My leadership team members seem to agree on our V/TO and strategy during our planning sessions, but afterward, I notice some of them quietly working against our decisions or failing to support them. How do we eliminate this passive-aggressive behavior?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

What you are experiencing is artificial harmony during your planning sessions, which leads to silent disagreement afterward. When leadership team members do not speak up in the room, they do not commit to the plan, and without commitment, there is no accountability.

To eliminate this passive-aggressive behavior, you must establish a strict rule: disagree and commit. During your quarterly and annual planning sessions, the Integrator must actively pull out dissenting opinions. If the room is too quiet or agreement comes too easily, start digging. Ask direct questions to challenge the assumptions and force real debate.

Once every perspective has been heard and a decision is made, everyone in the room must actively support the decision outside of the room. There is no room for backdoor complaining or quiet sabotage.

If you catch a leadership team member undermining a decision after the session, the Integrator must call them out immediately. Address it as a core values violation. Trust is built on transparency and alignment.

Remind the team that once we walk out of the planning room, we present a completely unified front to the rest of the company. Cracks at the leadership level appear as canyons to the rest of the organization. If a leader cannot align with the V/TO, they do not belong on the leadership team.