When tension rises in a leadership team, most team members read it as a sign something has gone wrong. A relationship is strained. A meeting has gone off the rails. There’s a problem to be fixed.

Effort is our greatest differentiator. Not talent. Not expertise. Not experience. Effort. Capability is something we have. Effort is something we choose.

I was recently speaking to a group of CEOs and was asked a question every executive team needs to ask: “How do we manage each other’s strengths and weaknesses to get the best out of the leadership team, especially when some leaders do not acknowledge their weaknesses?”

The future of leadership depends less on traditional structure and more on how organisations create a teaming system to coordinate action.

Most teams I work with do not flounder because they lack strategy, talent or effort. They fail because they are misaligned.

One of the distinguishing attributes of highly effective leadership teams is their capacity to tolerate the tensions in difference.  

The most significant shift I observe in teams that move from floundering to flourishing is this: They stop operating as a collection of executives and align to a shared purpose.

I’m pleased to share the State of Teams 2026 white paper which includes the results of a decade analysing executive teams in action.

When tension rises and conflict feels inevitable, notice what often happens. Someone (or you) suggests: “Let’s agree to disagree.”

In my work with executive teams, I consistently observe leaders showing up in one of two ways: those who strive to be interesting, and those who choose to be interested.

Difficult conversations are not difficult because of the content of the conversation but because of the context of the conversation.

Someone with a low level of self-awareness cannot operate as if they were self-aware. Not all situations require a higher level of consciousness. For example, when facing danger, our instincts keep us alive.