Summary: In this article, Mark S. Kenny explains why the health of a team is shaped less by structure or team-building activities and more by the everyday behaviors people practice with one another.
Who wants to be on a team that feels fractured, full of friction, or just plain frustrating? No one.
And this is not a small problem. When it’s not solved, teams lose people, energy, engagement, and execution. When the executive leadership team is fractured, the effects spread through the organization.
Most of the time leaders reach for structural or team-building solutions. I think this is because structural fixes and team-building activities are easier to grasp. They feel tangible. But by themselves, they don’t actually solve the problem.
The real leverage is everyday behaviors.
A team usually doesn’t look fractured because of one dramatic event. It looks fractured because certain behaviors have become normal over time.
You can often see the fracture in behaviors like these:
- Hiding mistakes, avoiding asking for help, or pretending to know
- Holding back disagreement to keep the conversation comfortable
- Getting defensive, digging in, or overpowering others when challenged
- Talking about issues outside the room instead of addressing them directly
- Raising doubts after a decision instead of before it
- Withholding support for a team decision once the decision is made
- Avoiding calling out missed commitments or unclear ownership
- Protecting individual priorities, departments, or agendas at the expense of the team’s most important outcomes
So What Actually Fixes It?
I talk a lot about giving each other Presence, Truth, Grace, and Belief. Those aren’t abstract ideas. They show up in behavior.
Presence changes how we listen. Truth changes what we are willing to say. Grace changes how we respond to mistakes. Belief changes how much room we give others to own the work.
A team-building session can help. But only if it surfaces the behaviors that need to change and is followed by sustained work to practice those behaviors together.
Teams fracture behaviorally. And they have to be repaired behaviorally.
So ask yourself:
What behaviors have we allowed to become normal that are making it harder for us to work as one team?
