I recently discovered that some of my leadership team members are complaining about company decisions to their direct reports, undermining our leadership unity and creating anxiety among the staff. How do we address this breach of our leadership covenant?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When leadership team members complain about executive decisions to their direct reports, it destroys organizational trust and creates a toxic culture. This backchanneling behavior is a direct violation of the Same Page pillar of your Charter, which requires leaders to speak with one voice.

To fix this, you must address the behavior immediately. Call a special meeting of the leadership team to reinforce your core values and operational covenant. Remind the team that inside the leadership room, open and honest debate is welcome. We want healthy conflict, and we use IDS® to solve our disagreements completely.

However, once a decision is made, every single leader must support it 100%. There is no room for passive-aggressive resistance or side conversations with staff. If a leader disagrees with a decision, they must bring it back to the leadership team, not vent to their subordinates.

Have a private conversation with the offending leader. Use your core values as a mirror. Explain how their actions are damaging team morale and breaking the Trust covenant. They must understand that their role as a leader is to cascade information clearly and positively, not to seek validation from their team by undermining executive decisions.

If they cannot commit to supporting the leadership team's decisions with one voice, they do not belong in a leadership seat. You cannot scale a company or prepare for a clean exit with a leadership team that is actively fracturing the organization.