Trouble at the Top: How effective is your Senior Leadership Team?
When a senior leadership team is not functioning effectively, the effects can resonate throughout the entire organisation.
The consequences extend far beyond the boardroom, often impacting how employees behave, make decisions, and achieve results. As a result, workplace culture suffers, and employee performance declines.
Importantly, ineffectiveness doesn’t usually come from a lack of individual skill or effort. Most leaders are highly capable and deeply committed to their departments. The problem lies in misalignment; leaders push hard for their own areas, but without a shared vision and mutual trust, those efforts clash rather than complement each other.
The result we commonly see is a set of capable individuals working in isolation rather than as a true team. This plays out in a handful of familiar behaviours…
Where Leadership Teams Go Wrong
Ineffective Meetings
Senior leadership meetings often lack focus and discipline. Discussions can easily become off-topic, collaboration may devolve into endless debates, and meetings may conclude without clear decisions. To be effective, these meetings require a well-defined agenda, purposeful facilitation, and a commitment to concluding with clarity and agreed-upon actions.
Unclear Communication
Another common issue amongst leadership teams is poor communication. Sometimes no one speaks up, other times the debate never ends, or the real decisions happen in corridors, pre-meetings, or informal side chats. This creates mistrust and confusion. Strong teams commit to saying what needs to be said in the room, respecting different views, and keeping communication open and transparent.
Weak Decision-Making
Some teams struggle to make decisions stick. Either they wait for complete agreement, or it isn’t clear who has the final say. As a result, decisions get revisited, delayed, or quietly resisted after the meeting. Effective leadership teams agree who owns which decisions, close them with confidence, and stand behind them collectively. Once a decision is made, everyone communicates it as a shared commitment, not as someone else’s choice.
Siloed Thinking
It’s natural for leaders to want the best for their own departments, but when that becomes the priority above all else, silos form. Leaders protect resources, defend their patch, and pull in different directions. The result is fragmentation. High-performing teams recognise that their first responsibility is to the organisation. That shift creates unity, even when it requires tough compromises for individual functions.
The results of these behaviours are easy to spot; Meetings become competitive rather than constructive. Decisions are delayed or diluted. Mixed messages cascade down the business, leaving teams confused about priorities. Middle managers end up firefighting contradictions, while trust in leadership quietly erodes. Over time, this creates disengagement, slows delivery, and reduces resilience.
Externally, the damage can be just as apparent. In worst cases, customers and partners notice inconsistency and indecision. Service delivery is harder to maintain when internal divisions prevent clear execution. Reputational costs quickly follow and, once credibility is lost, it’s difficult to win back.
At Pro-Noctis, we see this pattern often. It is rarely about bad leaders – it’s about leaders who haven’t been equipped with the tools, frameworks, and environment to operate as a true team. That’s why so much of our work focuses on building alignment, trust, and collective accountability at the very top. Because when senior leaders learn to collaborate effectively, they set the tone for the entire organisation.
An aligned senior leadership team creates clarity, consistency, and confidence. It models the behaviours people want to follow. And it ensures that energy is channelled into progress rather than politics.
How to improve your Senior Leadership Team’s effectiveness:
Start with shared purpose: Reassess the vision of your organisation to ensure that all leaders are aligned with it. Departmental goals must be designed to support, rather than conflict with, the overarching objectives of the organisation.
Prioritise trust-building: Focus on nurturing trust among leaders. When trust is established, collaboration becomes deeper and more meaningful, leading to more effective teamwork and stronger outcomes.
Agree on how you’ll work together: Establish clear guidelines for decision-making, conflict resolution, and communication. Don’t leave collaboration to chance – delegate responsibility.
Model the culture you want: Employees often reflect the behaviour of their leaders. By embodying a culture of openness, demonstrating accountability, and a strong sense of collective responsibility, you can inspire your team to do the same. When you lead with transparency and integrity, you create an environment where everyone feels empowered to contribute and collaborate.
Seek external perspective: Sometimes, a professional facilitator is needed to help you break free from a team’s routines and ingrained habits. Obtaining objective guidance can spark new perspectives and lead them towards a renewed collective vision.
Equipping leaders with the right tools and mindset is crucial for transforming a collection of strong individuals into a cohesive leadership team that effectively guides others. When senior leadership teams set aside their differences and make an effort to work collaboratively, the benefits are evident, impactful and far-reaching.
Our highly effective leadership development programmes have been tested across industries and are designed to embed the skills managers need to immediately and positively affect company culture, performance and employee engagement.
Learn more about our services, including our leadership development programmes and in-house training options, here. Alternatively, get in touch today to discuss the best training opportunities for your organisation.
