Introduction
Many organizations underperform because their senior executive team is a team of leaders and not a leadership team. In a team of leaders, each team member focuses on their own role and function, and the only point of integration is the CEO. In today’s complex, challenging, and fast changing world, this creates an impossible role for the CEO.
In contrast, in a leadership team, every team member is jointly responsible for the whole business, its integration, development and how it co-creates value with, and for, all its stakeholders. (Hawkins 2021, 2022, and 2025).
This article is based both on an account by Niren Chaudary on how he developed his top teams at Panera Bread, Inc., where until recently, he was Chairman & CEO and his previous experience at Yum brands , Krispy Kreme and Panera Brands, and by Peter Hawkins based on his work with over 100 top teams around the world. Although these are based on real experiences, to make this more available to others and to ensure confidentiality, we have fictionalized the scenarios, changed names and roles and some of the situations. However, the fictional account is in essence true to how we have both developed in teams, a series of simple but powerful team norms, that moved the team to collaborative and collective responsibility for the whole organization and its collective success.
Niren will be publishing a version of some of these and others, in his forthcoming book on leadership, with the title “The 3 of life “. Peter will feature a version of this in the next edition of his globally best-selling book: Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership (Kogan Page)
- We are here to serve all our stakeholders, not our own interests
A team is ‘high value creating’ (Hawkins 2021), in as far as it creates beneficial value with and for all its stakeholders. These at a minimum include its investors or funders, employees, customers or clients, suppliers and partner organizations, the communities in which it operates, and the wider ecology.
Sally the H.R. Director was arguing that we needed to commit more resources to our employees and give them all an equal bonus that was well ahead of inflation. David the Sales director was arguing that the sales staff should be given a a greater bonus, as: “they were the ones who brought in the revenue.” Neels the CEO called a pause and reminded them that the team were collectively responsible for creating value for all the stakeholders. He then asked each member of the team to step into the shoes of a different stakeholder than the ones with whom they most interacted. The technology director spoke about what the employees contributed and how they could be rewarded. The financial director spoke as the customers. The H.R. director spoke as the investors. The Marketing Director spoke about the wider ecology. The Supply chain manager about the wider communities and the CEO himself spoke on behalf of the suppliers and partner organizations.
He then asked them to stay in role while the team explored ways of creating a win -win -win for all the stakeholders, and synergy between them.
- Business over function.
As a senior team each one of us shows up as business leaders first and functional leaders second. We will always make decisions based on what’s right for the enterprise and not just for our function. What’s right for the enterprise are activities that build the brand, drive higher customer engagement or strengthen employee retention. All of these eventually strengthen the business model and increase enterprise value.
CEO Neel was very concerned with the declining customer satisfaction scores despite strong sales and rapid new product development. The Customer support team was completely overwhelmed affecting the brand’s reputation. Customer complaints were not being attended to and calls were frequently abandoned. Noor recommended a temporary slowdown in new product launches and local advertising to allow the operating team to settle and for the customer support team to get caught up
Although this decision meant short-term sacrifices for the product development team and the local marketing teams, the executive team had a quick huddle and agreed to focus on what’s right for the business . Sales targets were adjusted and the new product development process was modified to include operating filters. This gave the Operating & Customer support team necessary time to get properly staffed and trained and to be able to handle the increased volumes a lot more effectively
I also believe as part of being “business leaders” first and functional leaders second I would expect each executive team leader on my team to have an opinion on everything. The best decisions are to be made based on superior logic and not based on job titles or positional power. If there was a stale mate then the CEO could always intervene .
This approach offers several advantages:
- The Executive team becomes more engaged, leading to stronger commitment.
- It broadens their understanding of the business and helps eliminate implicit hierarchy within the team, reducing organizational silos.
- By ensuring that every Executive team member has a voice in all matters, we create a decision-making process that better reflects the perspectives of all stakeholders —who may not view our choices through a purely functional lens.
Putting the enterprise ahead of individual functions is a defining principle of strong leadership. It fosters alignment, breaks down silos, and encourages executives to think beyond their own domains—promoting a shared vision that drives long-term, organizational success.
- Resolve conflicts in 24 hours or let them go.
If there’s a conflict, in highly effective teams team members will resolve that conflict directly and very quickly with the person concerned and not triangulate with others. This is essential to building trust, maintaining clarity and strengthening relationships
If team members are we are unwilling to have the hard conversation, then in the interest of the team they we will need to just “let it go”. Members of highly effective teams just do not carry unresolved conflict around.
The Executive team was having their weekly meeting when David COO spoke angrily about the impact of the recent IT breakdown on the restaurants . “It is so frustrating when our e- commerce goes down. Operations are tough as it is and we just don’t want to have to deal with this on top of everything else. It seems to be happening very frequently of late. Even the franchisees are fed up. Frankly even I am”.
There was a stunned silence at this outburst and all eyes were now on Jane the Chief Information Officer. She seemed upset and very surprised to hear about this feedback for the first time at the meeting in front of the entire team. Jane tried to gather her thoughts as she replied “David, this is the first I have heard of it . Let’s huddle after the meeting and discuss the details and we will address the issue immediately.”
The meeting finished and Jane was seething. She reminded herself of her commitment to resolve conflicts immediately and walked up to David’s office and asked if they could speak. As soon as she sat down David apologized and said “I am so sorry Jane for throwing this at you in front of the team. I should not have done that. I should have spoken to you first so that you could have come prepared with action steps. “Jane smiled and said “Well I did feel attacked and was totally unprepared. I would much rather you came to me first and then raise it with the Executive team. It’s important for me to know that you trust me and have confidence that I will sort out issues.” David smiled back and said “apologies Jane. Will do in the future. I totally trust you of course! Let’s go grab a coffee.”
- No decisions without disagreement.
We will make decisions only after all voices have been heard, especially the dissenting voices. Decisions will be made based on superior logic and not positional power. However, once a decision is made only that one decision will leave the room and the entire team will converge to that
It was Monday morning, and the executive team met to discuss a critical decision: how to overhaul the menu to boost declining sales. The team was committed to making decisions based on superior logic and non-positional power. As the team brainstormed, two competing ideas emerged. Emma, the Chief Brand Officer, proposed a shift to higher quality signature products that were premium priced to attract new customers. In contrast Terry the CFO argued to keep the menu simple and focus on making the core more affordable for existing customers.
The discussion was intense with the respective teams making compelling arguments based on research and financial projections. Emma highlighted trends showing a growing demand for unique dining experiences and Terry emphasized accessibility and price sensitivity for their existing customers.
After hours of rigorous debate, the CEO Neel intervened to guide the team to step away from individual positions and problem solve collectively. The team analysed customer feedback, market trends, competitive activity and financial forecasts together. In the end the data suggested a hybrid approach was required. Value needed to be always on to increase frequency of existing customers and premium innovation needed to be pulsed in periodically to bring in new customers at the top of the funnel. The team agreed that value needed to be a more urgent near-term focus. Noor then reminded the team “once we have decided only this decision leaves the room and we will all commit to it. Agreed?” Everyone nodded and said, “Let’s go!”
- Eliminate “I told you so” when something doesn’t work.
I call this “hands from the grave.” This happens when things go wrong and a team member tries to distance themselves from the failure by saying, “I was the only one who felt this was not a good idea, but I had to go along.” Highly effective teams are in it together. They win together and lose together. There is no blame.
A new digital ordering system had been recently implemented across 1000 restaurants with the objective of streaming operations, improving customer satisfaction and driving sales. The roll out was a nightmare – orders got mixed up and customers were furious. The operating team as a result was under immense pressure and frustrated.
During a tense meeting Emma, the Chief Brand officer could not help saying “I knew this was a mistake right from the start. I was strongly suggesting to first test in 50 stores and then scale. Look at the mess we have created! David the COO also added “the roll out was accelerated with unrealistic timelines and we had no time to pressure test it either.” Jane the CIO was looking down and feeling very responsible and muttered “Agree it’s not been good.”
The morale in the room was sinking fast
Karen the CPO spoke candidly “Hey Team let’s remember we committed to “no hands from the grave.” We discussed all these risks and on balance decided to go ahead. So it was our collective decision. Lets all now own this failure and move urgently to fix it. Let’s focus on the solutions!” Jane smiled and nodded in relief Emma and David said “you are right Karen. Let problem solve and develop an action plan to get back on track!”
- Have all the discussions in the room -
Finally, highly effective teams commit to engaging with complete candor and transparency when the actual discussions are being had and NOT after the meeting in smaller groups at the water cooler or coffee machine . I have found one effective way to call this out is to ask after every important meeting “How many agree / disagree?” Now lets hear those who disagree and thrash this out right here. We need to leave the room with 1 fully committed decision.
Emma the CMO believed that the most effective enterprise value creation model was growth and absolute profits. George the SCM leader, David COO, Terry CFO felt strongly that it was growth and % margins not just absolute profits. When Emma presented the marketing ideas for balance of the year there was a bias towards premium products with higher prices, higher absolute profit but lower % margin. Terry spoke about the risk involved but was willing to trust the work Emma’s team had done to be profit accretive.
After the meeting George and David were very frustrated and went and spoke with each other. They had not spoken during the meeting which was taken as an agreement. Neel CEO wanted his teams to make these decisions with each other and did not lean in. Because George and David did not speak at the meeting it was assumed they were on board, but they were not. What’s worse is that they shared their reservations with their functional teams. As a result, things stalled with the cross functional teams and employees were hugely frustrated
Neel CEO then called a meeting and raised the lack of alignment and encouraged everyone to share their concerns directly in the room and not with their teams. “This was our commitment and is very important for us to show up as ONE team ONE decision to the organization.” This enabled an open honest discussion, and after a few hours, convergence that given the existing stage of the business % Margin was the most important near-term metric to go after.
We had agreed and launched a new range of Poke bowls to strengthen our competitive position around lunch. The entire team was excited and getting ready for launch, but Joe the SVP Operations was not on board. During the team discussion on the topic he had expressed his concerns around increasing in store complexity . However once the team decision was taken to launch, he had publicly agreed but privately he continued to hold on to his disagreement. This is one of the most toxic team behaviors one can have when leaders appear to agree but actually, they don’t. These are the “silent no’s” in the organization who can seriously derail the execution.
David had the direct conversation with Joe and raised his awareness to this dysfunctional behaviour and made it clear that it was absolutely not acceptable. David reminded him “Jeff as you know, once the team has discussed and agreed to launch we must all line up behind that and do everything we can to make Poke bowls a huge success. There is no second option. If there is any support, you need please do let me know”
- ‘Big-up’ a colleague or another division
The team had moved from a team of leaders to a ‘leadership team’ with collective responsibility for the whole business. However, this sense of integration was still not manifesting at the lower levels of leadership. The team explored how they could virally spread their integration down through the organization.
Gerry, told the other team members how they always celebrated their sales successes, in each team meeting. David asked him whether he ever celebrated the successes of other parts of the organization. Gerry said it had never occurred to him, and that he thought the place to celebrate those was in the top team, where the other parts were also represented.
After some further exploration each team member committed to ‘big-up’ a top team colleague, or another division in the company, at least in every team meeting they had with their own division. They would do this by celebrating something specific that colleague and/or division had successfully done that had benefited the wider company and its stakeholders.
To their surprise other members of their own teams, adopted the habit, and they too brought examples of success to celebrate from other parts of the business.
Conclusion
High value creating teams need team norms to define how they work together and create a built-in system for accountability. They drive consistency, build trust, and strengthen team effectiveness. However, you cannot just copy other leadership teams recipes for success. Instead, you have to use examples like Panera as a springboard to collectively create your own. Also, for them to truly work, they can’t be dictated from the top down. The CEO or team leader has to move from being the Team Leader, to being the Team Orchestrator and Team Coach (Hawkins 2021: pp 279-291).The team norms must be co-created, articulated, and owned by the team itself. When all team members take part in defining the norms, commitment follows—and that’s what makes them stick.
Hawkins, P. (Fourth edition 2021) “Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership.” London: Kogan Page
Hawkins, P. (third edition 2022) “Leadership Team Coaching in Practice.” London: Kogan Page
Hawkins, P. (2025) Beauty in Leadership and Coaching: and the transformation of Human Consciousness. London: Routledge.
Professor Peter Hawkins is leading an international certificate program in Systemic Team Coaching through AoEC and Renewal Associates
The Systemic Team Coaching Certificate Program is also available to book in North America. The next program is in Victoria, Canada, led by Dr Catherine Carr
Peter is also the director of the global virtual programs in Systemic Team Coaching run jointly with Coaching.com:
Team Development Essentials starting July 7th, 2025
Practitioner Accreditation program in Systemic Team Coaching starting October 7th, 2025
Senior Practitioner Accreditation program in Systemic Team Coaching starting September 8th, 2025
