Every executive leader I know is deeply committed to doing great work, but your first team isn’t your department.
These leaders care about their people.
They care about results and about delivering for the organization.
Which is why one of the biggest barriers to executive team effectiveness often comes as a surprise.
It’s not a lack of intelligence. It’s not a lack of commitment. It’s not even a lack of trust. It’s something much quieter.
Leaders begin identifying more strongly with the department they lead than with the leadership team they belong to.
And when that happens, even the best organizations begin operating in silos.
The Trap of Functional Leadership
Think about what leaders are rewarded for.
Growing revenue.
Reducing costs.
Hiring talent.
Improving operations.
Meeting departmental goals.
Every performance metric reinforces ownership of a specific function.
That’s exactly what organizations need.
Until leaders gather around the executive table.
Now their responsibility changes.
They’re no longer representing a department, but they’re helping steward an entire organization.
This is the shift Patrick Lencioni describes through the concept of the First Team.
Your first team isn’t the people who report to you, your department.
It’s the leadership team sitting beside you. Becoming a true First Team requires more than agreement. It requires the willingness to have the courageous conversations that keep leaders aligned around what’s best for the enterprise rather than individual departments.
Why This Is So Difficult
No one wakes up intending to create silos.
In fact, most executive teams genuinely enjoy one another.
The challenge is that organizational pressures quietly pull leaders back toward familiar territory.
Someone advocates for additional headcount.
Another pushes for technology.
Someone else protects the budget.
Each request makes perfect sense on its own.
But collectively?
The organization can begin optimizing individual departments while sacrificing enterprise performance.
That’s where misalignment begins.
Not through conflict.
Through competing priorities.
The Cost
When leaders prioritize their departments first, teams begin to notice.
Messages become inconsistent.
Resources feel political.
Departments compete instead of collaborate.
Decisions take longer because everyone is negotiating for their own area.
Trust slowly erodes—not because people have bad intentions, but because they experience leaders pulling in different directions.
Ironically, everyone works harder.
Yet the organization moves slower.
What High-Performing Leadership Teams Do Differently
The strongest executive teams I’ve worked with still advocate passionately for their functions.
But before asking,
“What’s best for my department?”
they ask,
“What’s best for the enterprise?”
That single question changes everything.
It changes conversations and resource allocation.
It changes accountability and trust.
And over time, it changes culture.
Because the organization always takes its cues from the executive team.
When leaders operate as one leadership team, the rest of the organization begins doing the same.
Three Questions Worth Discussing as an Executive Team
At your next leadership meeting, consider asking:
- Where are we unintentionally optimizing departments instead of the enterprise?
- What decision have we delayed because we’re protecting functional interests?
- If we truly believed this executive team was our first team, what would we do differently?
Don’t rush to answer.
The conversation itself may reveal more than the answers.
The Leadership Shift
One of the most rewarding moments in executive team development is watching this shift happen.
Leaders stop speaking for their departments.
They begin speaking for the organization.
The conversation becomes less about winning resources and more about creating collective success.
Departments don’t become less important.
They become better connected.
That’s what alignment looks like.
Not unanimous agreement.
Shared ownership.
A Final Reflection
One of my favorite questions to leave executive teams with is this:
When your people watch your leadership team make decisions, do they see a collection of department heads—or one leadership team committed to the success of the entire enterprise?
The answer to that question often shapes everything that follows.
Deseri Garcia
Most leaders struggle with disengagement, dysfunction, and non-productive behaviors with their teams. We deliver training that develops leaders and engages teams to increase your company results.