The Three Pillars of Executive Dysfunction

Lack of Radical Responsibility

This shows up when leaders walk into meetings armed with problems but zero solutions. They point fingers at everyone except themselves when things go sideways.

I worked with a CTO who would never take ownership for missed deadlines. It was always the fault of "unrealistic timelines from sales" or "changing requirements from product." He'd present elaborate technical explanations for why things couldn't be done, but never once said, "Here's how I'm going to fix this."

Because of his behavior, his team also learned to make excuses instead of finding solutions. They also began to see the other departments as enemies, rather than members of the same company.

Teams will almost always emulate the behavior of their managers and leaders. It was no different here.

Too Many Politics (The "Me, Not We" Problem)

This happens when leaders care more about their department's success than the company's success. They think their function is the most important and everyone else should revolve around them.

These leaders talk strategy for hours but never discuss implementation. They pander to the CEO instead of collaborating with their peers. They rarely encourage theiry teams to work cross-functionally because they're too busy protecting their territory.

👉️ Do you have me-not-we leaders? And if you’re a CEO - have you paused long enough to think about whether you’re rewarding people for optics rather than substance?

No One Will Tell the Truth

This is the most dangerous one. When leadership teams operate from fear, truth dies first.

Leaders won't challenge bad ideas because they're worried about the CEO's reaction.

They avoid conflict and create groupthink. They whisper concerns to each other in hallways but stay silent in meetings.

I coached a team where everyone knew the CEO was about to burn out the entire engineering department with an impossible timeline. They all talked about it privately. None of them said anything directly to the CEO.

In the end, the company lost three senior engineers within six months, they struggled with recruiting because of the company’s negative reputation, and the CEO could not understand why he had never seen the problems until it was too late.

Step 1: Implement Radical Responsibility

Every leader on your team needs to go through The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.

Here’s the opposite of the First Commitment:

I commit to blaming others and myself for what is wrong in the world. I commit to being a victim, villain, or a hero and taking more or less than 100% responsibility.

And here is what Conscious Leaders do instead:

I commit to taking full responsibility for the circumstances of my life, and my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing. I commit to support others to take full responsibility for their lives.

👉 The core principle is, "I am responsible for everything in my experience."

When something goes wrong, the first question isn't, “Who screwed up?" It's, "How did I contribute to this situation?"

Any time I work with someone I’m coaching, when we tackle problems, we always go in this format:

1. What’s the problem?

2. What did you do to contribute to this situation?

3. How do you intend to fix it?

If you contributed to the situation in some way, you are not a victim - and this is good news! It means you can do something about it to fix the situation.

👉 ACTION: Get a coach or Chief of Staff whose job is to call out "below the line" leadership when they see it. Someone needs to have permission to say, "You're being defensive right now" or "That sounds like blame, not ownership."

Make this part of your leadership evaluation process. Promoting someone who can't take radical responsibility is like giving a loaded weapon to someone who's never been trained to use it.

Step 2: Kill the Politics

Start evaluating all your leaders on their ability to collaborate cross-functionally, not just on their departmental results.

CEOs, stop treating one department as more important than others. Your company is one body - every organ is vital. When you play favorites, you create competition instead of collaboration.

Celebrate when cross-functional work happens. Make it visible. Share stories in all-hands meetings about how different teams worked together to solve problems.

👉 ACTION: Create shared metrics that require departments to work together to succeed.

I’m a big proponent of CEOs setting the company-wide objectives, and then causing each department head to say who they need to collaborate with in order to get the initiative across the board. While not all initiatives require multiple teams to collaborate, most do.

Step 3: Build a Culture Where Truth Wins

Are you a CEO? If so, how sure are you that your team is honest with you?

Now whatever you think…dial that back about 20-25%.

Most CEOs I coach forget that no matter how good they think they are, their teams will never be 100% honest with them. This is evolutionary: the CEO is the most powerful person in the company. And if you think back to when we lived in tribes and villages, you earned yourself no favors insulting your leader.

Today, people still, by and large, choose what they say to leaders based on fear. At best, you have a collective of people who are honest with you, but try to soften the blow.

And at worst, you surround yourself with yes-men who just tell you what you want to hear.

👉 ACTION FOR CEOs: Be honest with yourself about how your actions translate to your team. Where are you doing things that can scare them? Where are you not self-aware enough?

Schedule regular offsites with a skilled facilitator who can guide vulnerable, courageous conversations. Use exercises like "If you really knew me..." to build authentic connection between team members.

Create psychological safety by modeling how you want people to challenge you. When someone brings you hard feedback, thank them publicly. When someone admits a mistake, focus on solutions, not blame. Apologize where it makes sense - there’s a whole Force Multipliers issue dedicated to this.

If you show that you can handle the truth, you make it so people are willing to give you the truth.

One of my favorite analogies to get my point across is the dynamic between a parent and a child: if a parent scares a child or gets angry with them, the child doesn’t necessarily listen more to the parent - they just learn to hide their actions better and become excellent liars. But if a parent keeps an open line of communication with their child and engages in constructive conversations, the child is more likely to be honest with the parent and go to them when they need help.

Want more operational content?

Check out Coaching Founder for over a dozen free, downloadable Notion templates to use at your company, and tons of write-ups on how to level up your execs, your teams, and yourself.

About Regina Gerbeaux

Shortly after her role as Chief of Staff, then COO, she opened her own coaching practice, Coaching Founder, and has worked with outrageously talented operators on teams like Delphi AI, dYdX, Astronomer, Fanatics Live, and many more companies backed by funds like Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz.

Her open-sourced write-ups on Operational Excellence and how to run a scaling company can be found here and her templates can be found here.

She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her partner Lucas and dog Leia, and can be found frequenting 6:00AM Orangetheory classes or hiking trails nearby.