Could your executive team be the biggest obstacle to executing strategy? Misalignment, superficial agreements and lack of genuine collaboration often create bottlenecks that slow progress.

In my 30-plus years of experience as an organizational psychologist, the problem too often starts here, in the executive room – the very place where leaders are expected to inspire, set direction and drive change.

I’m sitting at the executive team table in yet another glass tower, listening to a conversation from frustrated executives about yet another survey telling them that people don’t understand the strategy.

“It’s the frozen middle,” proclaims the COO, blaming the ever-suffering middle managers. Heads nod.

“We lack leadership at the next level,” adds the Head of People and Culture. Murmurs of agreement.

My role is facilitator. Supposedly, to help this team drive change. It’s time to ask a question or two. “Is it really the middle of the organization that’s the problem? What if the real bottleneck is in this room?”

Glares, stares and shaking heads greet me. I continue. “Could this executive team, the very leaders expected to inspire, set direction and drive change, actually be the biggest obstacle to executing strategy?”

A troubling trend

Teamgage, a leading people data firm, pulses teams worldwide for leadership insights. Their data reveals a troubling trend: there’s a consistent misalignment between executive strategic plans and the reality on the ground.

To empower the business to execute effectively, their advice is that executives must continuously improve how they work together, measuring and modeling the behaviors they expect from others.

Noelle Smit, Teamgage Co-Founder and CEO, said, “When leaders demonstrate essential habits like trust, alignment and accountability, it gives middle management the permission and confidence to hold others to account, embedding these behaviors across the company.”

The missing piece is partnering

Teamgage and other studies of employee engagement and alignment suggest that many enterprises have a real problem with what we call ‘fake alignment’.

You’ve seen it. It’s the superficial agreement, the false harmony in executive teams that passes for decision-making. The team agrees to a decision, but back in ‘business unit land’, different priorities are in play.

Instead of resources being deployed in coordinated ways, leaders focus on their own unit’s agenda, leaving strategy execution fragmented and inconsistent.

The problem is blindingly obvious: if senior leaders aren’t visibly united, a small initial misalignment grows into a major execution failure.

From fake alignment to genuine commitment

Did you know that in an enterprise of 2,000 people, there may be roughly 250 teams, yet among the top 30 leaders alone, there are over 400 unique partnership connections, each vital to strategic success? Despite this, enterprises invest millions in team development while largely ignoring the critical partnering relationships that actually drive execution.

Partnering is the missing link, the difference between fake alignment and genuine collective action. Leaders who act as partners challenge each other constructively, solve problems collaboratively and fully commit to shared goals.

Four habits of transformational partnering

How to build those connections? A simple, yet powerful ‘Think One Team’ tool called the Partnering Quadrant describes four essential conversation habits and guides leaders and teams to connect, align, agree and grow.

Each habit builds trust and elevates collaboration beyond traditional team building.

Q1. CONNECT: Build trust first

Business leaders often skip connect and go straight to aligning expectations. Wrong move. Effective partners care about each other’s goals and challenges. The first habit is to connect by listening and showing empathy.

Partnering starts with a human connection that forms the foundation of pragmatic trust. Yes, it takes time, but it’s far less than the cost of conflict and rework caused by poor connection.

Q2. ALIGN: Create clarity together

Alignment means clarity of goals, roles and expectations, however, in a volatile environment, alignment needs a lot more than just getting structures and plans right.

Success in turbulent conditions comes through the coordinated efforts of adaptive people, teams and technologies. Partners share expectations and openly discuss natural tensions. They set up for shared victories. That’s why partnering matters.

Q3. AGREE: Commit with accountability

Agreement goes beyond words. It’s about making concrete commitments on resources, timelines and responsibilities.

Martin Bean, international CEO and co-author of Toolkit for Turbulence, put it best: “Acting as gatekeepers doesn’t work anymore at the executive level. Real agreement requires each leader to commit – eyes wide open – to their part in execution, ensuring they’re truly accountable.”

Q4. GROW: Learn and adapt continuously

The final habit needs discipline. It’s the commitment to regular communication, feedback, reflection and adaptation. Our experience shows that the strongest predictor of effective partnering between teams is the frequency of one-to-one catchups between the leaders.

That leadership commitment to stay connected, enables partnerships to strengthen over time and turns mistakes into stepping stones.

It starts at the top

I look around the executive table at a team sitting in silence. The CEO breaks the tension. “We need to hold ourselves accountable for partnering and collaboration, and it starts with me,” he says.

Exactly what I hoped for – every executive must build partnering connections, but the CEO sets the tone.

Three months later, executive partnering has become the standard characterized by pragmatic trust, transformative behaviors and measurable impact.

Breaking the executive bottleneck isn’t about another team-building workshop. It demands a different solution. One where every leader consistently commits to partnering – to connect through trust, align with clarity, agree with accountability and grow continuously.

Enterprises will and should invest in team development, but those who neglect partnering as a core capability miss a chance to truly transform one relationship at a time.

Opinions expressed by The CEO Magazine contributors are their own.