The Leadership Decision That Shapes Every Other One

The number one driver of organizational health is the strength of your leadership team. When that team is cohesive and committed to supporting each other and carrying the weight of leadership together, it makes it much more likely that all the other teams in the organization will end up mirroring their performance. But the opposite is also true. When they are dysfunctional, disconnected and not realizing their potential, the effects ripple everywhere.

If the leadership team matters this much, then the first question is not how to run better meetings or how to develop the individuals around the table. The first question is whether you have the right people in the room to begin with. Who is at the table determines how decisions get made, how culture is reinforced, and how strategy moves forward. And perhaps most importantly it models what a healthy leadership team composition looks like for every team in the organization to learn from.

Two common pitfalls tend to hold leadership teams back. Some are missing critical voices, which leaves decisions lopsided and confidence eroded. Others are simply too large, making dialogue shallow and accountability unclear. Understanding these two dynamics is the first step toward building a table that can actually lead.

When You’re Missing Key Voices

A team without the right perspectives is like trying to steer with one hand tied behind your back. Strategy discussions get lopsided. Blind spots grow. The group makes decisions based on partial information or spends too much time rehashing them when missing context surfaces later.

The result isn’t just slower progress. When key perspectives are missing, discussions start circling the same issues without resolution. Decisions feel less grounded. Over time, people inside and outside the room begin to wonder whether the leadership group truly has the visibility and balance needed to guide the organization forward.

That doubt shows up subtly at first: hesitation to commit, second-guessing of priorities, or quiet workarounds when clarity is lacking. But left unaddressed, it creates a credibility gap between the leadership table and the rest of the organization, one that even great communication or facilitation can’t close until the right voices are back in the room.

When You Have Too Many People Around the Table

The opposite problem is equally common: a leadership team so large that it can no longer function as a true decision-making body. Meetings become crowded, conversations stay surface-level, and accountability blurs.

Once a group crosses a certain threshold, the signal-to-noise ratio drops. Coordination takes longer. Side conversations multiply. The loudest voices win by default. In many cases, decisions are delayed not because they are complex, but because the group is too unwieldy to move forward together. Leaders often describe these meetings as exhausting - too much airtime spent on updates, too little on real decisions, and too many conversations that have to be revisited later in smaller settings.

Another common challenge is redundancy in function. When multiple leaders have overlapping roles, accountability becomes muddled. Staff hear different messages from different executives. Decisions get revisited because people are unsure who owns the final call. Over time, this overlap does more than slow down execution. It creates organizational confusion and erodes confidence in the leadership team.

Relational complexity also increases as teams grow. In a small group, it is possible to build strong, trusting connections across the table. In a larger group, the number of relationships that must be nurtured expands dramatically. With limited time together, those connections tend to stay shallow. The absence of deep trust makes it harder to engage in the kind of candid, high-stakes dialogue senior leadership teams need to thrive.

Research continues to show that team effectiveness is deeply tied to size and composition. When a group is too small, critical perspectives are missing and decisions lack depth. When it is too large, clarity and accountability suffer. The goal is not to hit a magic number but to find the smallest group that still brings the essential range of perspectives needed to lead strategy, financials, and culture. Some teams may need to grow to fill those gaps, while others will need to streamline to restore focus and speed. What matters most is that the team is intentionally designed, not simply inherited.

When You Have The Right Mix

When a leadership team is intentionally sized and designed, the difference is immediate and visible. Decision-making speeds up. Priorities align. Meetings shift from updates to problem-solving. Everyone understands why they are in the room, what they contribute, and how their role connects to the bigger picture.

Teams built with the right mix of perspectives do more than work better; they create clarity and confidence for everyone else. People trust the direction coming from the top because they can sense it is informed by diverse experience and unified intent.

That trust travels. The way the executive team operates becomes the blueprint for how other teams communicate, collaborate, and decide. A well-designed leadership table does more than improve performance at the top. It shapes the organization’s rhythm and coherence at every level. When the table works, the system works.

The Mirror Effect: Teams Follow What They See

If you want to understand why communication, decision-making, and collaboration look the way they do across an organization, start by looking at the leadership table. Every team, consciously or not, takes its cues from how the top team is structured and how it operates.

When the executive group is too large, unclear in purpose, or built around titles instead of perspectives, those patterns do not stay contained. Meetings across the organization become crowded and unfocused. Decisions drag. Updates replace leadership. People hesitate to speak up. Teams follow the model they see.

The reverse is also true. When the leadership table is intentionally composed - the right mix of voices, the right size for real dialogue, and the right clarity of purpose - it signals something different. Decision-making becomes cleaner. Participation becomes more balanced. Priorities become clearer. Other teams replicate what works, not because they were instructed to, but because it is how leadership shows up.

This is why composition is a systems question. Redesigning who is in the room is not about excluding people. It is about creating a table that others can trust, learn from, and mirror.

Make Changes with Care and Clarity

Expanding a team is always easier than shrinking one. Once someone has a seat, removing it, even for valid structural reasons, carries real relational and cultural weight. That isn’t a reason to avoid making the change, but a reminder to move with both clarity and care.

Be deliberate as you decide who belongs in the decision-making core, and ensure others stay connected through broader leadership circles, project teams, or feedback loops. Inclusion still matters, but not everyone needs to be in every conversation.

Once you’ve clarified who should be at the table, act decisively. As Claire Hughes Johnson writes in Scaling People, sitting on a re-org too long is like leaving ice cream on the counter - once it melts, it never goes back to its original form. Delaying action only fuels uncertainty and drains trust. When it’s time to adjust your structure, make the change clear, make it human, and make it all at once.

A Quick Gut Check:

Why It Matters

When the leadership table is sized and structured with intention, everything downstream gets stronger. Decisions move faster. Culture stays aligned. Communication improves. People feel ownership.

But when the table is too small, too big, or too fuzzy, even the best leaders end up spinning their wheels. The real starting point is to align on what your executive team is responsible for. When you know the work this team must own, such as strategy, financials, and culture, it becomes much easier to decide who should be at the table.

Designing the right leadership team is not easy work. It requires clarity, courage, and sometimes hard calls. Yet nothing else you do as a leader will ripple as far or shape the organization as deeply as getting this right. When the team at the top is right, the whole system has a chance to thrive.

-Shaun & Joe