Leadership team development: build a stronger senior team
A leadership team is not the sum of its leaders. The most common senior-team problem is a group of individually excellent executives who are, collectively, a committee.
Each of them is good at their function. Each of them would score well on any individual assessment. And together they cannot make a decision stick, because the unit of work at this level is not the people — it is what happens between them: how decisions get made, whether disagreement happens in the room or after it, and whether each member is in the meeting as an owner of the whole or as an ambassador for their department.
That is what leadership team development addresses, and it is a different intervention from developing the same people separately. Individual senior work is executive coaching for organizations; the wider organizational picture is leadership development for organizations.
ICF ACC · MBA · Riyadh · Arabic and English
Five symptoms, and what each one actually is
Decisions do not stick. Something is agreed and then quietly renegotiated, or executed differently by two functions. The underlying issue is almost never commitment; it is that the decision was never actually made — the meeting ended and everyone left with a different understanding of what had been decided.
Disagreement happens after the meeting, not in it. The corridor conversation is more honest than the room. This is the single most reliable symptom, and it is usually about safety rather than politeness.
The chief executive is the only integrator. Every cross-functional issue routes through one person, who becomes the bottleneck and the only one who sees the whole. A team that cannot resolve anything laterally is not a team.
Members advocate for their function rather than the enterprise. Predictable positions, negotiated outcomes, and an unspoken agreement not to challenge each other's territory. Individually rational, collectively expensive.
The team is polite and unproductive. Meetings are pleasant, nobody is difficult, and nothing hard is discussed. Frequently mistaken for a healthy team.
The first two usually travel together, and the second is the one to work on: a team that can disagree in the room stops needing the corridor.
The diagnostic
Each member scores this independently, before anyone discusses it. The comparison of the scores is the intervention — the gap between how members see the same team is almost always larger than any individual score.
2 = consistently true, 1 = sometimes, 0 = rarely.
| Score | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | When we leave a meeting, we all have the same understanding of what was decided | |
| 2 | Disagreement happens in the room rather than afterwards | |
| 3 | We resolve cross-functional issues without the chief executive | |
| 4 | Members support decisions that are bad for their function | |
| 5 | I know what each of my colleagues is being judged on this year | |
| 6 | Someone can say "I think that is wrong" without it being an event | |
| 7 | We spend more time on what is ahead than on reporting what happened | |
| 8 | If one of us is struggling, the others know and it is discussable | |
| 9 | We have, in the last quarter, changed a decision because someone argued well | |
| 10 | A new member would be able to tell how decisions actually get made here |
Compare the spread, not the average. A team where scores on the same item range from 0 to 2 has a bigger problem than a team that averages 1 across the board, because it means members are not describing the same organization.
Item 9 is the sharpest. A team that has not changed a decision because of an argument in three months is either extraordinarily well-aligned or not actually deciding anything in the room.
What team development is, and is not
It is: structured work on how the team operates, using the team's real decisions as the material. It happens over months, in the team's own meetings as well as in sessions, and it produces agreements the team holds itself to.
It is not a retreat. Off-sites are useful and they are not development. The relationships improve, everyone returns, and the meeting on Tuesday is the same meeting.
It is not personality profiling. Profiles are a legitimate conversation-starter and a poor intervention. A team that knows each other's types and still cannot decide has learned vocabulary, not behavior.
It is not team-building. The problem at this level is rarely that people do not like each other. It is frequently that they like each other too much to say the difficult thing.
It is not a substitute for a decision about a member. If one person is the problem and everyone knows it, team development becomes an elaborate way of not saying so — and the team will notice.
The operating agreements worksheet
The output of this work is short and specific. A team that produces this and holds to it has done most of what there is to do.
HOW WE DECIDE Who decides what, by type of decision: _______________________________________________________ What "decided" means here, and how we record it: _______________________________________________________ What we do when we cannot agree: _______________________________________________________ HOW WE DISAGREE What we commit to saying in the room: _______________________________________________________ What we will stop doing in the corridor: _______________________________________________________ WHAT WE OWE EACH OTHER What each member needs from the others to succeed: 1. ____________________________________________________ 2. ____________________________________________________ 3. ____________________________________________________ 4. ____________________________________________________ WHAT WE STOP The meeting, report or ritual we are ending: _______________________________________________________ REVIEW Date we re-score the diagnostic: _______________________
Copy the block — nothing to download and no email required.
"What we stop" is not decoration. A set of new agreements added to an unchanged calendar is a set of agreements nobody keeps. Ending one standing meeting is the most reliable evidence that a team has actually changed something.
When not to do this
When the real problem is one person. Deal with that first, separately, and honestly.
When the chief executive will not participate as a member. A leadership team's operating norms are largely set by one person's behavior, and work that excludes them is work on the wrong unit.
When a restructure is coming. Agreements made by a team that is about to change shape do not survive it. Wait, or work with the team that will exist.
When it is being used to avoid a strategic disagreement. Some teams do not have a dynamics problem; they have two people who genuinely disagree about direction and have never had that argued out. That is a strategy conversation, and dressing it as development delays it.
How engagements are structured here
The stated organizational process is Understand → Design → Deliver → Apply → Review, and for a team the Understand stage is longer: individual conversations with each member before anything is worked on together, because the diagnostic comparison depends on candour that a group setting does not produce first time.
Entry configurations range from a single senior leader to work attached to an existing program. Delivery is in Arabic or English, and the team chooses.
On confidentiality, the position stated on the corporate page applies here too: "The organization pays. The session still belongs to the participant." What members say individually is not reported to the sponsor or to each other; what the team agrees together is the team's.
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In the Saudi context
Hierarchy shapes what gets said in the room, and it is not the obstacle it is sometimes described as. Respect for seniority and honest disagreement are compatible; what prevents the second is usually the absence of an agreed mechanism, not the presence of the first. Teams that name how disagreement happens — who speaks when, and how a challenge is phrased — get there faster than teams that are told to be more open.
Mixed senior teams are normal, and different first languages mean that "we agreed" can genuinely mean two things. Recording decisions in writing, in the language the team works in, resolves more disputes than any behavioral intervention.
Where the chairman, owner or board is close to the executive team, the boundary between the team's decisions and the owner's is part of the operating agreement rather than a background condition. Naming it is usually overdue.
In a family business, the real decision may sit outside the formal team. Work that assumes the formal team decides will produce agreements the organization does not follow.
Calendar and pace. Ramadan, Eid and the school year affect senior availability, and team work spread over months has to plan around them rather than through them.
Common questions
How long does this take?
Months rather than days, because the material is the team's real decisions and those arrive on their own schedule.
Can we just do an off-site?
You can, and it will be enjoyable. If you want the Tuesday meeting to change, the work has to touch the Tuesday meeting.
Should the chief executive be in the room?
Yes, as a member. A team's norms are largely a reflection of one person's behavior, and their absence makes the work cosmetic.
What if one member refuses to engage?
Common, and worth understanding rather than overriding. Sometimes it is skepticism about process, and sometimes it is the most accurate read in the room about something nobody has named.
Do you use assessments?
Where they help the conversation, and never as the intervention. A team that learns its profile distribution and changes nothing has bought a vocabulary.
We are a new team.
Then this is cheaper and faster than it will ever be again. Operating agreements made in month two are adopted; the same agreements attempted in year three are a correction.
Can you work with our team and our individual executives?
Yes, and the boundary needs stating at the start: executive coaching for organizations covers how individual confidentiality works alongside team work.
Start with the independent scores
Have each member score the ten items alone, before any discussion. Then compare the spread. Most senior teams discover they are not describing the same organization — and that finding, on its own, changes the next meeting.
A useful next step, matched to this topic
If you want support applying what you just read, start with the option closest to the problem in front of you.
Working on this for a team or organization?
Use the corporate route for leadership, manager development, succession, transition and organization-wide coaching needs.
Saad Al-Wuqayan
Career & Executive Coach — ICF ACC, MBA
Saad Al-Wuqayan coaches professionals and executives in Riyadh. Nearly two decades across engineering, business development, financial leadership as a CFO and government transformation sit behind every session.
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Work on this with a coach
If the decision in front of you is specific, a session is usually faster than another month of reading. Bring the situation as it actually is.