When a senior team is underperforming, most leaders look for external causes. The market is difficult. The structure is wrong. People are burned out. But in leadership coaching, we often discover that the real friction lies within the team itself, not in what is being done, but in what is being avoided.

Dysfunction is rarely loud. It is often quiet, hidden under layers of politeness and performance. Teams continue to hit goals, but slowly lose cohesion, trust, and speed.

Here are five brutal truths about dysfunctional senior teams:

  1. Dysfunction is expensive. It shows up in missed opportunities, high turnover, and poor decision-making. Coaching helps leaders calculate the true cost.

  2. Metrics can mask misalignment. You can meet targets and still have a team working at cross purposes. Therapy shows us how people perform even when internally fragmented. The same is true in business.

  3. Politeness can be poisonous. When teams avoid honest feedback, resentment builds. Coaching creates space for truth without blame.

  4. Ego fills the void where clarity is missing. In the absence of clear roles and shared goals, personal agendas take over.

  5. You cannot reorganise your way out of relational breakdowns. A new structure will not fix a lack of trust. Personal development is the real work.

In advisory sessions, we often hear leaders describe friction without naming it. Meetings feel off. Energy is low. Decisions take longer than they should. The problem is not tactical. It is relational.

Leadership coaching does not just improve performance. It repairs what is broken beneath the surface. It replaces assumptions with alignment. Silence with dialogue. Isolation with shared ownership.

The most effective senior teams do not pretend everything is fine. They talk. They challenge each other. They revisit how they work, not just what they are working on.

If your team feels flat, distant, or too polite to be productive, you may be facing dysfunction. The good news is it is fixable. And you do not need a dramatic reorg or expensive offsite to shift it. You need to bring truth back into the room.

That is what coaching does.