The CEO’s Best Tool for Success – A High Performing Leadership Team
To thrive, organizations must be agile enough to respond to constantly shifting market conditions. Organizational culture evaluations highlight that the speed and complexity of change can be overwhelming for unprepared executive teams. From evolving business models to fluctuating resource demands, even the most capable CEOs cannot drive meaningful transformation alone. Their most powerful asset is a high performing leadership team — one that aligns strategy with execution, amplifies decision-making, and accelerates organizational impact.
Top 5 Challenges of Building a High Performing Leadership Team
While executive leadership teams face many internal and external challenges, our leadership simulation assessment data found that five challenges of building a high performing leadership team rise to the surface.
- Lack of True Strategic Clarity
Our organizational alignment research shows that strategic clarity drives 31% of the performance gap between high- and low-performing executive teams. Yet only one in five executives believe their team is fully aligned on priorities or has a clear path to achieving its goals.
Compounding the issue, C-suite leaders consistently rate their strategy as twice as clear as their direct reports do. Without shared understanding across corporate vision, mission, values, ideal target clients, unique value proposition, big strategic bets, and strategy success metrics, achieving high performance is nearly impossible.
If your executive team isn’t operating at peak effectiveness, it may be time to assess your strategic clarity.
Are your plans for success not just defined, but also believable, actionable, and compelling enough to drive alignment and execution?
- Not Enough Trust, Norms, and Processes
Executive teams do not all develop at the same pace or in the same way. Regardless of seniority, any team’s performance will falter if team trust and agreed-upon processes for how work gets done are insufficient. Strong team health lays the foundation for psychological team safety — the essential condition that allows honest, high-stakes debate and tough decision-making. Clearly defined norms and processes set expectations for how the team collaborates, makes decisions, and executes key initiatives.
Have you invested the time to build enough executive team cohesion and trust to tackle complex problems effectively, engage in constructive debate, provide candid feedback, reduce workplace politics, and commit fully to shared objectives?
- Silo-based Perspectives
Accenture research shows that teams that break down silos and operate fluidly are 28% more likely to achieve top-tier growth. A high performing leadership team understands this: success depends on prioritizing company-wide and cross-functional goals over isolated departmental objectives.
Top executives model this behavior by establishing clear, organization-wide goals and actively discouraging siloed thinking or toxic back-channel communications.
Have you aligned efforts across the enterprise to ensure that every team contributes to the broader mission through coordinated actions?
- Individual versus Team Behavior
Just as siloed thinking undermines organizational performance, executives who prioritize self-interest over the company, their peers, or their team can create significant workplace dysfunction. Surprisingly, many CEOs tolerate one or two such leaders on their teams, even when their behavior visibly erodes trust, collaboration, and overall leadership effectiveness.
To counteract this, establish team-based goals and accountabilities reinforced by meaningful incentives. When executives are motivated to collaborate, communicate openly, and build strong relationships, the team as a whole becomes far more effective.
Have you purposefully aligned individual self-interests with organizational success?
- Neglecting Executive Development
When executive teams stop learning, they not only limit their own effectiveness but also fail to model the growth mindset that employees expect. A stagnant leadership team is inherently less capable of driving strategic impact. Generic leadership programs rarely move the needle — but customized, action-oriented development initiatives have been shown to strengthen leaders while simultaneously improving business outcomes.
Are you investing in leadership development programs that genuinely elevate both your executives and your organization to the next level?
The Bottom Line
CEOs cannot succeed alone; they depend on an executive team that operates seamlessly together. Building a high performing executive team requires deliberate attention to what drives success: clearly defined and shared goals, agreed-upon processes, constructive behaviors, and a commitment to continuous growth. When these elements are in place, the team becomes a force multiplier for both leadership impact and organizational performance.
To learn more about building a high performing leadership team, download The Top Skills for High Performing Leaders
Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.
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