🔥 Build and Maintain a Cohesive Leadership Team

According to Patrick Lencioni’s The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, the very first discipline of building a healthy, world-class organization is to build and maintain a cohesive leadership team. In fact, Lencioni calls this “the most critical of the four disciplines because it enables the other three.” When the executive team is united and healthy, they set the tone for the entire organization, creating clarity and alignment that drive success.

🤝 Trust is the Foundation
Leaders who genuinely trust one another can engage in open, honest dialogue and won’t shy away from healthy conflict. A cohesive team is marked by an absence of politics, unnecessary anxiety, and wasted energy. Instead of gossip or infighting, these leaders confront issues head-on and solve problems together.

💡 Signs of a Cohesive Leadership Team:
🤝 High Trust & Vulnerability: Team members admit mistakes and weaknesses without fear.
🔥 Constructive Conflict: Leaders debate passionately and address disagreements directly.
🚀 Unified Commitment: Once a decision is made, everyone aligns behind it fully.
🎯 Mutual Accountability: Peers hold each other accountable for behaviors and results.
🌍 Focus on Collective Results: The team prioritizes the organization’s goals over silos or ego.

⚔️ Cohesion vs. Fracture
From my own experience in the military, I’ve seen firsthand how a cohesive leadership team (or lack thereof) can make or break an organization. In one unit, we had an exceptionally tight-knit leadership team that created stability and clarity. In another, a fractured and constantly divided leadership team led to confusion, low morale, and poor performance. When the leaders aren’t on the same page, the whole mission suffers.

🎯 Your Turn
On a scale of 1 to 10, how is your leadership team doing?