My leadership team members think they are hiding their disagreements from the rest of the company, but our middle managers are starting to display the same passive-aggressive behavior. How do we identify where leadership team friction is bleeding into the broader organization and stop it?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When members of your leadership team are not aligned, they often believe they are keeping their disagreements quiet. They are not. Employees are highly intuitive; they read body language, notice who avoids whom in the hallway, and pick up on the subtle ways leaders talk about other departments. Any alignment issue at the top of the organization is magnified ten times by the time it reaches the front lines. To stop this bleeding, you must first establish a strict First Team mentality on your leadership team. This means that your leaders must commit to each other first, and to their individual departments second. When a decision is made in your Level 10 Meeting™ sessions, every leader must leave the room presenting a unified front. There can be no eye-rolling, no passing the buck, and no telling employees that they disagreed with the decision but were overruled. If you observe middle managers displaying passive-aggressive behavior, trace it directly back to the top. Ask yourself which leadership team members are modeling that exact behavior. Address it immediately in your peer-to-peer discussions. When your leadership team operates with absolute alignment and mutual trust, that cohesion naturally filters down, creating a unified and highly focused organization.