When Good Executives Make a Bad Team, What Should the CEO Fix First? [#134]

Smart executives can make a dysfunctional team. The question to ask: is it the person, or the system?

When executives keep reopening decisions or sending their departments in different directions, it’s tempting to pin the problem on one person. Executive leadership coach and author Betsy Kauffman joins Cindi Baldi to show where a CEO should look when their leadership team gets stuck.

Together, they lay out three agreements that give leadership teams a place to start: how they’ll decide, how they’ll disagree, and how they’ll stay focused long enough to act.

From examining the executive team’s operating system, to optimizing for different communication styles and integrating in new executives, this conversation offers a better way to diagnose what’s going wrong before you decide what to change.

What you’ll learn about leadership team dysfunction, executive communication, and strategic alignment

Five places to look before you coach one executive. Check how the team communicates, collaborates, makes decisions, stays focused, and follows through.
Four communication styles that can collide in one meeting. See why getting straight to the point helps some colleagues contribute and cuts others off before they’ve had a chance to think.
Why a great hire can look like a poor fit. Find out what an established team needs to relearn when a new executive inherits a role shaped by someone else.
What it means when the real debate happens after the meeting. Learn to spot when apparent agreement is masking objections the team needs to hear.
A quick test for strategic alignment. Ask executives separately what the company is focused on this quarter, then compare their answers.

Watch This Episode on YouTube:

About Betsy Kauffman:

Betsy Kauffman is the Founder and CEO of Cross Impact Coaching, TED Speaker, best selling author, and a globally recognized executive leadership coach. She helps mid-market – large enterprise CEOs and senior leadership teams build the leadership alignment needed to successfully navigate their most complex, high-stakes challenges — whether that’s AI adoption, rapid growth, acquisition, or closing the gap between strategy and execution.

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Want to Go Deeper? Check Out Our Recommended Reading:

Tumlin, Geoffrey. Stop Talking, Start Communicating, McGraw Hill, Aug. 2013, https://a.co/d/08kyFCiR
Paul Rogers and Marcia Blenko, “Who Has the D? How Clear Decision Roles Enhance Organizational Performance,” Harvard Business Review, 2006, https://hbr.org/2006/01/who-has-the-d-how-clear-decision-roles-enhance-organizational-performance

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Questions Answered in this Episode:

How can a CEO tell whether an executive is struggling because of who they are or the system around them?

Betsy Kauffman recommends looking at 5 elements before blaming the individual: how the team communicates, collaborates, decides, stays focused, and executes. Then ask what conditions the executive had for the task at hand, including clear expectations, authority, relevant information, and coaching where needed. If peers can work effectively under those conditions and the same person continues to struggle despite support, individual development or role fit becomes a more plausible explanation.

How can executives with different communication styles work together?

Betsy uses four flexible communication preferences in her coaching: bottom-liners, storytellers, processors, and collaborators. Bottom-liners want the point first, storytellers want context, processors want time to think, and collaborators want to talk ideas through. A pre-read with the decision at the top and context underneath can serve several preferences at once. Betsy emphasizes the usefulness of having your team recognize their communication style to help them compensate for its shortcomings when working with others.

What should a leadership team revisit when a new executive joins?

An established team has a shared sense of who knows what and where to go for help. Researchers call that part of a team’s transactive memory system. The newcomer has to learn that map, and existing members have to update it as they discover the person’s strengths and how they’ll work together. Betsy suggests sharing team norms and discussing what the new executive and their peers need from each other. Both Cindi and Betsy highlight that when a new executive joins a small leadership team, it is essentially an altogether new team and should be treated as such.

How can you tell if a leadership team is avoiding conflict?

Look for decisions that keep coming back, objections raised in sidebar conversations, and apparent agreement that dissolves once people leave. These are clues worth investigating. Kauffman looks for whether colleagues can raise a hard issue directly, give each other a genuine hearing, and continue working together afterward.

How to keep your leadership team focused when the next big thing comes along

The management problem

It’s easy to agree on the quarter’s priorities in a planning meeting. The harder test comes three weeks later, when a promising opportunity lands and everyone wants to get moving. If the leadership team adds it without deciding what can wait, people are left to figure out which of their existing commitments still count.

Executive coach Betsy Kauffman compares this to little kids chasing a soccer ball. Wherever the ball goes, the whole team runs after it. Her advice is to choose what matters for the quarter, explain why it matters, and give people enough time to make progress. If circumstances change, revisit the choice together.

Find out whether you’re actually aligned

Borrow Betsy’s quick check. Ask each executive separately, “What are the three things we’re focused on as a company this quarter?” Compare the answers before you discuss them. You may find that everyone remembers the same headline but has a different idea of what it means for their department.

Take it one step further. Ask, “What have you told your team to do differently because of those priorities?” That’s where you’ll hear whether a priority has changed anyone’s work. If each department is still doing everything it planned to do before the meeting, ask what the leadership team is willing to take off their plates.

Make the tradeoff together

At your next leadership meeting, pick one quarterly priority and finish these three sentences together:

“By the end of this quarter, we want to have accomplished ___.” Describe an outcome that people can recognize when it happens.
“To make time for that, we’re going to pause or scale back ___.” Name the work that will move and tell the people doing it. Give executives a chance to raise any commitments that make the tradeoff harder.
“We’ll revisit this priority if ___.” Agree on what new information would justify changing course. When a new opportunity comes up, ask which commitment it would displace and make that choice as a team.

Betsy Kauffman (00:00)
When you can’t focus as a leadership team, what in the world are your teams supposed to do? Think about that trickle down effect.

Cindi Baldi (00:05)
The system can make it look like the person has problems that they don’t actually have.

Betsy Kauffman (00:10)
If we think people just can’t make a decision, it may not be the actual person. It may be the environment. If you can as a leadership team come together and say, this is what we’re focusing on for the year, for the quarter, that is all that teams and people want. I mean, the amount of time and money and energy that is wasted by just changing directions and not being clear in your communication is absolutely critical.

Cindi Baldi (00:36)
Thanks for joining us today on Management Muse. I’m your host, Cindi Baldi. Today we’re gonna talk about when a leadership team is dysfunctional, how do you know whether you have the wrong people or good people trapped in a bad system? Betsy is the founder of Cross Impact, author of The Fix, and she helps mid-market to large enterprise C-suite leaders fix the real problem behind most leadership team dysfunction, which isn’t the people, but the system they operate in. So how can a CEO distinguish a people problem from a system problem?

Betsy Kauffman (01:06)
Yeah. So I think, you know, you have to first figure out, have I created all the right conditions for my leaders to be successful? And if you have, and we can talk about what those conditions are and what we call this operating system, and you’ve done everything in your power and that that person or that leader is still not fitting in or being able to make that jump when you’ve given them coaching and you’ve given them guidance, then it probably is the person and maybe the leader and not necessarily the system.

But I would not go to the person first. I’d actually say, what have I created? What have I given them or not given them? And now how do I make sure that everybody understands where we’re where we’re headed and that I’m diagnosing the right, the right or wrong problem, however you want to look at it. So I think it’s a great question to start with is, you know, is it the person or is it the system and what I’ve created around them?

Cindi Baldi (01:58)
Well and I think that you’re possibly understating actually how hard that is. ‘Cause you know it sounds it sounds really obvious, like, hey, let’s let’s blame the system first. let’s let’s explore whether or not the system is causing the problem before we get to the people. But like how we’re built, like there’s a theory called the fundamental attribution error, and how we tend to be built is that when somebody else does it, when it when it happens to somebody else, it’s their fault. When it happens to us, it’s bad luck or the system.

Betsy Kauffman (02:36)
Right.

Cindi Baldi (02:37)
And so like you and like it’s almost like an automatic response that we have. Now there’s a caveat to that. Like if you like super strongly identify with somebody, you treat them like you treat yourself. So that could definitely play out in leadership teams and make it so some people are actually getting the attribution, they’re only screwed up because of the system. But if you’re not super tight with the CEO, the CEO is very likely to default to you’re jacked up.

Betsy Kauffman (03:06)
Yeah. And well, and the system is hard. Like to your point, it’s really hard. It’s easy for me to say these things. But when you think about the system, and and and I think about it in five or six components. And I’ll tell you why there’s an or or in there. I think there’s several pieces of a of any team. And when it comes to leadership team, same thing. It comes down to how do we communicate? Do we actually communicate and do we respect the other folks, like our peers, when it comes to communication? Right. So we’re all going to communicate in very different ways.

Do I understand that? Are you a processor? Do you need to actually collaborate? Do you like to tell a story? Like, how do I communicate when I look sideways across? how do I collaborate? So am I open to partnerships and negotiations and conversations? And and, you know, do I know that you have my back and I have your back? And we’re gonna, we’re gonna go in that same, you know, same, we’re gonna row together. How do we make decisions together? Have I put together, you know, as a CEO, have I put together a good decision-making framework? Or is that the area that we’re struggling with within the system? do we have focus? I see so many leaders. Like, do we have focus? And are we able to actually stay the course? It’s-

Cindi Baldi (04:12)
You have a story in there.

Betsy Kauffman (04:13)
I do. There’s so many things here. and you know, then again, you know, and then how do we execute upon that? So those are kind of the five core things. And and like I said, you those are all different pieces that

We need to probably look at to say, okay, have we done the best that we can or are we actually setting ourselves up for success in those five areas? And if we are, and our leader is still not able to make the the the jump or the bridge or whatever we’re looking for and the rest of them are, then maybe it is a leader at that point. But yeah, you’ll just take a step back. Which one do you want to dive down? We shouldn’t there.

Cindi Baldi (04:44)
What’s your favorite one? What’s your favorite story back then?

Betsy Kauffman (04:46)
Yeah, I like first I like the communication one because I think people I was working with the leadership team.

And they were really struggling to just learn how to work together and how to communicate together. And we did an exercise as to, you know, what is your communication style? So when you, when you have an idea or you want to actually like convey a message, what are you, what do you want to do? Are you a bottom liner? Do you just like to get right to the point? Are you a storyteller? Do you need to actually tell the story and understand the back history? are you a processor? So do you need to get information and process it and think through it before somebody, you know, comes at me. or are you a collaborator? So do you actually like to collaborate back and forth?

And and we did this really fun exercise together. And it actually opened a lot of folks’ eyes. They’re like, I had no idea that you’re a bottom liner or you’re a storyteller or you’re a you’re a collaborator or you’re a processor. And so that every time I come to you and I want you to make a decision this quickly, I actually need to understand that I might have to set up first in a different way for you to bring the information in.

And also be able to have conversation with me and make the decision with me. And when we unlocked that piece of that communication style for each person, it actually made them become a much stronger team because they were able to approach each team member a little bit differently when they were working together, when they were interacting. The other thing that was really interesting about it was a it was a smaller team. It was about, I think, six or seven people. Of the six or seven, I believe four of them were actually processors.

They loved to process. And then we had a couple b bottom liners. And so processors and bottom liners can really struggle sometimes to work together. Because, you know, this and then you had some, you know, you had another one that’s a storyteller. And so it’s like, okay, I need

Cindi Baldi (06:34)
I think the storyteller and the bottom liner also will have problems with each other. Exactly. I mean I you because I think I I think I may be a bottom liner. And like there are so many times in our conversation where I have to be like, this is part of their process. This is part of their process.

Betsy Kauffman (06:49)
Right, right, breathe. Yeah. Like I have to understand that. And I think having won that awareness is half the battle. And then being able to say, okay, now how do I communicate in a way that’s going to be effective for them to consume it? And and I think a processor has to say, well, how do I communicate with a bottom liner? Because they’re going to want me to make decisions and be able to communicate really quickly. And I might need not be ready for that. And so that was just that’s just one of the facets that we work on with our leadership teams.

And it’s not trying to put people in like a box or in a, you know, okay, this is you, and you’re, you’re a processor, you can never be a bottom liner. But it is to help them understand how do I communicate better amongst myself as a team. And and the the leader of that team, once she understood the dynamics of what she had with her, she started to set up her meetings and her decision-making processes a little bit differently. And she started like to send stuff in advance to say, okay, here, here’s what you need to read, here’s what we need to be prepared to make a decision on or understand.

And it was very helpful because we weren’t putting all of our processors on the spot to say, go, go, go, go, go. And our our bottom liners weren’t like go go go go go. Let’s go. Let’s make a decision. Right. So there was enough of a balance to say, okay, how do we make sure we set up ourselves for success when it comes to decision making or cum you know, conversations, communication? I’m a collaborator and that can drive people crazy too. Like I love to like whiteboard and bounce off of people and get ideas and like Cindy, like, gosh, please stop. But like but that’s just that’s how I communicate. Like I can also be a bottom liner when I need to in a certain moment, in a certain situation. I can kind of flex them all.

Cindi Baldi (08:22)
Yeah, I’m a learned collaborator because I’ve had to do it through academia and yes. I like you you go through that, you’re forced to go through the process and it’s impossible to not see that your product is better on the other side through collaboration. Yeah. But it is not my nature.

Betsy Kauffman (08:38)
Yeah. That’s fair. Right. That’s fair. You know, and processing is like, ooh, okay. Can you just please let’s just go. Like, can we just whiteboard this? No, I need to take it back to my office and I need to, you know, work on it. I’m like, no, let’s talk through it. That just doesn’t work, right? And so you have to learn as you as a leader, you have to learn to be patient and respect all the different types of ways that people work and communicate together.

Cindi Baldi (09:00)
That it it is true and it’s setting up a system where the person can pull what they need, but like the bottom liner probably cuts out a lot of that.

Betsy Kauffman (09:10)
They do.

Cindi Baldi (09:10)
Which is fine. That’s what it’s there for.

Betsy Kauffman (09:12)
It is and bringing the self-awareness to the bottom layer to say you’re actually stifling conversations because you’re wanting to jump to the end immediately when not everybody’s all being brought along. And you know, some of our some of our strongest leaders are bottom liners. and so helping them to understand, yes, the bottom line is important, but we also have to make sure everybody has a has a voice and can say what they want to say so that we can get to the final decision.

Cindi Baldi (09:38)
So there’s somebody in in my life who and I won’t say who it is, somebody in my life who has a very, very, very fast processor. Yeah. And so we you know, she’s come a long way, but like initially when I first met her, she she’s so smart that she actually can finish your thought before you have

And she and so you don’t even have like the full thought out and she’s answering you. Yeah. And she and you know, she’s right. Like like ninety-five percent of the time I would say she is actually right in matching the thought.

Betsy Kauffman (10:18)
Interesting.

Cindi Baldi (10:19)
It was such an unsatisfactory conversation every time because it’s not just and this is the lesson for the bottom liners, I think, it’s not just that you’re communicating information.

It there’s there’s like a social bonding that is also going on there and a recognition. so like you can’t just bypass it to just get to the information. Exactly.

Betsy Kauffman (10:43)
Exactly. There’s yeah.

Cindi Baldi (10:45)
You actually have to stay in it for the process. ‘Cause I sh she like I said, she’s come a long way and now it’s generally delightful to talk to her. But yeah, yeah. Initially it was okay, well, I’m glad that thought was so easily digested.

Betsy Kauffman (11:02)
Well, and it’s interesting. I’m actually getting ready to go into a meeting in a couple of days and we are introducing a whole new operating model for a team and and how we’re gonna work together. I don’t know half the people that are actually in this meeting. So I’m not quite sure how we’re gonna approach the actual conversation, the facilitation. So one of the things that we did is I said, okay, I’m gonna send out a pre-read for my processors who I don’t know who are processors or who are not.

And and when I get into the meeting, I’ll know who read it or didn’t read it, like who wanted to have the advanced notification, who didn’t. But as a as a consultant, as a coach, as somebody who’s helping to try to bring leaders together and have better conversations, that can be sometimes a little bit hard when you first walk into a room and you’re like, okay, I’ve got to read this room and I’ve got to do it virtually, and I’ve got to figure out how does each person take in information, how do they communicate, how do I make sure everybody has a voice.

How do I make sure that if they haven’t done the pre-read, we get them up to speed quickly? And so I think those are all the fun challenges that that I get to face as you’re starting to work with a brand new leadership team. And I think as new CEOs are coming in or as they’re bringing in new team members, they also have that same, you know, ramp up time to figure out, okay, who’s this leader? How do I communicate with them? Who’s that leader? How do I communicate with her? You know, how are they going to communicate back to me? Expectations. So it’s just a fun, it’s a fun challenge, but it’s it’s one that that is, you know, kind of unnerving as you’re trying to set yourself up for success in any for in any kind of form as a leader.

Cindi Baldi (12:32)
Why do smart, competent executives sometimes behave badly as a team, even though each of them performs extremely well individually?

Betsy Kauffman (12:40)
So I think when we go to hire team members, right, and we go to hire leaders, we hire them based on their skill set and their background. Very occasionally we might think about, well, are they gonna fit in with the rest of the team? Sometimes we do. Some of our higher, probably more self-aware, more emotionally intelligent leaders are thinking about does this person fit with the larger mix? But more oftentimes than not, we don’t, right? So we just say I’m gonna hire them because they’re an amazing sales and marketing or they’re amazing finance or tech or whatever. And we’re gonna

It’s kind of like they’ll come into the mix. Yeah, they’re gonna come into the mix and we’ll figure out how to make it work. Right. And I think, you know, without then taking an intentional focus to say, now how do I get this group of individual, amazing, smart people to come together is where we often see these teams struggling and are on are not are misaligned and not able to execute together. And you start to see problems. So that’s, you know, everybody typically has been picked or chosen, hopefully, for their skill set and for a reason and they’re in that spot for a reason.

Now we’ve got to figure out now how do we get them working better together. And if we don’t address it and we don’t spend time saying, again, it’s a system, right? What are the pieces in the system that may not be working well for us? Could it be that we as a team don’t actually have focus and not all acts, you know, executing on the same things and we’re kind of in seven different directions?

Or do we lack good decision making or do we lack really good execution? Like what is it that is that we’re struggling with that we need to focus on to make sure that we’ve given everybody the success that they need and then to decide, hmm, you might be really smart and really talented and really amazing, but you’re maybe not a fit for this company. Whether it’s culture, whether it’s you know, where we’re trying to go strategically, how we try to lead our people, those are all kind of the different facets that I see sometimes when because they most might be the most amazing leader and they may not be a fit.

Cindi Baldi (14:32)
Gonna throw something else out there too. I had a really good colleague in my academic program, Josh Keller, and I think it was actually his dissertation. It may have just been a paper he was on, but and I know he was he was on this research. And I think you can’t underestimate the impact of an existing team who is bringing on a new person because what his research showed was there’s sort of this implicit assumption that happens when you’re bringing somebody new into a a pre existing group, yeah, that it’s like a puzzle piece that’s gonna fit in where that other person left. And yet it’s a totally different person who has different talents. And so you have like a group of people who already have a schema for how they function and they’re not actually updating it. They’re just assuming that this person is gonna pick up the same pieces. Yeah.

And and so then when that person comes in and like it’s not necessarily that they’re not willing to pick up the pieces, it’s that they may not have the skills or experience to pick up everything, like you know, because we shape our jobs. Right. And that throws everybody in massive chaos where you’re almost better off thinking about it like, yeah, we were an existing team, but essentially as soon as we bring somebody new on, we should think of ourselves as like a a a new team reformed.

Betsy Kauffman (15:59)
Brand new team. Yep. And I think that’s the case in any level in an organization, right? So at an executive level or at a, you know, let’s say a a d software development team or any type of product team. anytime somebody leaves and somebody else comes in, you’ve you’ve basically are restarting the whole teaming process. And how do we, you know, norm inform and storm and all the things that we need to do in that place. And and I think again, it’s it’s acknowledging it.

And saying it out loud and like, okay, we’re actually a brand new leadership team because so-and-so has left. We’ve brought somebody else in, but this person is not, you know, Mike or whoever we want to say. This person is now Kim. And so Kim is going to create this new team for us. And we’re going to, we’re all having to become a new team and and learn how to work together differently. And I do think there’s a lot of leaders will underestimate that impact, especially if they’re a if they’re a close-knit team and they rely heavily on each other. And leadership teams should be a close knit team. They should be working together very closely and and conversion. They’re usually not that they’re usually not. Right.

Cindi Baldi (17:01)
Usually not that big. No, I mean I’ve I’ve I’ve been with a lot that are that actually are, but they’re usually not that big, which makes it a lot easier to be tight and you’re spending a lot of time together.

Betsy Kauffman (17:13)
Yeah.

Yeah. And you’re trying to understand, like, okay, this person is what what drives them? How do I work with them? How do I communicate with them? How do I make sure they understand the the culture and the company and what do they need from me to be successful? And what do I need from them to be success successful? And I don’t know that we actually take the time to do that. We just assume to your point that they’re gonna plug right in and we’re gonna rock on and we’re gonna keep going. And they’re learning the company, they’re learning the culture, they’re learning all the new team members, they’re trying to figure out like, hey, where do I fit? What’s my value?

And how do I continue to drive, you know, progress forward within my group, my downlines and across? Yeah.

Cindi Baldi (17:47)
I mean, I think the existing team members have an advantage in that they at least know some of like we call it a transactional memory system where, you know, each team member has an idea of what another team member is good at. And that emerged within like the group setting. So, you know, maybe that’s not like their strong suit in another group, but it’s a strong suit in the the pre existing group. But they still have a sense for each other, whereas the new person is creating it like not only learning their job, but also trying to figure out how they plug into each of these other individuals.

And if you get rid of that assumption that they’re just gonna fit like a puzzle piece, I I think one of the things that you could do to try to like ramp up the group communication and cohesion is to like try to be more explicit about the transactional memory system. Like this, if you have questions about this, this is what I would do. And

Betsy Kauffman (18:45)
Come here, yeah, go here. Yeah. Right. Exactly.

Cindi Baldi (18:48)
Exactly.

And and it may even be like we were just talking about this the other day on a on a separate podcast, but you know, it may even be to some degree, building a model with AI where like the the the new person can like, All right, this is what challenge I have, who’s the best person to be able to go seek out?

Betsy Kauffman (19:10)
Right, right. And giving them some kind of a playbook to say, hey, here’s how you here’s how you operate within our team or within our our company or our structure. If you have other questions, go here, here, here, or here. Yeah, I’m I’m I’m working with a client now and we’re we were actually just shaping a workshop for a couple weeks from now. And so we are we we will have a brand new leader. So one leader has left, another leader shifting into that into a role, and we’re bringing in a brand new leader. And so we were talking about how do we bring that person up to speed about all the work that we’ve done so far in the past couple of years and again the norms and the communication styles and all of that stuff.

And so and then how do we make sure new team members as well that are not maybe in the leadership team, but that are also part of the department also understand that. So there’s a lot of work there, but I’m super excited that they’re being intentional about it. And it actually came up as a topic to say, okay, let’s spend a little bit of time bringing this new person into the mix. And you know, we’re gonna give her

A few things to think about and to read and to understand. Like here’s our culture vision and here’s our first team vision. Cause we’ve they created a first team charter. And here’s all the things that we’ve done so far. Now we’ll bring you into the mix. So when we start talking about these different terms and things, hopefully you’ll have them and you can refer to them. And then we’ll bring you along on the journey with us because we’ve worked together for two years, this team. And so we’ve built a lot of really good operating system rhythms and areas that we’ve been spending time on. And this new person is gonna be like,

Okay, what what just happened? Where where did I land and how do I know where I’m supposed to be? So super excited about building building that kind of intentionality within the within the session.

Cindi Baldi (20:46)
Yeah, it sounds excellent. Yeah. Suppose I secretly watched a leadership team for a month. What behaviors would tell me they don’t have a functioning leadership operating system?

Betsy Kauffman (20:58)
Yeah. I like there’s a couple things. I like to see how they make decisions, or should I say, don’t make decisions. So if a decision needs to get made and it does it can’t get made within a room, either because we do not like conflict.

Whoever is being charged with making that decision won’t make a decision. I’ve seen that often, often enough. Like, okay, but yeah, maybe we’ll come back to it. We we revisit it over and over.

That’s that’s that’s the processor. That’s the processor. It’s actually what the book, The Fix, is about. It’s one of my main characters. The CEO is struggles with decision making. if they can’t focus. So I I’ve worked with a lot of teams on strategy and building out strategy plans. And what are we going to focus on for this quarter? What are we going to focus on for the year? And they get very distracted by shiny objects. And so they’re constantly bouncing around. That’s another sign of dysfunction to say, okay.

Know if I were to go around a room and say, what is our top three things that we’re focusing on as a company? And I would probably get, if I get very different answers or even just slightly different answers, that shows me some dysfunction too. That means we have not aligned on this is where we’re headed. And as an organization, as a company, this is where we’re going. so I I think those are kind of the big ones as to, you know, how do we handle conflict or do we handle conflict? Do we communicate? Do we make decisions? And do we actually have, are we able to focus and and execute on our strategy.

What do you think? Is there another one? What would you add to it? When you go into a leadership team and you possibly see something that maybe isn’t and you’re like, this is maybe something we should harp in on.

Cindi Baldi (22:36)
I find that the best leadership teams actually laugh.

Betsy Kauffman (22:39)
Yes, yes.

Cindi Baldi (22:42)
And when like the laughter is missing, I I worry. Yeah. because like you’re I mean, you are spending an awful lot of time together and like being able to sort of take that tension out with, you know, just a little joke and and and the way that people either are feel free to laugh at themselves or make a joke about themselves. I think it says a lot about like the psychological safety in the room.

Betsy Kauffman (23:08)
Sure. Especially and if they can bring up tough topics, right? And we can actually walk out still and not like hate each other. Right. I mean, that goes hand in hand. It’s like, okay, we can we can we can really bring up some tough stuff that’s happening and we can have healthy conversation, debate. We can even probably laugh about it. And then we can still walk out and still talk to each other and not hold a grudge and not sit in this, you know, can’t deal with this anymore. I’m not going back, type of thing. Yeah.

Cindi Baldi (23:34)
There’s a there’s a lot of excommunication that goes on in organizations that like everybody needs to get that out of their systems. I’m telling you, I really, really hate the Puritans because I think they did so much damage to our culture that still exists today. And that’s like one that you totally see over and over again in an organization. I’m mad at you. And instead of like just even saying, I’m mad at you I’m mad you.

Betsy Kauffman (23:58)
Yeah.

Cindi Baldi (23:58)
Yeah. Have a constructive conversation. No, I’m gonna ice you down and I’m going to encourage everybody else to ice you down because you ticked me off and like

Betsy Kauffman (24:07)
It’s and I’m gonna spend a lot of energy talking bad about you and I’m gonna yeah, it’s it’s so not productive. How much how much energy and money is and time is wasted when people just can’t be like facing directly, like this is what I need from you and I’m mad at you and like how do we get through this? Yeah. It’s a but it’s uncomfortable. It’s hard to sometimes do that if you’re not if one if you don’t have that safe environment or if you’re conflict averse or you you know, you don’t like confrontation and and if people aren’t open to it either.

So if they’re not open to receiving that back to say, okay, tell me why you’re mad at me, Sydney. Like, let’s do Let’s go at it. Let’s talk about it. What have I done? Right. And like being open and listening as opposed to just hearing, like, okay, yeah, you’re right. I was kind of a jerk in that last meeting. You know? Yeah.

Cindi Baldi (24:49)
I just didn’t mean it to be taken that way. Right.

Betsy Kauffman (24:52)
I have a leader that’s that’s a bottom liner. And that is her biggest area of focus. I’ve been coaching her one-on-one, is because she’s such a bottom liner and she’s just so ready to just make a decision, move forward. and then people get really upset with her because they’re like, she just like cut me off and she just doesn’t listen to me and she’s not hearing me. And I’m like, no, she’s moved on. Like she’s she is, she’s probably a fast processor. and she’s but she’s made a decision, but she hasn’t taken the time to slow down to hear your side of it.

And so she’s having to really learn, to your point, how to smoke down and how to have a conversation, how to collaborate and how to put things out there to process. And it’s, it’s driving her crazy. But it the first thing is she needed that self-awareness to know that, like, okay, I am a bottom liner. I do offend people with my style. And I’m gonna have to maybe adjust a little bit based on to these people because they’re not her other bottom liner peers, they’re like, you know, they’re two peas in a pot. No offense there.

So it’s just interesting to watch.

Cindi Baldi (25:51)
I think you can see it in emails. Like my emails don’t have fluff. Now, first of all, I had that all beaten out of me in business school. Right. Like

Betsy Kauffman (26:00)
Mm-hmm.

Cindi Baldi (26:01)
so I you know, I don’t think I actually got there n on my own organically. I think it was like literally business because like we were told, don’t waste time. The people running organizations don’t have time. So yeah, get to the bottom line. And it comes out in like emails for the bottom liners because th th they’re just like bla-da bda bda like whatever it is and there’s no there’s no hey hope you’re doing well like there’s none of the warmth yeah and and like I like I I was listening to a podcast that has since sadly gone away. It was actually a very good podcast and they had somebody, a communication expert on who was talking about working with somebody

Where and it was a woman, because I think it it does disproportionately impact women, the bottom lining. where they can they can come across as being colder than right like a man doing the same thing just because of like societal expectations. And and basically she’s like, just throw an exclamation point once into like your

Betsy Kauffman (27:11)
Interesting.

Cindi Baldi (27:12)
text message or your email, like, you know, that was like the sin of the business school. Like why would you ever

Betsy Kauffman (27:22)
You do not show any emotion.

Cindi Baldi (27:25)
Like, why would you ever put an exclamation point in exclamation points for thirteen year old girls? Like that’s not what we do here. Yeah. And so and but like I I realized that like that was actually pretty good advice because like you know, if you’re gonna put in have a good weekend, it comes across very differently if you use a period or an exclamation point. Right.

Betsy Kauffman (27:47)
Well, I also think as you as you continue to climb the ladder in your company or if you work with executives, you learn how to become a bottom liner, right? Because that level really does want just tell me, tell me what you need me to hear. Like what what do you need from me? Yeah, I don’t have time. So I don’t have time for the rest. Spit it out. Exactly. So I think we we almost become like you said program to like, okay, which level am I talking at? And like what am I where do I need to lead with versus what do I need to follow with?

And there’s a there’s a there’s an art and a science to all of that. I’m you know and and I’m not perfect at it, but we work at it all the time. And when I work with leaders and and we’re trying to, you know, communicate something to either an executive VP or a board member, we try to figure out like what’s the best way to do it. And usually it’s it’s taken a bottom line approach. Give me the give me the the headline up front, exactly what I need to know. And if I want more, I’ll I’ll let I’ll ask for it. Yeah, I think

Cindi Baldi (28:39)
Yeah. I think you to your point, I think you need to spend a little bit it’s not like one leadership style is gonna work for everybody. You you have to individualize and and pay attention to sort of like how they’re I mean, usually people are giving away what they are. So it’s you know, my sister is big on like the four love languages.

And and this kind of reminds me of that, right? Like you can usually identify somebody’s love language by how they’re trying to to love you, which may be completely wrong.

Betsy Kauffman (29:17)
Mm.

Cindi Baldi (29:18)
So you know, like, like I I don’t require gifts, just as like talking about this this,

Betsy Kauffman (29:25)
For love languages. Mm-hmm.

Cindi Baldi (29:26)
yeah, the l and but like I have family members who are like really gifty. And so like it’s become clear to me that

I need to show my love to them by giving gifts. It’s not

Betsy Kauffman (29:39)
And then it becomes a chore, you’re like, gosh, I’ve gotta get another gift for this person, okay. Well

Cindi Baldi (29:44)
And it’s the same with the communicating. Like you’re gonna have like the people that you’re watching and yeah and like how they’re communicating with you, if they’re a bottom liner, you know, they’re probably communicating like just the bare bones to you. And that’s probably gonna be I mean, you know, I mean, if we’re all watching and then trying to adapt, there may be some confusion there. But always I feel like especially in the moments where pe people are really busy or they’re multitasking.

Betsy Kauffman (30:13)
Mm-hmm.

Cindi Baldi (30:14)
then what they actually are comes out. And if you’re watching those moments. Yeah. Like like they talk about police interrogations where they’ll give them a task, like maybe they’ll have them writing something while asking them questions because they get more honest answers out of that. It’s very hard to like hold back or be deceptive when you’re doing two tasks at the same time. Right.

Betsy Kauffman (30:37)
Yeah, split your time. Yeah.

Cindi Baldi (30:39)
And and so I think in a very similar fashion, like if you are paying attention to how people are communicating or processing or making decisions when there’s like multiple things going on or they don’t have any time and they’re like they’re they’re trying to move very quickly. I think those are the moments where you get a a glimpse at their actual tendency. Mm-hmm. And that would be how I might individualize.

Betsy Kauffman (31:04)
Yeah, it’s funny. I can always tell when somebody’s, you know, multitasking or they’re they’re on another team’s chat or they’re doing something different. And sometimes I’ll just stop talking because I’m like, I don’t know what I’m saying, and whatever I’m saying is probably not resonating. And that’s okay. Like, you know, if if you’re done with the conversation, because we’ve moved on, that’s okay. or if you’re just trying to find something or figure something out, that’s okay too, right? But I’ll just pause and just be like, okay, silence.

And l like see how they respond to that. just because not everybody can process. I know.

Cindi Baldi (31:40)
That’s super dangerous. That’s that’s also very cultural. you know, as a former professor, you have to get used to just sitting standing in front of a room in silence.

Betsy Kauffman (31:52)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Cindi Baldi (31:54)
Because t to your point, like people do process at different speeds. And so you it feels like an eternity up there to not have anybody talk, but they’re actually sitting at their seats trying to figure it out.

Betsy Kauffman (32:06)
Right. Well, and I also think sometimes to your point, like I I like I like white space. I like to have space to be like, okay, not every when somebody’s jumping in, you’re like, okay, that person needs to fill a space. Right. Whereas sometimes you do just need to pause and let people stop and process ask questions. And the CIO that I’m working with now is is not that way. Millions of questions, millions of questions, millions of and so and and and she’s working with a Midwest company.

So it’s very interesting culturally to watch this. she’s from the the West Coast, San Francisco, big tech, talks fast, you know, questions, questions, questions, questions. And these Midwestern folks are not used to having that kind of type of communication style. And so they’re like just watching it has been very fascinating. and and they’ve now got a bunch of other folks from the East Coast that are trying to help with this. And so it’s it’s an interesting dynamic watching this culturally between the company.

And these consultants and these interim folks, and really like just watching the communication styles and and seeing where people are able to adjust, allow white space, not allow white space, right? Answer you know, pepper people questions, watch people respond to them. So for me, it’s been a fascinating experience experience to watch it and to try to figure out like a how do you adjust based on your audience and who you’re working with, and how do you respond to the CIO versus the the Midwestern leadership team versus the East Coast leadership team?

Cindi Baldi (33:33)
Yeah, I I sometimes wonder if that’s a sign of well first of all, somebody who’s probably on the extrovert side, but somebody who is more anxious about the situation. And so they keep putting they keep putting the questions out there because like they they’re trying to resolve their uncertainty basically. Cause I you know, like with coaching, I’ve coached people who are definitely extroverts and definitely introverts. And

When you’re coaching an introvert, it can be very tough if they’re especially if they’re extreme one, because like they’ll just give you a yes no answer or it’ll be a very minimal answer. And they just sit in the silence. Like you don’t you don’t get like the same level of feedback. And so I’m I’m thinking that there’s probably maybe a personality anxiousness that’s coming out that that person. So

Anyway, maybe in a different setting, she wouldn’t be like blasting questions at them like they were in interrogation. Interestingly enough, that pretty much describes my first date with my husband.

We were sitting having coffee and he’s like, you know, like boom, boom, boom, one question after another and I’m like What what’s going on? I didn’t do it. I didn’t murder the person.

Betsy Kauffman (34:54)
That’s hilarious. That’s so funny.

Cindi Baldi (35:01)
What leadership

team dysfunction do you think gets mislabeled the most as like a a personality problem?

Betsy Kauffman (35:08)
I might say decision making.

Cindi Baldi (35:12)
Mm.

Yeah, I think you I can totally see that.

Betsy Kauffman (35:14)
Yeah, because a lot of times if we think people just can’t make a decision, it may not be the actual person. It may be the environment or how we’ve set up the decision making. I actually have a a leader that I I was coaching. I’m not coaching anymore. It’s interesting dynamic, this whole leadership team. And we we came in and we started doing some decision-making work. And we actually created a decision-making framework. And when does this leader need to be involved? And when do they not need to be involved? and that leader struggled with like living into the rules that we had created.

Like, okay, if it has anything to do with the, you know, with with your team and performance and all of that, then I’m gonna let you do it and I don’t need to be involved. That wasn’t the case. You know, if it has anything to do with how you’re running a project and if it’s not, you know, part of the larger board meeting setting, you guys go, you run with it. And like that didn’t seem to be the case either. Right. And so we had created a framework and, you know, hoping that we could help because it’s the problem was truly the leader.

He struggled with allowing his team to make decisions and being okay with the decisions that they made. He wanted to be in the middle of all of it. And so we created the framework, hoping that that’s the framework system would help and come to find out that the rest of the leadership team love the framework, love the system. They were able to follow it. We they put it up everywhere. Like this is where I make decisions. This is where you make decisions. And it was the actual leader that couldn’t live with the own framework that we put in place.

So I kind of answered your question a little bit differently because I do have I mean, that is a hard one. Decision making is a hard one. And I think as a leader, you have to decide like how much do you want to be involved in something and how much can you not be involved in it? And do I trust my team and my peers to make the right decisions and to learn? If if a decision doesn’t go well and something happens, am I okay with that? Or do I need to work on my own?

Like, how do I work in in in decision making as a as a leader. So I think that’s a hard one because that’s when we say is is it a system and a team problem or is it an actual individual person problem? Yeah.

Cindi Baldi (37:17)
No, I’m just I’m just sitting here thinking about that. I do I agree with you. I think that that’s probably a good source for mislabeling when it’s decision making. You know, because people read so much more into that. They read that you don’t think I’m capable or you don’t trust me or that you’re overly controlling. And maybe it’s actually just that that person feels like the team is behind. Yeah.

Or that they’re looking at it and they’re like, I don’t wanna overbur I’ve seen this one a lot. I don’t want to overburden them. Right. So I’m picking up and doing some of the work, but then it looks like I can’t make a decision because I’m too busy doing something else. Or or I or

Betsy Kauffman (37:59)
I unmake decisions, we make a decision. We call her here’s a decision. And then I go back and I unmake it. I see that a lot too as well. Because for whatever reason, when that decision was made, it wasn’t fully vetted, it wasn’t fully aligned on, it wasn’t fully agreed upon. And they they go back behind it and change it. And that could be because there’s a fear of conflict or trust or whatever it is.

Cindi Baldi (38:24)
Yeah. Or just now this this is a personality trait, but it it could also just be a high level of anxiety that that person has. Yep. But it really it’s really a them issue. It’s really I mean, in fact, you know, I won’t say all issues are them issues, but it it does seem like a lot of the time with bad or messy behavior, it’s usually somebody bringing some some baggage into the situation all on their own.

Betsy Kauffman (38:55)
Yeah. Yeah, it’s funny. It’s kind of how my book was crafted or the idea was generated. so I was getting tapped by a lot of senior leaders and board members to say, Okay, could you come in and work with this one leader? Because there was something broken about them, right? And when we’d start to talk about it, and you come in and do some one on one coaching, and I want you to fix this part of them. Executive presence, decision making.

Being more strategic. I mean, you name it, communication, collaboration, all the different things that we talk about. But when I when I would come in and I’d start to ask questions about, tell me about the rest of the leaders, tell me about the people that are in the rest of the leadership team, tell me about how the group functions, it started to turn into, well, yeah, but all the other leaders kind of maybe need some one-on-one coaching too, because we’re struggling, right? it’s maybe not just that one person. And, you know, we probably need to figure out how to work better together as a team, but

What has always happened is typically as somebody will say to me, come in and work with this one leader, and then it ends up expanding. It expands into doing one on one coaching with the whole team and doing development with the with the entire team because we realize it’s not that one person, right? And whatever that executive thought was broken is truly a bigger pace and a bigger picture than just that one person not having whatever trait that they’re looking for that they want more of or that they want less of in that person. And so I think Yeah.

To your point, it comes from a an executive that says, I gotta go fix this person. I gotta go help this person be something different than I want them to be. But then have you really created the environment to make them successful? And sometimes I mean, we all have character, like we all have a skills that we need to work on and develop. Nobody’s perfect. So it’s not like, you know, like like that exactly

Cindi Baldi (40:42)
There’s always underlying stuff in there.

Betsy Kauffman (40:43)
Yeah, yeah. But it’s more so than just that one thing, you know. But they they tend to hone in on it and to say, if we could just help this person be a little bit more executive in their presence and working with, you know, the board or whatever, if we could just help them learn how to communicate better, things will be perfect. We’ll have fixed them. Well, they’re not broken. People aren’t broken. And it could be that they need some development and some professional development, but usually nine times out of ten is that and how we created the system to also support them as leaders. And that’s and that’s where the book came from. Over and over and over again. Right.

Cindi Baldi (41:19)
And I find that you it’s very hard when the system is messed up, it’s very hard to actually see what because to your point, like it like the system can make it look like the person has problems that they don’t actually have. Right. And so until you clear out the system, you don’t really know what you’re working with for the individual who inevitably has things that they could probably work on because we all have

Betsy Kauffman (41:45)
We all do. We all do. Absolutely.

Cindi Baldi (41:48)
Okay.

If a leadership team could agree on only three rules for how they’re going to operate together, which yeah.

Betsy Kauffman (41:56)
Okay. How we’re gonna make decisions. Number one, how we’re gonna have healthy, productive conflict, which leads to con conversations, right?

Cindi Baldi (42:11)
These are good.

Betsy Kauffman (42:11)
Yep. and then how we’re going to actually focus. And I I I I talk about focus. We haven’t talked a lot about that, but there’s just so many things that come at leadership teams and at companies, and like

We’re chasing shiny objects, we’re all over the place. It’s it’s it’s a real problem and we can’t I mean

Cindi Baldi (42:32)
Yeah. The communication is coming at you in all different directions, like

Betsy Kauffman (42:37)
And we we chase we’re like little kids in a soccer field chasing a soccer vulture, like, we’re gonna go do this and we gotta go do this and we gotta go do that. If you can, as a leadership team, come together and say, this is what we’re focusing on for the year, for the quarter, we will adapt, but we’re gonna kind of try to stay the course for at least a quarter. Like you will be amazed and we’re gonna communicate it and we’re gonna hold steadfast with it, and we’re gonna hold steadfast with it with our teams. That is all that teams and people want.

Tell me what I need to be working on. Why is it important to me? And why is it important to the company? And don’t continue to change course. I see so many companies. We’re gonna do this and then we’re gonna go do this and we’re gonna do that. just kidding. Next month. Now we’re gonna go do this. And then we’re gonna go focus on that. And then we’re gonna do this. And like, I mean, the amount of time and money and energy that is wasted by just changing direction and not staying the course and not being clear in your communication is absolutely critical. So I think I.

I took your question and like went down my little soapbox and I apologize. But it it would be decision making, having healthy conflict and conversation and and focus would be my top three things.

Cindi Baldi (43:40)
I I like that. I like the focus one. We haven’t talked much about that one.

Betsy Kauffman (43:44)
It’s a problem in many, many, many companies. And like I said, it’s it becomes this thing where when you can’t focus as a leadership team, what in the world are your team supposed to do? Think about that trickle-down effect, right? Because I’m being told I have to do this, I’m being told that you’re being told that you’re gonna do this, and we’re supposed to be working together. I mean, my goodness, there’s so much confusion as to what it is that we’re supposed to be doing that if we can focus up here and be very clear and communicate it and continue to keep course.

you will actually get more accomplished. And and it’s just, you know, I mean, that’s just human like like knowledge, I guess, at this point. But we we struggle with it because there’s so many things coming at us.

Cindi Baldi (44:22)
It’s kind of a bull whip effect. I mean, we usually think about like a bull whip effect in terms of like scheduling, right? Like D Anderson, I you know, I’ve I’ve been a patient there, so I can tell you MD Anderson, they’ve actually come a long way since. So this is back in 2007. If you got there in the morning, everything would run on time. If you were getting there past noon, you were gonna be waiting three hours for the same appointment.

And and so it’s usually because it’s like as each person doesn’t show up on time, they get further and further behind. But the same thing happens with the focus. If the top leadership team isn’t focused, there’s like this escalating spiral because the people down below already don’t have perfect information. Right. They already have more uncertainty in terms of like what leadership is doing just because they’re not in the meetings and they don’t they’re not participating.

And so if the leadership team doesn’t come out pretty tightly organized and communicating tightly what they’re doing and stay focused,

Betsy Kauffman (45:23)
Yeah.

Cindi Baldi (45:23)
then everybody is drifting even more so than they would have normally.

Betsy Kauffman (45:28)
And if they don’t agree. So if they’re in the meeting, they say, Yeah, we’re going to focus on these three things, but one layer goes, Yeah, no, we’re not. I’m going to go over in this direction, which happens quite a bit. And they direct their team to go in that direction. There you go. You’ve already started. So so I think with that dis with that focus, it becomes alignment. Like how do we align? How do we agree? And how do we make sure we walk out and we still say and do exactly what we said we were going to say and do in that strategy session or in that whatever session it is that you you decided what your focus areas are.

Cindi Baldi (45:57)
All right, last question. What is something you believed about fixing dysfunctional leadership teams ten years ago, but you no longer believe it?

Betsy Kauffman (46:06)
I think that it was you just have to do whatever the the let’s say if we say C suite, the CEO says. CEO is in charge, right? And whatever they say we’re gonna do, that was probably what I believed 10 years ago. I mean, I have to try and think about where I was 10 years ago. or the C CEO knows best, right? no, now I mean it is it is a team, it is a team effort, right? And it’s a group effort and it’s a focused intentional effort. And everybody has to understand that.

They really need each of the each of their peers to make it be successful. And it’s not just a CEO that has to set this up for success. It’s the actual all the people coming to the to the table together.

Cindi Baldi (46:46)
I think that’s a really good one. I I think that what you’re kind of tapping into is what I it it relates to like prisoners becoming institutionalized. And I don’t mean it to be like that negative of a an analogy, but I think when you’re lower in organizations, like you kind of get institutionalized to just following because that’s technically what organizations want you to do.

I see it a lot when you have people who then rise up and then they’re in the meetings and they’re still carrying like that same set of assumptions about following that they had when they were lower, but like, hey, like you’re now at the top. Like you’re not supposed to be following. You’re supposed to be figuring out where the path is. Right. Right. But it takes a while for people to come out of that.

Betsy Kauffman (47:39)
It does. And I think it also it’s a lot about the culture, right? Do you allow your folks to come up and and do they have the space and the comfort to to say what they want to say? and you know, a lot of times again, I’m working with this client and there’s a lot of folks that are kind of in that middle leadership level and they they’re just they’re frustrated and they’re sitting here and they’re like, Can I say something? Can I do something? And I’m like, Why would you not? Why would you not? If you have an idea of how we’re gonna make this better, then we need to have the conversation and we need to be able to bring it to the bring it to the leaders.

And so being having that culture to open the door to allow those folks, because that’s that’s your next set of C-suite, right? When those folks can actually bring their really good ideas and they’re watching the trains, you know, coming down the tracks and they’re gonna hit something. And they can actually be like, okay, stop. Like let’s let’s look at this and let’s have a conversation.

I think that is what’s critical in leadership is making sure you’ve created that environment where people who care deeply and want to do something different feel like they have a a voice and a place at the table and can actually talk about it and can bring up things that are not comfortable and like we’re we’re we’re moving things all over, we don’t have focus, we don’t have strategy or whatever it is. So I do think that is, you know, that is the the bigger piece of it too, is how do you make sure you’ve got the culture where people want to speak up and they wanna talk and then they and they then they will rise up to the occasion.

Cindi Baldi (49:00)
Thank you for being on the show. I want you to have an opportunity to give one last plug for whatever you want to plug.

Betsy Kauffman (49:06)
Yeah. So the book is called The Fix. I think it’s a it’s it’s a book about a business fable about, you know, when when your people are not broken, but your system is, and being able to stop and take a little bit of look at yourself to say, okay, what have I created as a leader and have I put the right environment in space? so you can find that of course Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all all the good places it’s there. there’s also on my website, crossimpact.co, there’s a leadership alignment survey. It’s free.

It’s 10 quick questions to sit down and be like, how aligned is my leadership team? do we make good decisions? Do we collaborate? Do we communicate? How am I as a leader? Am I showing up? So it’s gonna take it’ll take some time to just really think about, you know, where are we coming together? And then at the end of it, you’ll get the results. And if you want to book in 45 minutes and we’ll just chat about it and talk about the results. And it can be a therapy session session, it can be a coaching session. that would be another great way to to find me too.

To really think about your leadership alignment, your leadership team and how do you come together better.

Cindi Baldi (50:07)
All right, thank you for being here. And I’m gonna give the I’m gonna give an a an ask to the audience. Let’s see. Favorite book. Tell us your like in the comment section, post what your most recent favorite read has been. It doesn’t matter if it’s business or self-help or fiction. We don’t really care. We’re interested in whether or not you’re reading for sure. Thank you for being here. We appreciate you. Hope to see you again. You made it this far, so please like, comment, subscribe, and go over and check out Betsy on her website.