How To Fix Executive Team Performance And Accountability

Forbes

a day ago

Even strong executive teams can struggle with creating shared accountability for enterprise results. getty
Want to have a high-performing executive team? It's easy to assume that when you bring together smart, capable executives, performance will naturally follow. But in practice, the real barriers to executive team performance aren't about intelligence, strategy, or even trust. They're about a much deeper level of dynamics—unspoken tensions, competing priorities, and the uncomfortable truth that many senior leadership teams never learn how to hold themselves accountable to each other.
Here's what's really going on behind the polished slides and well-run meetings—and what teams need to do differently if they want to drive real enterprise value.
Most leadership teams know accountability is important. The problem? We tell teams to hold each other accountable—but we don't teach them how.
Accountability requires conflict. It means naming when someone hasn't followed through, when priorities are drifting, or when a leader's actions are out of sync with what the team agreed to. That's hard in any environment—and exponentially harder when you're sitting across from someone who has more power, deeper relationships, or a longer tenure.
So we avoid it. We say, 'We'll follow up later," or tell ourselves it's not the right time and assume the team leader will step in. And slowly, accountability erodes—not because people don't care, but because we haven't built the skills to do it well.
Just telling teams to 'hold each other accountable' is naive. It's like handing someone a scalpel and telling them to perform surgery. It sounds simple—but without the training, it's not going to end well. The real fix is to help leaders learn how to have productive, high-stakes conversations where conflict, candor, and challenge are part of the process—not the exception. These are not soft skills. They are essential executive capabilities.
Practical Steps: Train for it. Teach executive teams how to give and receive direct feedback in high-stakes situations—without it getting personal or political.
Teach executive teams how to give and receive direct feedback in high-stakes situations—without it getting personal or political. Practice it. Build conflict into your meetings. Assign someone to challenge ideas or play devil's advocate. Reflect on what made a disagreement productive or not.
Build conflict into your meetings. Assign someone to challenge ideas or play devil's advocate. Reflect on what made a disagreement productive or not. Reward it. Don't just celebrate outcomes. Celebrate leaders who name hard truths, raise flags early, or hold a peer accountable in service of the team's goals. The Unspoken Rules Run the Room — And That's a Problem for High-Performing Executive Teams
Executive teams love to say they value open dialogue. But behind the scenes, there's often a long list of topics that never make it into the room—especially in front of the CEO. Power dynamics, relationships, and politics all play a role. And truthfully, it makes sense—not every conversation can or should happen in the team setting. That's why we pull each other aside in the hallway or debrief one-on-one after the meeting. It's faster, safer, and often, more efficient.
But here's the catch: when the real conversations only happen outside the room, the team never learns how to operate with full transparency inside it. And over time, that reinforces a dynamic where people second-guess what they can say, silence themselves, and make safer bets. We avoid the risk of speaking up in the room—so the room stays safe, but also stagnant.
The fix isn't to ban backchannels or pretend they don't exist. It's to balance them—and to gently build a culture where team members start saying to each other, 'I think that's something worth raising with the group.'
Practical Steps: Encourage transparency, without demanding perfection. It's not about saying everything out loud—it's about recognizing when the team deserves to hear it, more often.
It's not about saying everything out loud—it's about recognizing when the team deserves to hear it, more often. Model the shift. As a leader, bring something into the room that you used to handle privately. Show that it's useful to do so.
As a leader, bring something into the room that you used to handle privately. Show that it's useful to do so. Use team norms intentionally. Include agreements like, 'If we're having multiple side conversations about a topic, that's a sign it belongs in the room.'
If you want real performance, don't just focus on what's being said—start noticing what's being saved for later. Yes, It Can Feel Like Middle School Sometimes
On the surface, executive teams operate like composed, high-functioning professionals. But dig deeper and you'll often find something far more familiar: cliques, inside jokes, and informal in-groups that leave others on the outside.
Newer executives and external executive hires, especially, can struggle to break in. Long-standing relationships dominate conversations. Some leaders have shared history, inside language, or direct access to the CEO that others don't. It can feel like there's an A-team—and then everyone else.
But here's where it gets more complicated: this dynamic is real—but it's also a trap. Feeling excluded can easily lead to the mindset of, 'I'm being excluded,' or, 'This team is the problem, not me.' And that thinking, while understandable, often leads to behaviors—pulling back, judging others, staying quiet, thinking, 'why bother?'—that unintentionally deepen the divide.
The more we feel like we don't belong, the more we risk behaving in ways that reinforce our separateness. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's why fixing this dynamic takes the willingness to point out if this happening, and the courage to look in the mirror and ask how we're personally showing up.
Practical Steps: Treat onboarding to the team like onboarding to the company. Clarify norms, decision-making patterns, and implicit expectations. Assign mentors, sponsors, and coaches to help new members integrate faster.
Clarify norms, decision-making patterns, and implicit expectations. Assign mentors, sponsors, and coaches to help new members integrate faster. Leaders feeling like outsiders: Check your narrative. Stay engaged, ask for support. Don't let the dynamic define your value or contribution.
Check your narrative. Stay engaged, ask for support. Don't let the dynamic define your value or contribution. For the team as a whole: Normalize talking about inclusion—not just at the org level, but within the team itself. Who speaks most? Who rarely gets the floor? What patterns are we not seeing? Team belonging doesn't just happen. It's created—by the team and by every individual on it. Too Much Going On Limits Executive Team Performance
Today's executive teams are pulled in more directions than ever—global priorities, cross-functional initiatives, urgent issues, never-ending decks. As a result, conversations stay surface-level.
Meetings devolve into report-outs. Strategic discussions get cut short. We run out of time before we get to the real work. This isn't a discipline problem—it's a design and structure problem.
Fix it: Redesign meetings around value. Limit updates to pre-reads. Dedicate time for strategic conversation—and protect it. Ask: What's the most important thing only this team can solve together this week? Then focus there. Final Thought: Build A High-Performing Team Before You Need It
Most executive teams are under unbelievable pressure, so it's easy to be reactive and focus on team performance only when there's visible dysfunction or a crisis. But high-performing executive teams don't wait for a breakdown—they build their capability ahead of time.
A high-performing executive team doesn't just manage the business—it multiplies its value. That doesn't happen by chance. It happens through intentional work, shared goals, and continuous practice. If your team isn't creating the value you know it could, it's not a failure of talent. It's a signal to invest in how you work together.