Eight signs your leadership team is not aligned
The belief that everyone at the top already agrees is usually the first sign that they do not. Eight signs, and what to do about each one.
Bill Dickinson, D.Min., RCC
8 min read
Aligning with company priorities takes a good deal more than reading the strategy deck. It is the work of getting the leaders around you and above you to mean the same thing by the same words. And the belief that everyone at the top already agrees is usually the first sign that they do not.
Eight signs tell you a leadership team has never fully aligned. Each one has a move.
| The sign | The move |
|---|---|
| Ask three leaders where the company is headed and get three answers | Agree out loud on the one-year and three-year priorities |
| The same problems resurface every quarter | Find the root cause, then assign one owner |
| Nobody is fully sure who owns what | One clear owner for every function at the table |
| Meetings end and nothing was decided | Hold a consistent structure: priorities, the numbers, the top three issues |
| The honest conversation happens after the meeting | Model openness yourself before you ask for it |
| Everything feels urgent, nothing feels important | Choose three to five things for the next 90 days and protect them |
| Someone is in the wrong seat and everyone already knows it | Ask whether they understand the role, want it, and can do it |
| Decisions get made, then reversed a week later | Practice disagree and commit, then hold the line |
Why this is your problem, even if you do not run the team
Most leaders spend their energy leading down and almost none leading up and across. It is the more comfortable direction. Your team already grants you authority. Your peers and your boss do not.
But alignment at the top is the constraint on everything below it. If the leaders at the top are not aligned, nobody beneath them stands a chance of being aligned either. Your team will feel the contradiction long before anyone names it, and they will read it as your indecision rather than as a gap between functions.
The test that costs nothing
Ask three of your peers, separately and casually, what the company's top three priorities are for the next year. Write down what you hear. If the three answers do not match, you have just found the most valuable work available to you this quarter, and you did not need anyone's permission to find it.
What it looks like when you do it
You know you have it when your peers describe your priorities the same way you do.
Bill Dickinson, D.Min., RCC
Founder and Managing Partner, C3 Leadership
Thirty-five years spent alongside leaders in hard moments, first as a pastor and now as an executive coach. Author of Optimizing Self, second edition, September 2026.
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