This topic has bothered me for some time. Maybe its been on your mind too.
Why is it that despite genuine intent, and in some case, honest effort, true collaboration in senior teams is rarely fully achieved. At first glance, your team might seem to be working well together. Meetings are OK, decisions get made, and projects are progressed. But under the surface, something’s nagging you.
You start noticing nuanced signs that true collaboration in your team might be struggling. Decisions take longer than you’d like, buy-in is conditional and you get a sense that your team members work around each other.
What is going on?
Senior teams find real collaboration tough because of several interconnected factors: mindset, structure, and relationships all play a part. From different ways of thinking to cracks in trust, these issues build up, making deep and effective collaboration much harder than just personal agendas getting in the way.
Here are 10 key reasons senior teams struggle to collaborate and why these challenges run deeper than they first appear.
Different Ways of Seeing the World
Each team member brings their own ways of thinking and relating to their context. They bring their own mental model, how they see the business, its challenges, and the way forward. When team members mental models and ways of thinking don’t align, it’s like speaking different languages. Misunderstanding arise. Your team assumes they are working towards their same understanding of a goal, but their definitions of success may differ. Without alignment, collaboration turns into parallel working rather than true teamwork.
Jumping to the Wrong Conclusions
Not knowing and understanding each other’s personal styles also gets in the way. We all make assumptions about why people act the way they do. But attributing reasons for behaviour can be wrong. Instead of explaining certain behaviour due to situational factors, or a person’s circumstances, we attribute their actions to personal traits, beliefs or attitudes. Essentially, blaming their actions to who they are as a person.
Senior teams find real collaboration tough because of several interconnected factors
The classic example, I’m sure we’ve all experienced at some time, is perceiving a colleague who is consistently late to meetings and other gatherings as just being “unreliable”. If someone pushes back on an idea in a team meeting, you might assume they’re being difficult when, in reality, they may have a valid concern you haven’t considered. Senior teams, particularly those with strong personalities and high stakes, are prone to misjudging motives, leading to friction and mistrust.
Believing Collaboration Is Better Than It Really Is
Many senior teams think they are highly collaborative, but the reality can be quite different. Research conducted in 2001 revealed that while most teams believe they are working well together and their collaboration is effective, only 21% actually achieve outstanding collaboration. The gap between perception and reality can lead to complacency. It’s been identified how erroneous assumptions about team purpose and leadership can create false impressions of effective teamwork. This perception gap leads to assumptions that no changes are needed when, in fact, there’s room for significant improvement.
Poor Information Flow
I’ve gone on about this a lot before. It’s a characteristics of high performing teams. They intentionally share information in ways that directly adds value to the team effort. But in many teams, critical information doesn’t reach everyone who needs it. Unevenly distributed information and differences in speed of access become key barriers to true collaboration.
Sometimes this happens unintentionally. People assume others already know, or don’t think to share, or believe it’s not important. Other times, silos within the organisation prevent open knowledge exchange. Without a culture of sharing, collaboration quickly breaks down.
Rigid Decision-Making Structures
If decision-making in your team is too centralised or follows rigid hierarchies, true collaboration is stifled. Traditional assumptions about team roles and leadership can undermine collaborative decision-making. Especially if the decision is about a particular operational area, or where some specific technical expertise has greater weight. Team collaboration need inclusive environments, structured frameworks clarity about decision-making ‘rights’. When only a few voices dominate, others disengage. The best senior teams create environments where input from all members is encouraged, ensuring better decisions and stronger buy-in.
The Impact of Power and Status
Senior leaders often have strong personalities, and perceived status differences can affect how openly people contribute. I recently coached a new leadership team member who, while being very experienced, questioned themselves and the contribution they were making to their team. You may have noticed how perceived power dynamics plays out in tour team. Those with more power may inadvertently silence others, either because they speak first or because others hesitate to challenge them. True collaboration requires an environment where people feel safe to contribute, regardless of their position.
Speaking Different ‘Languages’
Different functions within a business develop their own ways of talking about issues. The jargon of their area of responsibilities. And businesses are full of acronyms. Specialised language and disciplinary jargon create barriers in communication. Finance, HR, and operations may use the same words but mean different things. Without effort to bridge these communication gaps, teams end up misunderstanding each other, leading to superficial collaboration because meaning is lost in translation. Imagine, if on top of this, you had a multicultural team.
The component parts of genuine collaboration and team effectiveness in order to achieve strategic speed are clarity, unity and agility.
Lack of Deep Trust
Interpersonal trust is now well recognised as crucial for breaking down silos and increasing cooperation. Trust isn’t just about believing people are competent, it’s about believing they have good intentions. Building team bonds and fostering a sense of community in the team is an essential element of interpersonal trust building. I can’t tell you the number of times I have been told by senior team members “if only we spent more time together and got to know each other better, our teamworking would be more effective.” If trust is low, or only based on competence, people hold back ideas, second-guess colleagues, or operate defensively. Senior teams need to cultivate trust actively, not assume it will develop naturally.
Leadership That Talks Collaboration but Doesn’t Enable It
Senior leaders set the tone. If they say collaboration matters but reward individual achievement over collective success, teams won’t truly collaborate. As the team leader, you have to be the number one role model of the behaviours you want to see in your team; listening actively, valuing diverse views, and encouraging honest discussion and distributing leadership. The notion of ‘ambidextrous leadership’ comes into play. We all have focus preferences, but this dexterity balances both a task orientation with a relationship orientation.
Challenges Don’t Exist in Isolation
A curious feature of these barriers to deeper collaboration is that don’t appear one at a time. They interact and amplify each other. A lack of trust leads to poor information sharing. Failures in mutual understanding lead to communication breakdowns, which then reinforce misaligned mental models. Power dynamics shape decision-making. Assumptions about others’ behaviours drive perceptions. Research has shown that beyond surface level self-interest, these factors intertwine and explain why so many senior teams struggle to achieve deeper collaboration beyond superficial cooperation. Tackling one challenge in isolation won’t work, you need to address the system as a whole.
So, What Can You Do?
If you recognise these patterns in your own team, the first step is awareness. Ask yourself:
- Are we really as collaborative as we think we are?
- Are different perspectives being fully heard and valued?
- Do we have a culture of trust and open information sharing?
As you will have head and read me say so often, the component parts of genuine collaboration and team effectiveness in order to achieve strategic speed are clarity, unity and agility. True collaboration isn’t about just working side by side. Clarity is about achieving clear, complete and mutual understanding. Unity is about achieving mutual commitment and uncompromising cohesion behind the team’s vision & purpose, it’s shared goals and it’s shared operating values and principles. The collaboration drives forward team agility with real momentum. So my question is how collaborative is your team really?
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