What happens when a leadership team faces turnover, performance pressure and frayed trust? For one private manufacturing company, it meant stalled decisions and missed alignment — until the CEO invited a member of the board to assist him with a strategic reset.
Why C-Suite Cohesion Is a Governance Issue
Private company directors know that strategy without execution is wasted ink. Yet many boards underestimate the leadership alignment risk hidden inside the C-suite. When turnover, market volatility or competing priorities erode trust, execution slows, accountability weakens and reputational risk rises.
This is not just a leadership development issue. It’s a governance challenge. If the C-suite doesn’t operate as a unified first team, the board’s strategic oversight is compromised.
A Case of Missed Alignment
At a mid-sized manufacturing company, the integration of a recently onboarded CFO — the third in as many years — revealed deeper cracks in leadership trust. Despite the company’s continued financial resilience, directors and executives alike noted stalled decision-making, conflict avoidance and inconsistent accountability across the leadership team.
The CEO recognized that, without intervention, these relational gaps would delay progress toward a $25 million profit goal and jeopardize enterprise-wide alignment.
A Strategic Reset
To course-correct, the company engaged me to design and facilitate the first of a two-day quarterly leadership offsite. Anchored in my proprietary “THRIVE Model”, the experience offered far more than a retreat — it was a strategic inflection point to reset leadership dynamics and reclaim momentum.
The “THRIVE Model” in Action
The elements of the THRIVE model are:
- Transparency. Structured dialogues create space for vulnerable, courageous conversations.
- Harmony. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team framework was used to diagnose friction points and reset behavioral expectations.
- Responsiveness. Leaders cocreated a commitment covenant, naming specific unacceptable behaviors and replacing them with values-aligned norms.
- Inclusivity. The team explored what high trust looks like, sounds like, feels like and acts like to operationalize culture.
- Values. A shared sense of purpose was reignited, with clarity around the cultural drivers behind high performance.
- Execution. Each executive developed 30-day action plans supported by peer accountability partners.
Insights That Matter to Boards
Trust capital protects strategy. Trust isn’t a “nice-to-have” thing. It’s the foundation for effective execution. Leaders reported that vulnerability and candor not only deepened connection, but enabled more decisive, aligned action.
Covenant over contract. The commitment covenant reframed expectations as relational, not transactional, emphasizing the value of enduring commitments to one another as the first team responsible for leading the organization as a cohesive unit.
First team focus mitigates risk. By calling out siloed behavior and back-channeling as unacceptable, the team took collective ownership for course-correcting internal dynamics that could otherwise undermine strategic outcomes.
From Insight to Impact: Measurable ROI
The day after the offsite, during the company’s quarterly business review, the leadership team demonstrated a visible shift, displaying:
- Sharper dialogue.
- Faster consensus.
- More confident alignment, including meaningful contributions from the newly onboarded CFO.
And the data backs it up:
- One hundred percent of participants aligned on new team expectations.
- Eighty-six percent committed to immediate application of offsite insights.
- Eighty-six percent rated the experience as directly applicable to their roles as enterprise leaders.
These are not just engagement metrics. They represent business-readiness indicators: faster capital deployment, crisper communication across verticals and reduced time to decision.
Board Questions to Ask
To assess whether the C-suite is aligned, boards should consider asking:
- Does the executive team operate as a first team or as a collection of functional silos?
- Are leadership commitments codified in a way that transcends job descriptions and metrics?
- What visible behaviors demonstrate trust, candor and accountability at the top?
- How is leadership misalignment tracked, escalated or addressed before it becomes a risk to strategy?
Trust Capital as a Governance Asset
Just as financial capital funds growth, trust capital fuels execution. When leadership teams are fractured:
- Strategic priorities are delayed.
- Decision-making slows.
- Succession planning becomes reactive.
- Reputational risk increases.
Boards that invest in team cohesion are safeguarding enterprise velocity, cultural resilience and investor confidence.
What Boards Can Do Now
For boards, the message is clear: C-suite cohesion is not a soft skill; it’s a fiduciary imperative.
When boards sponsor the kind of strategic offsite described here, they strengthen their own oversight by ensuring the leadership team operates as a cohesive unit, not a coalition of departments. They reduce risk, accelerate results and enhance their ability to govern with clarity and confidence.