill in gaps with assumptions when they know their leaders are not really aligned, or when they are simply not clear about what the priorities are.

So that uncertainty at the top often turns into friction, duplication, and silo behaviour elsewhere. What looks minor in the senior leadership team can mean slower execution, weaker decisions elsewhere in the organisation, and missed opportunities too, because people are just not moving fast enough.

It starts to affect performance pretty quickly.

What should leaders do to check whether those negative impacts are happening in their business?

One practical step you can take is this.

Experiment with a real, live priority. Take a little time to explore how aligned your senior leadership team is around that priority. Ask yourselves questions like:

  • What will this priority look like when it is successful?
  • Are we all working towards the same kind of outcome?
  • What are each of us concerned about here?

If those questions reveal any gaps in your alignment, that is useful information. It gives you a chance to deal with those gaps before they widen outside the room, so that you are not papering over the cracks.

About me

I’m Nick Robinson. I work with senior leadership teams who sense they’re not yet working well enough together.

My programme The Shift is a development experience that helps leadership teams strengthen trust, alignment and how they function together, so the organisation benefits from clearer decisions, stronger collective leadership and better overall performance.

Why the Condition of the Leadership Team Affects the Whole Organisation

How well the leadership team is functioning, and how tightly aligned those people are as a team, matters far beyond the team itself. Senior leaders are often much more visible than they realise, and the way they work together really sets the tone across the whole organisation.

In the article and video in this post, I explore how that has big impacts on how people feel about their work, and on the outcomes they can produce for the business.

Why does the way a leadership team works together matter so much for the rest of the organisation?

People take their cues from leadership behaviour. We know this from common sense, and we also know it from research. For example, the Culture 500 survey analysed around a million and a half employee reviews. The overwhelming finding was this:

Culture is shaped by what leaders do, not what they say, or what they tell you to do.

Sull, D., Sull, C., & Zweig, B. (2019). The Culture 500. MIT Sloan Management Review & Glassdoor.

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/projects/culture-500-introducing-the-2020-culture-champions

Alongside that, leadership teams are much more visible than they realise. One of my clients said to me:

“Nick, it’s like being in a giant goldfish bowl. Everybody sees everything you do, they hear everything you say.”

As a member of a leadership team, you cannot not be a visible role model. There is a massive link between how your leadership team behaves, and the culture that forms around and beneath it in the rest of your business.

What signals do people across the organisation pick up from the senior team?

The first signal people really pick up on is alignment:

  • Are those leaders all pulling together in one direction?
  • Or are they pulling in different directions?

Then there is behaviour:

  • How are those leaders in meetings?
  • Are they open with each other?
  • Do they challenge in a way that is constructive?
  • Do they give respect without avoiding conflict?

People also notice the tone and energy of senior leadership team members, as much as the formal decisions they make.

What tends to happen when the senior leadership team is well aligned?

When the leadership team is really well aligned, and the members of it are tight with each other, a clarity comes across. The members understand the direction they have set, they understand the priorities they have agreed, and that comes across clearly to everybody else in the organisation.

There is also a kind of speed and quality:

  • Decisions are made faster
  • They move into action more cleanly
  • Confidence increases
  • Members of the senior leadership team act without second-guessing each other

A simple question to ask

If you are a leader who wants to deal with these issues, a simple thing to ask yourself is this:

If people across the organisation copied the way this leadership team works together, what kind of culture would that create?

About me

I’m Nick Robinson. I work with senior leadership teams who sense they’re not yet working well enough together.

My programme The Shift is a development experience that helps leadership teams strengthen trust, alignment and how they function together, so the organisation benefits from clearer decisions, stronger collective leadership and better overall performance.

Why leadership teams work on the business but not on their own team

If there was one thing that separates okay leadership teams from great ones, it is the decision to turn at least part of their attention onto how well they perform together as a team.

But that is actually relatively rare.

Research from McKinsey & Company found that only about one in five senior executives believes their leadership team is truly high-performing. Most leadership teams spend their time running the business rather than improving how they work together.

So why does that happen?

In the video above and the overview article below, I explore what happens.

Leadership teams are trained to focus outward

Leadership teams are under huge pressure to run the organisation.

Because of that, the team itself almost never appears on the agenda.

Leaders become very skilled at responding to operational pressure:

  • Deadlines that keep coming week after week

  • Changes in the marketplace

  • New technologies

  • Regulatory changes

These are familiar problems. Leaders know how to respond to them.

Over time, the team’s identity becomes tied to that work.

The leadership team sees itself as the group that runs and fixes the business.

Turning the focus onto the team itself feels like something quite different.

Examining how the team functions as a group of people can feel much more personal.

Why looking at the team feels uncomfortable

For many leadership teams, examining how they work together touches sensitive territory.

A lot of this comes down to the peer relationships inside the team.

When a team begins to examine what might be holding it back, several things are suddenly at stake:

  • Hierarchies of authority

  • Differences in expertise

  • Length of service

  • Informal influence

Everyone in the room is aware of those hierarchies.

And alongside them sit other human factors:

  • Personal reputations

  • Professional pride

  • Ego

We all want to be seen well by our peers.

Looking closely at how the team functions can feel like it puts those things at risk.

Which is why many teams continue focusing on the external work of the organisation rather than examining themselves.

What becomes possible when a team turns inward

When a leadership team does turn some of its attention onto itself, a lot becomes possible.

First, it becomes possible to have much more honest conversations.

It also becomes possible to make better decisions:

  • Decisions that are faster and sharper

  • Decisions that do not unravel afterwards

  • Decisions that include a wider range of perspectives

Trust inside the team can strengthen significantly.

And the wider organisation begins to see something important:

A leadership team that is clearly aligned and working together.

That clarity at the top has a powerful impact on both performance and satisfaction across the organisation.

About me

I’m Nick Robinson. I work with senior leadership teams who sense they’re not yet working well enough together.

My programme The Shift is a development experience that helps leadership teams strengthen trust, alignment and how they function together, so the organisation benefits from clearer decisions, stronger collective leadership and better overall performance.

Why leadership teams know something is holding them back, but don’t say it

Many leadership teams sense that something is holding them back from being at their best, long before anyone names it.

And this is surprisingly common.

Leadership teams are often very perceptive about what is happening around them. But the moment of naming it can feel risky.

The signals leaders notice first

Most leaders notice patterns.

They see tension showing up in small ways:

  • A shortness in how colleagues treat each other

  • A sense that someone else is to blame when things are not going right

  • Repeated frustrations in meetings

Often those frustrations look like this:

  • People talking over each other

  • People speaking at length without really saying what they mean

  • People not speaking up at all

You find yourself listening to a long sentence and wondering what the person is actually trying to say.

Another common signal is that decisions take much longer than they should.

Decisions that could be sharp and clear instead drift on and on, getting revisited again and again.

Why teams don’t name the problem

So if leadership teams can sense that something is not quite right, why does it often go unspoken?

Several things tend to hold people back.

1. Fear of personal conflict

This is usually the biggest factor.

Teams often think:

“We are getting by. At least we are not at each other’s throats.”

The fear of opening a difficult conversation about how people relate to each other can stop leaders from naming what is not working.

2. Respect for colleagues

There is often a great deal of respect within leadership teams.

People have worked together for years. They know each other’s experience and expertise.

And sometimes that respect makes people reluctant to raise concerns about the way the team is functioning.

3. Time pressure

Leadership teams are busy.

When the agenda is already full of operational decisions, it can feel difficult to pause and talk about how the team itself is working.

4. A fear of destabilising things

There is often a quiet concern in the background:

“Things are functioning. What happens if we open this up?”

That caution can keep teams from naming what they are already sensing.

What happens if it goes unspoken

When a leadership team senses something is holding them back but never names it, the tension does not disappear.

It quietly grows.

Those small frustrations begin to accumulate:

  • Little irritations turn into bigger ones

  • Meetings start to feel tense before they even begin

  • Tough decisions feel like potential flashpoints

Over time, certain behaviours can become normal:

  • Tiptoeing around issues

  • Avoiding difficult conversations

  • People feeling unable to speak their minds

And the result is simple.

Performance starts to drop.

The turning point

The strange thing is that simply naming what is happening can often become the turning point.

Once the patterns are spoken out loud, leadership teams can begin the journey back towards working together at their best.

About me

I’m Nick Robinson. I work with senior leadership teams who sense they’re not yet working well enough together.

My programme The Shift is a development experience that helps leadership teams strengthen trust, alignment and how they function together, so the organisation benefits from clearer decisions, stronger collective leadership and better overall performance.

How to tell when a leadership team isn’t firing on all cylinders

How can you tell when a leadership team isn’t firing on all cylinders?

We know that leadership teams have a huge impact on the success of their organisation. Research from Bain & Companyshows that organisations with highly effective leadership teams are six times more likely to be top performers in their industry.

The challenge is that you usually only see that after the leadership team has been effective.

So what are the signs that something isn’t quite right? In the video above and the article below, I explore how to tell when your leadership team isn’t quite firing on all cylinders – yet.

The early signals are often subtle

Very often the first signs are not dramatic.

They show up in the tone and texture of conversations.

Meetings remain polite. People are pleasant with each other. But something feels slightly constrained.

Conversations feel guarded, as though people are not quite saying what is really on their mind.

Another signal is that there are fewer disagreements than there should be.

Disagreement, when it is handled well, is extremely useful. It surfaces differences of opinion and extends the range of thinking in the room. Without it, teams drift into group-think.

But when a leadership team starts avoiding disagreement, what you often see instead is this:

  • People speaking more carefully than honestly

  • Team members walking on eggshells

  • Conversations moving quickly past anything awkward

It is as though there is an unspoken agreement in the room:
“We are not opening that can of worms.”

Behaviours that begin to appear

When a team is not working well together, certain patterns start to show up.

One of the clearest signs is that decisions begin to drift.

Something that appeared to be agreed in the meeting slowly unravels afterwards. The decision gets revisited outside the room.

You start hearing conversations like:

“Did we really just agree on that?”

These corridor conversations begin happening everywhere.

At the same time, other behaviours begin to emerge:

  • People start protecting their own departments

  • Teams revert quietly to silo thinking

  • Individuals become cautious about committing resources

  • The room waits to see which way the leader is going to go

Instead of shared leadership, everyone begins watching the leader for signals.

Why these signals matter

These signals matter because the rest of the organisation is constantly reading the leadership team.

Uncertainty at the top spreads very quickly.

When the leadership team is not fully aligned, the organisation experiences:

  • Mixed signals

  • Confusion about priorities

  • Hesitation about where to put effort and energy

Small tensions in the leadership team can quickly become structural problems throughout the organisation.

Which is why these early signals are worth paying attention to.

Because if the leadership team is not fully aligned, even in the room, the organisation will feel that very quickly.

About me

I’m Nick Robinson. I work with senior leadership teams who sense they’re not yet working well enough together.

My programme The Shift is a development experience that helps leadership teams strengthen trust, alignment and how they function together, so the organisation benefits from clearer decisions, stronger collective leadership and better overall performance.