A Team Meeting Story

Imagine a boardroom in a corporate building. It is fall season. The morning is fresh. Everyone has enjoyed a hot drink of their choice. It's an all-day meeting. Each team member has travelled here to meet face to face, some from the other side of the world.

There’s a buzz of excitement in the room. At the same time, there's an agenda: an official one, and many unofficial ones around the table. The meeting begins with the Chief of Staff presenting the agenda. It’s packed. Even lunch will be a working session. Visitors from other departments are scheduled to drop in throughout the day, each with their own agenda.

Two hours in, everyone is on their laptops, answering emails and pretending to listen. There’s a lot of activity, but very little presence. The topics drag on, a slow death by PowerPoint. Then the leader intervenes. He interrupts the presenter: “Please close your laptops and pay attention. We didn’t travel all this way to do emails.” 

People reluctantly comply. It lasts an hour. Then, quietly, a parallel meeting begins on WhatsApp. Every comment in the room is echoed and judged on text. Emotions are shared, but never spoken aloud.

How effective do you think this team is?

On the surface, the team performs. Targets are met (more or less), numbers are known, and the team is compliant (e-learnings are all completed in their teams). But underneath, most team members are actively preparing their exit. Horrendous? Familiar? Real? Fake?

The Hidden Cost of Execution

We often assume that execution is about discipline and alignment. Yet despite decades of frameworks and performance management systems, most organizations still struggle to implement their strategies. 

A large-scale study involving 262 companies and over 7,600 managers revealed that while most teams have clear goals, appropriate funding, and aligned objectives, execution still fails, not because of planning, but because of poor coordination and weak cross-functional commitments. 

Only 9% of managers say they can consistently rely on colleagues in other units, and less than one-third believe their organizations reallocate people and resources fast enough to match priorities. 

Execution fails not from lack of having targets, but from a lack of agility and trust across silos. It is not just about setting direction. It is about creating the conditions for real collaboration, timely decisions, and courageous adaptation.

The Two Sides of “How”

When we talk about execution, people almost always think about the “doing”: “How do we do this?” (process, tools, decisions, metrics).

They almost never think about the “being”: “How do we want to be together?” (tone, trust, behavior under pressure).

Organizations tend to overinvest in the first and overlook the second. They build systems, dashboards, and methods but rarely invest in the emotional and relational space.

The result? You get rooms like the one in the story. People say things like:

• “I was disappointed.”
• “He/She never listens.”
• “That’s a day I’ll never get back.”
• “We’re hitting numbers, but it doesn’t feel good.”

Why It Matters

The cost of skipping relational design is not always immediate, but it is deeply corrosive. You may still hit your targets. Meetings happen. Tasks get done. But trust erodes, truth goes underground, and energy drains.

In the boardroom story, the official agenda was packed. But the unspoken emotional agenda was louder. What was missing was not commitment to the work. It was a shared agreement about how to be together.

Without it:

• Communication retreats to private channels
• Feedback becomes cynical rather than constructive
• Presence gives way to performance
• Morale declines while results appear steady (until they don’t)
• Engagement becomes compliance
• Contribution fades into withdrawal
• Retention drops as people look for the exit

This is the cost of not conscious designing the relationship:

• Energy, truth, and trust are lost
• People may be in the room, but the room feels hollow
• Accountability loses its foundation
  
  

Why Don’t Leaders Do This?

There could be quite a few reasons why leaders don’t know this and/or potentially don’t dare going there…

• Leadership culture rewards results over relationships
• Most leaders never had this modeled
• Cultural norms discourage mixing emotion with professionalism
• Most programs teach tools, not relational design
• Urgency and busyness crowd out the reflective space this work requires

So… we build relationships by default - not by design - until something breaks.

What Does It Mean to Design an Alliance?

It’s simple. Before jumping into content, take a pause and ask: “How do we want to go through this together?”

If it were a sport: What game are we playing, and how do we want to play it?

If it were a recipe: What ingredients will make this meeting nourishing? (Fun? Focus? Creativity? Kindness?)

Let each person speak. Let the others listen in silence. Agree. Adjust. Clarify. Repeat.

This is not about setting rules. It is about giving shape to trust.

The A.L.I.G.N.™ Framework

Use this model to structure the conversation:

This model can help explore various aspects of a brand new relationship or an existing one. Giving a chance for each team member to focus on the part that is the most meaningful to them:  some people may be sensitive to the language being used in the team, others to the energy and presence in the room or others about how to keep this alliance alive at all times.

Overcoming Resistance: “It Feels Weird…”

That’s normal. Most people have never experienced this. Or they’ve seen it done in a way that felt awkward or rushed.

They may think:

• “This is soft.”
• “This is emotional.”
• “This is not my job.”

Reframe it clearly:

• This is not soft. It is structured.
• This is not therapy. It is performance architecture.
• If you’ve ever worked in a team that was technically fine but emotionally exhausting, you’ve already experienced the cost of skipping this.

Try It Now

Use your next offsite or full-day meeting. Spend 30 to 45 minutes. Focus only on how you want to be together over the next one or two days.

Avoid trying to fix every relational dynamic. This is not a universal code of conduct. Start simple. Start small.

Helpful prompts:

“What do you need from this team to do your best work?”

“What do we do when things get tense?”

“How are we doing as a team—not just what are we doing?”

If it feels risky, remind the team:

“One good conversation about how we want to be together can prevent ten difficult ones later.”

A Story Where It Made a Difference

I recently coached a leadership team under pressure. The sponsor had a strong vision and tight timelines. Before we began, I sent a team survey.

One response read:

“I wasn’t consulted about this coaching. I don’t know why we’re doing it. I don’t have a choice, so I’ll come.”

Another said:

“I’m just glad to be invited. I usually don’t get asked.”

We began by designing an alliance. Trust emerged as a top priority. Then came themes like reducing control, increasing spontaneity, being more empathetic, less judgemental. The team ultimately named three intentions: flow, ease, and energy.

Those three words became the compass for the next three months. Whenever the team faced tension or complexity, someone would ask, “Does this bring ease?” And often, that alone would shift the conversation. A cumbersome process might be dropped because it made things heavy. The agreement had become a filter for choice.

A Call to Paradox Leadership

Here is the paradox: the more you try to control the team, the less it thrives. The more you lead from certainty, the more you limit what can emerge. And yet, as a leader, you are still responsible for results.

Paradox Leadership means holding space for both direction and dialogue. It is having the clarity to name the goal, and the humility to shape the path together. It is recognising that performance is not only built on plans and KPIs, but on the invisible threads of trust, presence, and shared responsibility.

You don’t need to be a coach to lead this way. You simply need to start. Right now. Before the next project. Before the next meeting. Pause. Ask your team, “How do we want to do this, together?” Then listen. Let the answers come. Let the relationship lead.

This is leadership not just of tasks, but of energy. Not just of structure, but of connection. It is leadership that invites others to lead with you—and sometimes, to lead you.

That is the paradox. And it is where transformation begins.

Sources

• Sull, D., Homkes, R., & Sull, C. (2015). Why Strategy Execution Unravels—and What to Do About It. Harvard Business Review, March 2015. https://hbr.org/2015/03/why-strategy-execution-unravels-and-what-to-do-about-i  
• Humble Leadership, the power of relationships, openness and trust. Edgard H. Schein and Peter A. Schein 
• Center for Right Relationship (CRR Global). Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) – The concept of the “Designed Team Alliance” is a foundational practice in systems coaching to consciously co-create how a team wants to work together. https://crrglobal.com