My leadership team is starting to form quiet alliances and cliques behind closed doors, especially when we debate resource allocation during our quarterly sessions. It feels like passive-aggressive political maneuvering rather than direct, healthy disagreement. How do we break up these executive factions?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Quiet alliances and cliques on a leadership team are often a symptom of low trust and a fear of direct conflict. When team members feel they cannot speak openly in the room, they resort to private discussions and lobbying. This political maneuvering can quickly poison your company culture.

To dismantle these factions and foster healthier interactions, consider the following strategies:

Establish Clear Rules for Communication

You must enforce the rule that there are no private agreements or offline lobbying on strategic issues.

• All strategic issues and debates must be brought to the leadership team table.
• Process these issues openly using the IDS tool: Identify, Discuss, and Solve.
• If a leader attempts to lobby you or another peer privately before a meeting, shut it down immediately. Direct them to add the issue to the Issues List for your next [Level 10 Meeting](/qa/should-integrator-facilitate-level-10-meetings).

Realign with the Vision

During your quarterly sessions, use your V/TO (Vision/Traction Organizer) to realign everyone on the common vision.

• Remind the team that their first loyalty is to the leadership team and the organization as a whole, not to the individual functional departments they run.
• Emphasize the need to "put on their enterprise hat" when they sit at the executive table, focusing on what is best for the entire company. This shift in mindset can also help address situations where [leadership team members are overly protective of their departments](/qa/shifting-leadership-mindset-to-enterprise-first).

Direct Confrontation and Open Debate

If the passive-aggressive behavior persists, you must address it directly in the room.

• Call it out: Name the dynamic you are observing.
• Set expectations: State clearly that passive-aggressive behavior is unacceptable and violates the trust required to run a healthy company.
• Force the debate: Require the team to debate the issue openly until a resolution is reached that everyone can support, even if they do not completely agree.

By eliminating the private channels for discussion and forcing transparency, the conditions that allow cliques to thrive will diminish, leading to their dissolution and fostering a more open, trusting environment where healthy conflict can occur. If your team struggles with this, it might be worth exploring how to improve [leadership team trust and healthy conflict](/qa/leadership-team-trust-healthy-conflict) in general.

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