Is Your Executive Team Really a Team—or Just a Group of Leaders?

Most executives are promoted for functional excellence. Very few are ever taught how to operate as an enterprise leadership team.

Craig Martin · Martin Growth Leaders

Here’s a blunt question: how do you know if your executive team is actually an executive team—or just a group of senior people sitting in the same meetings?

I recently got a call from the CEO and founder of a company that has been very successful, especially over the last year. Strong client platform. Impressive talent. Real momentum. And then he said something that stopped me cold: “My top leaders aren’t acting like top leaders.”

They didn’t have an ownership mindset. They were thinking too narrowly. And they weren’t behaving like the enterprise leaders he needed to scale the business to the next level. The real question wasn’t about talent. It was this: Is this a people problem—or something deeper?

Teams vs. Groups: A Distinction That Matters

This situation is incredibly common. CEOs and founders often feel disappointed with their executive teams—not because the people are bad, but because they’re not operating at the level the moment now requires.

There is no playbook for being “at the top of the house.” Most executives are promoted because they’re excellent functional leaders. Very few are ever taught how to operate as an enterprise leadership team. In our experience, many executive teams are really high-powered groups: functional leaders and business unit heads, but not a true enterprise leadership team.

That gap becomes dangerous during growth, succession, strategic pivots, M&A, or rising stakeholder expectations—because those moments demand high-achieving teamwork to create enterprise value. Here are three principles for closing it.

Principle 1: Is Your Executive Team Fit for the Future?

Your executive team is the fulcrum of your business. It is where leverage comes from. So the first question every CEO must ask is: Is our executive team fit for where the business is going next—not where it’s been? That requires clarity around:

The next horizon of growth or enterprise value
What stakeholders now expect from the top team
What behaviors and decisions will get you up the next mountain
And just as importantly, what you must stop doing

Many CEOs can describe their strategy. Far fewer can describe how the executive team must operate to deliver it.

“A team is not a group of people who work together. A team is a group of people who hold themselves mutually accountable for a shared purpose, goals, and approach.”

— After Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith, “The Discipline of Teams,” Harvard Business Review

If we’re honest, most executive teams operate in parallel. Top leaders focus on their own functional or business-unit goals rather than the overall business—and at worst, spend most of their time putting out fires. That makes high-achieving teamwork structurally impossible. And if you tolerate average teamwork at the top, you will get average enterprise results.

Research from McKinsey & Company shows that top teams working toward a shared vision are 1.9 times more likely to deliver above-median financial performance. That’s not culture talk. That’s enterprise economics. So aim high—on purpose.

Principle 2: Build a Real Executive Leadership Pipeline

The second principle is about bench strength. If you want strong executive teamwork tomorrow, you must develop enterprise-ready leaders today. As Jim Collins put it, “Great vision without great people is irrelevant.”

We work with a CEO who does this exceptionally well. He identified a high-potential VP and gave that person responsibility for long-term, cross-functional initiatives—work that cut across silos and required influence without authority. That built enterprise thinking, strengthened cross-functional partnerships, and developed real decision-making maturity. It wasn’t accidental. It was designed.

“If you build a team of A-players, you attract more A-players. If you tolerate B-level leadership, you eventually get C-level results.” — a client CEO

Just like a sales pipeline, you need an executive leadership pipeline.

Principle 3: The CEO as System Shaper

Now for the hardest part. If you’re a CEO and you’re frustrated with your executive team, start by looking in the mirror. It is your job to:

Set clear expectations for executive behavior
Model enterprise leadership
Coach the team to make decisions collectively
Prevent silos, politics, and personalization from taking over

Executive teams don’t magically become strategic and aligned. They are designed, coached, and reinforced into high performance. Your team will never outgrow the leadership system you create.

Case Story: Full Executive Team Leverage

I worked with a COO—let’s call her Teri—who felt constantly overwhelmed. Her calendar was packed, and she wanted to be more strategic. When I interviewed her team, the message was clear: “Teri does everything—from strategy to fixing the paper shredder.”

When I asked why she didn’t delegate more fully, she said, “I don’t trust them to make decisions the way I do.” So I asked one question: “Have you taught them how you make decisions?” Her answer: “No—I don’t have time.” That moment told us everything. Teri was the bottleneck to everyone’s growth.

We redesigned her decision rights, clarified roles, and shifted the team from a hub-and-spoke model to an interconnected leadership team. Teri freed up her calendar, stepped into a true enterprise role, and created real leadership leverage for the organization. Not overnight—but intentionally.

The Bottom Line

All great outcomes—in business, in society, in history—come from powerful teamwork aligned to a compelling, bigger vision. The question for every CEO is whether the team at the top is truly a team, and whether it is built for what’s next.

Strategy identifies what’s next. Your leadership team determines whether you’re ready for it.