If you lead a senior team, you may have noticed moments where things simply do not click the way they should.
Meetings take longer than expected, decisions seem to circle back for further discussion, or different leaders begin to pull the organisation in slightly different directions.
These situations are more common than many leaders realise. One analysis found that executives believe they are around 82% aligned with their company’s strategy, yet the actual level of alignment is closer to just 23%, highlighting a significant gap between perception and reality.
In many cases, these gaps come down to leadership team dynamics.
In this article, I’ll explore why leadership teams sometimes struggle to click and how understanding these dynamics may help leaders work together more effectively.
Over the past decade, James Akin-Smith has worked with leadership teams across a range of organisations, profiling around 1,000 individuals using the Talent Dynamics framework.
If you’d like to explore how this could support your leadership team, you’re welcome to get in touch to discuss the workshop.
Table of contents
- Why leadership team dynamics matter more than most leaders realise
- What leadership team conflict often looks like
- Why leadership teams fail to work as a cohesive group
- Understanding leadership team dynamics through talent profiles
- How the Talent Dynamics Workshop helps leadership teams gain clarity
- When leadership teams understand their differences
- Take the Talent Dynamics Workshop to strengthen your leadership team
Why leadership team dynamics matter more than most leaders realise
Gallup found that managers account for around 70% of the variance in employee engagement, showing just how strongly leadership dynamics affect the wider organisation.
Many leadership teams look strong on paper. The individuals involved are experienced, capable, and successful in their own areas of the business.
Yet despite this, organisations often find that decisions take longer than expected, priorities drift, or alignment becomes harder to maintain as the business grows.
The issue is not capability or effort. It is the leadership team dynamics, the way leaders interact, communicate, and make decisions together. These dynamics often shape how effectively an executive team operates.
Research highlights just how influential leadership behaviour can be. Gallup found that managers account for around 70% of the variance in employee engagement, showing just how strongly leadership dynamics affect the wider organisation.
What leadership team conflict often looks like
When leadership team dynamics are not working well, the symptoms are often subtle at first. Meetings may feel less productive, discussions revisit the same issues, and nothing seems to get done.
Over time, these patterns can affect how the leadership team sets direction and communicates priorities across the organisation. Leaders may start to recognise several common signs.
Strategic decisions take longer
Leadership teams are responsible for setting direction and making key decisions about the business’s future. When executive team dynamics are strained, however, reaching an agreement may take longer than expected.
Discussions can return to the same points repeatedly, with leaders approaching problems from different perspectives but struggling to align on a path forward. As a result, initiatives may slow, and the organisation may lose momentum.
Different priorities begin to emerge
Each member of a leadership team represents a different part of the business. Finance leaders may focus on financial control, sales leaders on growth, and operations leaders on efficiency.
When leadership alignment is not clear, these perspectives can begin to pull in different directions. Instead of reinforcing a shared strategy, departmental priorities may compete for attention, making progress harder to coordinate.
Communication becomes more cautious
In some leadership teams, conversations gradually become more guarded. Leaders may hesitate to challenge ideas openly or avoid raising concerns during discussions.
When this happens, important viewpoints can remain unspoken. Groups where people feel comfortable speaking openly tend to make better decisions and adapt more effectively to change.
Tension begins to appear
As misalignment grows, tension can begin to surface in leadership meetings. Frustration may build when conversations circle back to the same issues or when decisions appear to favour one area of the business over another.
These situations rarely arise because leaders lack capability. More often, they reflect a leadership team that has not yet developed a clear understanding of how different leaders think, communicate, and approach decisions.
Why leadership teams fail to work as a cohesive group
Fewer than 25% of executives feel their organisations are aligned on strategy and priorities, which can significantly affect how effectively organisations make decisions and execute strategy.
Many organisations assume that building a strong leadership team simply means hiring capable people. In reality, leadership teams often struggle for a different reason.
They bring together individuals with very different ways of thinking and communicating. These differences can create friction if they are not clearly understood.
Some of the most common reasons leadership teams struggle to click include:
- Different approaches to decision-making
Some leaders prefer to analyse information carefully before making a decision, while others are comfortable moving quickly and adjusting along the way. When these approaches collide, discussions may take longer, and decisions may feel harder to reach.
- Unclear roles and leadership responsibilities
When it is not clear where each leader’s authority begins and ends, decisions can overlap or stall. Two leaders may try to solve the same problem, while other important areas receive less attention.
- Competing priorities across the organisation
Each executive is responsible for a different function of the business. Finance, operations, sales, and marketing leaders may all approach decisions from their own perspective. Without strong alignment on leadership, these priorities can begin to compete rather than support the organisation’s wider goals.
- Limited visibility into how individuals contribute to the team
Leadership teams often lack a clear understanding of how each person naturally adds value. Some leaders generate ideas, others analyse risks, and others focus on execution. When these strengths are not recognised, contributions can be misunderstood or undervalued.
Fewer than 25% of executives feel their organisations are aligned on strategy and priorities, which can significantly affect how effectively organisations make decisions and execute strategy.
Without a shared understanding of how each leader works and contributes, even highly capable executives may struggle to operate as a cohesive group. What appears to be leadership team conflict is often the result of these underlying differences.
Understanding leadership team dynamics through talent profiles
One of the most useful ways leadership teams begin to improve alignment is by gaining clearer insight into how each person naturally approaches work.
Over the years, I’ve worked with many senior teams who initially believed their challenges were caused by strategy, structure, or communication issues.
In reality, the underlying challenge was often much simpler: the leaders involved approached problems in fundamentally different ways.
To explore these differences, I often use the Talent Dynamics profiling framework. Since becoming an accredited practitioner in 2015, I’ve profiled around 1,000 individuals, working with leadership teams to help them better understand how they think, communicate, and contribute within a group.
What the Talent Dynamics Workshop involves
Each leader completes a short assessment that produces a radar chart, highlighting their natural strengths across different areas of thinking and contribution.
When leadership teams review these profiles together, it often provides a new perspective on how the group operates. Leaders often begin to see:
- Why some leaders naturally focus on identifying opportunities and generating new ideas for growth.
- Why others prefer analysing information or evaluating risks before decisions are made.
- Why people may be drawn to building systems and structures that support execution.
- Why others are naturally motivated to move ideas forward and drive results.
With this insight, differences that once created friction can begin to make far more sense within the context of the team.
How the Talent Dynamics Workshop helps leadership teams gain clarity
During the workshop, leaders review their radar charts and discuss how their distinct strengths influence how the team communicates, debates ideas, and approaches important decisions.
Rather than focusing only on theory, the workshop centres around a real business challenge chosen by the CEO, MD or team leader as a bare minimum. This allows leaders to see how different thinking styles influence strategy discussions, problem-solving, and decision-making in practice.
Working through this exercise often helps leadership teams:
- Understand how each person naturally contributes to discussions.
- Recognise where the team may have overlapping strengths or capability gaps.
- Approach strategic decisions with a clearer structure.
- Navigate disagreements more constructively.
By stepping back and examining these dynamics together, leadership teams often gain a clearer understanding of how they operate and how they can work together more effectively.
When leadership teams understand their differences
Research from McKinsey shows that teams with above-average trust are 3.3 times more efficient and 5.1 times more likely to achieve results than teams where trust is low.
When leadership teams develop a clearer understanding of how individuals naturally contribute, the way the group works together often begins to shift.
Conversations tend to become more constructive because leaders recognise that different perspectives are part of effective decision-making rather than signs of disagreement.
This understanding can have a measurable impact on team performance. Research from McKinsey shows that teams with above-average trust are 3.3 times more efficient and 5.1 times more likely to achieve results than teams where trust is low.
Communication plays an equally important role. The same research found that teams with strong decision-making are 2.8 times more innovative.
When leaders understand how each person approaches problems and contributes to discussions, these benefits become far more achievable.
Differences that once created tension can become a source of balance within the team, helping leaders challenge ideas, make clearer decisions, and maintain stronger leadership alignment.
Take the Talent Dynamics Workshop to strengthen your leadership team
Many leadership teams invest significant effort in improving communication, refining strategy, and strengthening collaboration. Yet challenges around alignment or decision-making can still persist.
The Team Dynamics Workshop offers leadership teams a structured opportunity to step back and examine the factors shaping how the group works together.
By reviewing their Talent Dynamics profiles and radar charts, leaders can see how different approaches to thinking, communication, and problem-solving influence the way the group operates.
If you’d like to explore how this process could support your leadership team, feel free to get in touch to discuss the Team Dynamics Workshop.
