Are we actually a team? Map how you lead together.
A structured session that asks a question many leadership groups have not faced directly: are we actually a team? The group works through the horizontal relationships that make a leadership team real, examining where they align, where silos form, and where they can better support, complement, and depend on one another.
Leadership teams are rarely examined with the same rigour as the teams they lead. Most groups of senior leaders meet regularly, share information, and make collective decisions, but the deeper markers of a genuine team, shared accountability, mutual dependence, and honest peer relationships, are less common than they should be. This session starts from that reality and works forward from it.
The horizontal mapping exercise is where the session does its most important work. Each leader brings a picture of what their team needs from the rest of the organisation. Those pictures, placed side by side, reveal the dependencies, the misalignments, and the silo-forming patterns that no individual leader can see on their own. The conversation then moves to the leadership team's own contribution to those patterns, which is where change becomes possible.
The session closes with a set of peer commitments: specific things this leadership team will do differently in how they work with each other. These feed directly into the Leadership Charter later in the day.
Participants leave with an honest shared assessment of how well they currently function as a leadership team, a clear picture of the horizontal dependencies and friction points across their areas, and a set of commitments about how they will lead across the organisation together.
Help a leadership group examine how it functions as a team, then agree how it will lead across the organisation. Score how much of a team you are, map where your teams depend on each other, and commit to what each of you will do differently with your peers.
Open with a direct question: on a scale of 1 to 5, how much of a team does this leadership group actually function as right now? One is a collection of individuals who happen to meet together. Five is a team with shared goals, shared accountability, and genuine mutual dependence. Ask each person to write their number privately, then share it around the room. Hold the discussion for a moment and let the numbers land. Then ask what gives each person that score, and what it would take to move one point higher. The aim is to name a pattern most leadership groups recognise but rarely examine, and the conversation that follows is more valuable than the numbers.
Ask each person two questions: what does your team most depend on you for, and what does your team need from the rest of the leadership team to do its best work? The first is familiar. The second usually produces a different quality of response, surfacing the horizontal dependencies between teams, the things that are nobody's specific responsibility and so fall through the gaps. Capture the answers to the second question on a board, as raw material for the mapping.
In pairs or small groups, work on two questions. Where do our teams genuinely depend on each other, and where do we currently create friction, confusion, or duplication for one another? And what is this leadership team doing, or failing to do, that feeds the silos in this organisation? The second question matters more. Silos persist because the leadership team has not had this conversation clearly enough, and asking groups to examine their own contribution shifts the conversation from observation to accountability. Groups share back, and you capture the friction points and missed opportunities on the board. Then run a brief whole-room reflection: looking at the board, how much of this is within this team's power to change?
Close with three questions to the whole room. What do we need from each other to lead this organisation well? What would need to change about how we operate together? What is one thing each of you commits to doing differently in how you work with your peers? Capture the commitments clearly, so they can feed the shared leadership agreement you build later in the day.
Use How We Lead when a leadership team functions as a set of capable individuals and has not faced whether it is genuinely a team. The group maps the horizontal dependencies between their areas, then examines its own part in the silos that persist.
Using this tool with a skilled facilitator means that discussions are focused, time is used efficiently, and the group moves toward consensus, making the session productive and impactful.
