Two of my executives have a deep personal history outside of work, and their alliance makes other leaders feel excluded during strategic debates. How do we break up this sub-clique inside the leadership team?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Sub-cliques within a leadership team breed suspicion, destroy psychological safety, and stall open debate. When two leaders enter strategic discussions with pre-aligned positions formed over private dinners, other executives stop offering candid feedback because they assume the outcome is already rigged. The rest of the table checks out, leading to artificial harmony and quiet resentment.

You must confront this dynamic directly during your next session or offsite. Name the behavior neutrally and describe its operational cost. When two members caucus outside the room, they deprive the entire company of open, vulnerable, ideological debate during IDS (Identify, Discuss, and Solve).

Enforce two structural rules:
- Ban hallway agreements on leadership issues. If an issue affects company strategy, resources, or cross-functional execution, it must be logged directly on the leadership team Issues List and addressed in the Level 10 Meeting.
- Reassign accountability pairings. When working on quarterly Rocks or deep-dive strategic projects, partner each member of the alliance with different peers across the table to build horizontal trust across the wider team.

Remind both executives that their primary allegiance belongs to the leadership team as a unified whole, not to their private friendship. If they cannot debate each other vigorously in public or accept decisions that cut against their personal alliance, they cannot remain in executive seats.