My department heads are fiercely loyal to their own staff, often defending their team members even when they make critical errors that hurt other departments. How do I get my leadership team to realize that their primary loyalty must be to the leadership team itself, not to the departments they manage?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When department heads prioritize their own staff over the leadership team, they build dangerous operational silos. They begin to hoard resources, hide mistakes, and defend their people even when performance is poor. This behavior is a direct threat to your scaling efforts.

You must teach your leaders the concept of the First Team. This means their primary loyalty is to the leadership team, not to the departments they manage.

To implement this shift, you must change how you evaluate leadership performance. During your quarterly reviews, assess your leaders on how well they collaborate across departments to achieve company-wide goals.

In your weekly Level 10 Meetings™, make sure the focus remains on the overall health of the business. Use the IDS® process to solve cross-functional bottlenecks. If a leader becomes defensive about their department, remind them that the goal is to solve the issue for the greater good of the company, not to protect their turf.

Encourage your leaders to spend time understanding the challenges faced by their peers. When they see the business as a single, integrated system, they will make decisions that benefit the entire organization rather than just their own department. This shared accountability is essential for building a high-performing company.