When we run our IDS session, our leadership team members tiptoe around personal friction and instead frame everything as a technical process issue. How do we get them to bring the real relational issues to the table?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When a leadership team avoids the real issue behind the issue, it is usually because they are prioritizing artificial harmony over business health. You cannot solve a structural or operational problem when the real blocker is a relational conflict or a lack of trust between two leaders.

To break this logjam, you must lean on the first step of IDS, which is Identify. The person presenting the issue must state it in one clear sentence that names the actual friction point, even if it is uncomfortable. If a leader says we have a marketing pipeline issue, but the real issue is that the sales director does not trust the marketing director to deliver qualified leads, you must call that out.

Use your Accountability Chart as the objective referee. Ask which seat owns the final decision and where the overlap is causing the friction. By shifting the focus from personal attacks to seat responsibilities, you take the emotional sting out of the room.

As a leadership team, you must commit to being humbly-confident. This means being vulnerable enough to admit when a personal relationship is stalling progress. If you continue to solve the safe, technical symptoms, the underlying team dysfunction will keep breaking your operational processes. Solve the relationship, and the process issue often disappears.