You've Hired the Right People. Just Not The Right People For Each Other.

Anyone relate? 🤦‍♀️

You've got two highly competent, highly paid people into the most senior of roles. Both A-players with stellar credentials.

However, now they're in, they're increasingly becoming locked in tension.

The founder built the company creating strategy in real time. Move fast, gather data as you go, and adjust on the fly. The newly hired CRO, straight out of a grown up company, holds an entirely different view. Their world views are diametrically opposed. Experience has taught them to navigate the playing field using totally different tools..

One person finds the other rigid. One finds the other reckless.

You've tried everything. Offsites, a facilitator, a coach, improved comms frameworks, various versions of 1:1s. You've even resorted to a whiteboard.

Nope, still tense.

Here's what I've learned across 20 years of sitting with, by and in leadership teams: personality compatibility and professional competence operate on entirely separate dimensions. You can have two exceptionally competent people whose thinking styles are fundamentally opposed. Their incompatibility has nothing to do with ability and everything to do with how their minds work, not least when under pressure.

Why the Fixes Fail

When two people clash, the instinct is to solve for communication.

Better processes. Clearer language. More structured conversations. Frameworks, decks and endless slides. 

You're solving the wrong problem.

They don't need to communicate better. 

They need to understand how their approaches differ. 

One person is systematic and the other is intuitive.

One leads through data and the other through instinct.

One needs certainty and the other needs autonomy. 

Neither approach is necessarily wrong. But the difference cumulatively will cost you a great deal in time, energy, momentum and money.

I worked at a company where the founder hired two seasoned C-Suite execs in one fail swoop. From the outset it was very clear that this triumvirate had a limited expiration date. Fast forward a year, and after a whole boat load of conflict, both had exited. All in all, an incredibly expensive exercise that could so easily have been avoided.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. So much so that it is the inspiration for the work that we do. We are on a mission to minimize this happening as frequently as it does. 

You need to look at the real problem.

Which is, conflict styles. 

Which basically means understanding how each person operates under pressure. What drives their responses. What their default behaviours are when it matters most. What they reach for when they feel threatened, blamed or pushed.

The founder, under pressure, often accelerates and centralises decision-making. The COO, under pressure, gets deeper into the data and slows things down. Both are survival strategies. Coupled with a deadline, those strategies collide.

Understanding styles matters. 

You get awareness. And with awareness, you get space. Space for all parties to understand what's actually happening. Space to acknowledge it without blame. Space, with mutual willingness, to make behavioural changes.

It's the difference between hoping they'll figure it out and giving them the tools to at least try a different way.

The Stakes of Getting This Wrong

Heidrick & Struggles tracks executive failure. 40% of executives fail within 18 months.

The reason is almost always fit with the role, with the culture, with the people they work alongside.

That tension you're feeling between your founder and COO? Your team feels it too. According to Gallup, 70% of engagement variance comes down to management. When senior leaders are working around each other instead of with each other, everyone disengages. A cost most cannot afford to absorb. 

And there's a secondary cost: your bandwidth. According to Myers-Briggs data, managers spend an average of 4+ hours per week managing conflict. That's time consumed by friction that could be channeled into scaling.

The Move That Matters

Diagnosis first. 

Bring in someone who can measure the actual conflict patterns and role incompatibilities. Identify what's real. Name the structure that would work given how each person actually thinks.

Then go do that..

Different reporting lines. Clearer ownership. Expectations built for how each person operates.

You're not trying to change anyone. You're positioning them for what they're actually capable of delivering.

The Philosophy Behind It

There's a quote attributed to Socrates: The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

That's exactly what this work does.

You stop fighting the broken dynamic: the miscommunication, the tension, the frustration. 

Instead, you build a new team structure that works with how they actually think. You position them in roles where their natural operating style is an asset, not a liability. You create conditions where psychological safety becomes the default, not the exception.

That's when change happens. 

Your Move

Have you measured the actual conflict patterns in your senior team? And if not, why not?

Take the Scorecard. Five minutes. Get a real read on what's actually happening and what it could be costing you.

https://www.activatehc.com/leadership-scorecard

#LeadershipDynamics #TeamDiagnostics #ConflictIntelligence