The First Team Principle
Your executive peer team must be your primary loyalty, not your department
The First Team Principle addresses a subtle but destructive pattern in leadership teams: when executives consider their departmental teams as their primary loyalty rather than their peer executive team. This means they share more openly with direct reports than with peers, advocate for departmental interests over company goals, and treat executive meetings as obligations rather than their most important work.
This dysfunction manifests as leaders who are excellent managers of their own people but terrible teammates at the executive level. They build strong sub-teams that are fiercely loyal, but this loyalty comes at the expense of cross-functional collaboration. The result is a collection of high-performing silos that compete with each other rather than with external competitors.
The remedy requires a difficult psychological shift: leaders must be willing to make their executive peer team their first team, which to some may feel like abandoning the people they have worked so hard to develop. In reality, it means recognizing that the health of the executive team determines the health of the entire organization.
- Your executive peer team must be your first team, even if your departmental team feels more comfortable
- A collection of good managers who do not act as a team creates confusion about priorities throughout the organization
- Loyalty to a department at the expense of the executive team is a form of the fifth dysfunction: inattention to collective results
- Making the executive team your first team does not require destroying your department team, but it does require making it secondary
- Leaders who share more openly with their direct reports than with peers undermine executive alignment
- Diagnose Where Loyalties LieAsk each executive team member directly: which team do you consider your first team? Most will admit their departmental team comes first. This honest assessment is necessary before the shift can begin. Also examine where confidential information leaks and where allegiances surface during budget and resource discussions.Pro tipDo not expect immediate commitment to the shift. Simply naming the pattern and getting honest acknowledgment is a significant first step.
- Redefine Success as Collective OutcomesEstablish shared goals and metrics that the executive team owns collectively rather than departmentally. Make it explicit that success is measured by the team achieving its overarching goal, not by any individual department hitting its numbers while others fail.Pro tipTie a meaningful portion of rewards to collective team outcomes rather than departmental performance to create structural incentives for the shift.
- Model the Behavior as the LeaderThe CEO or team leader must visibly prioritize the executive team dynamic and hold members accountable for putting the executive team first. This means addressing situations where a leader advocates for their department at the expense of the broader team's goals.WarningThis shift will feel like abandonment to some leaders. Acknowledge the difficulty openly rather than dismissing their concerns.
- Establish Confidentiality and Communication NormsCreate explicit agreements about what is shared within the executive team versus what is cascaded to departments. Executives must be able to have candid conversations with peers without worrying that everything will be relayed to their direct reports.WarningWithout clear norms, leaders will default to sharing everything with their departments, which undermines the trust and candor needed at the executive level.
DecisionTech's CFO Jan was extremely close to her direct reports, five of whom had followed her from previous companies. She openly admitted they were her first loyalty and that she shared more with them than with her executive peers. When Kathryn asked the team to make the executive group their first team, Jan was honest about how difficult that would be, saying it would feel like abandoning what she had worked hard to build.
Lencioni identified this pattern when observing how DecisionTech executives shared confidential information with their direct reports, were closer to their departmental staff than to their peers, and framed decisions through the lens of departmental impact rather than company outcomes. The CFO Jan openly admitted being a den mother to her staff, with five of her eight direct reports having followed her from previous companies. Martin protected his engineers from organizational distractions. Both were excellent department leaders but contributed to executive-level dysfunction.