In my work, executive team coaching between meetings means changing how an executive team decides, hands off and disagrees after it leaves the room, because that is where agreed priorities succeed or fail. It targets the team as a decision system, not each member's individual performance.
In more than 25 years working with CEOs and executive teams, the complaint I hear most often is about what happens after agreement: the team agrees on Tuesday and the same decision returns on Friday under a different name. Everyone nodded. Nobody owns the follow-through. The CEO thinks the issue is settled, the CFO thinks the COO has it, and the COO thinks it is waiting for an answer. The meeting was fine. The seams between meetings are where the cost builds.
What is executive team coaching between meetings?
The Center for Creative Leadership defines team coaching as a single coach working with a team of leaders, giving each member the chance to stretch beyond their current abilities. Its process begins with a thorough assessment of the team so that the coach understands the organisational challenges and the team dynamics, and then builds a coaching programme around outcomes such as greater self-awareness, shared guiding principles and stronger shared direction and commitment. I agree with that starting point. I would add a specific focus: the coaching has to reach the work the team does when the coach is not there.
That means the coach observes real meetings, then watches what happens in the days afterwards. Who acted on the decision? Who was told? Who reopened it, and why? The coaching conversations that matter are about those moments, and the team's own record of them is better evidence than anyone's impressions. A team can describe itself as aligned and still produce a trail of reopened decisions.
| Option | Unit of work | Best for | Main limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual executive coaching | One leader | A leader changing a personal pattern or stepping into a new role | Cannot change how the group decides; the leader returns to the same team habits |
| Executive team coaching | The team as a client | Friction between leaders, slow or reopened decisions, unclear ownership | Needs the CEO's visible commitment and honest access to real meetings |
| Offsite or workshop | One event | Setting direction, resetting relationships, agreeing priorities | Effects fade without a rhythm to carry the agreement into the following weeks |
| Architecture engagement | The leadership system | Gaps in decision rights, cadence, capability pathways and measurement as well as behaviour | Larger commitment; needs a sponsor with authority over the system |
The table is my own view, based on the way these options tend to differ, and it is a prompt for your decision, not a ranking. My piece on building executive teams that perform covers the broader team-building case, and executive coaching or leadership systems helps you decide between investing in people or in structure.
Where decisions break between meetings
That is the kind of record I am asking a team to keep. Bain's decision-effectiveness research, a ten-year programme covering more than 1,000 companies, reports a clear correlation, at a minimum 95 per cent confidence level, between how well a company decides and executes and its business performance. The finding is correlational, and Bain recommends scoring decision effectiveness mainly through employee surveys, so I read it as a reason to measure decisions rather than as proof that better decisions cause better results. It supports the practical point: decisions that are made and then revisited, delayed or escalated are measurable, and a team that never measures them cannot see its own seams. In my experience the waste falls into five seams.
- Ownership seam: The decision is agreed but nobody leaves the room as its owner. The cure is a named person, a date and the first action, recorded before the meeting ends.
- Information seam: The people who must act were not in the room, and they hear about the decision second-hand. The cure is a rule on who is told what, by whom, within what time.
- Authority seam: The owner does not have the authority to carry the decision through, so the matter comes back for approval. The cure is clear decision rights, written down.
- Timing seam: Decisions made on Tuesday cannot take effect until the next monthly review. The cure is aligning the meeting cycle with the decision cycle.
- Follow-through seam: Nobody checks whether the decision happened. The cure is a short, regular review of open decisions, owned by the CEO's chief of staff or the person who runs the cadence.
Notice that none of these is a flaw in an individual. A team full of capable people can have all five. That is why coaching each executive separately rarely helps: you have repaired the people and left the seams. My article on improving executive team decision-making goes further on decision rights, and what to do when an executive team is not aligned covers the symptoms.
How to diagnose the seams in your own team
You can run a simple trace in about a month, before spending anything. Choose five decisions from the last quarter that mattered. For each, find out who made the decision, when it was made, who was told, when the first action happened, and whether it was reopened. Ask the people involved separately, then compare the answers. The gaps between accounts are the seams.
- Count how many of the five were reopened and who reopened them.
- Measure the time from the decision to the first visible action. Ask whether the delay had a cause or just drifted.
- Ask each person who owned the decision. If you receive more than one name, the ownership seam is open.
- Ask the people who had to carry it out when they found out. If it was from a corridor or a message channel rather than from their executive, the information seam is open.
- Look at the CEO's calendar for the week after. If the CEO had to chase, the follow-through seam is open.
The trace costs little and gives the coach, or whoever helps you, a factual starting point. It also shows the team that the issue is a system issue, which lowers defensiveness. My Leadership Diagnostic provides a structured first look at the same question from a different angle.
Applying Leadership Capability Architecture to executive team coaching between meetings
Leadership Capability Architecture is the lens I use for this work. It treats the executive team as a part of a larger system, and the free diagnostic scores five structural pillars: the Alignment System, the Leadership Identity System, the Execution Cadence System, Capability Pathways and the Cultural Reinforcement System. Executive team seams show up mostly in two of them. The Alignment System covers whether the team shares priorities and decision rights. The Execution Cadence System covers the rhythm that carries decisions from the meeting into the business.
My 5D framework gives the order of work. Discover diagnoses the seams, using a trace like the one above and observation of real meetings. Desire aligns the team on what it is trying to achieve. Define designs the decision rights, the meeting cadence and the follow-through routine. Deliver embeds the new behaviour through coaching in the team's actual meetings. Drive spreads it down the organisation so that the team's direct reports work the same way. Coaching sits mainly in Deliver. Brought in before Define, it tends to produce insight without a structure to hold it. You can see the full sequence on the 5D Leadership Framework page.
CapabilityAI is my AI leadership coach, built on this methodology, and the page explains how it works for preparing a difficult team conversation or reviewing a decision record. I mention it as my own product, and it supplements team coaching without replacing it.
What changed behaviour looks like
Look for evidence in the places where the seams were. After a few months of good team coaching, I would expect to see the following changes, each of which an observer can check.
| Before | After | How to see it |
|---|---|---|
| Decisions end with a nod | Each decision ends with an owner, a date and a first action | The decision log or meeting notes |
| Decisions return in other meetings under other names | Reopened decisions are rare and reopened by the owner for a stated reason | Count of reopened items per quarter |
| The CEO chases follow-through | A short routine surfaces open decisions without the CEO | The CEO's calendar and the routine's own record |
| Executives discuss disagreements after the meeting in pairs | Disagreement is voiced in the room and settled by the person with decision rights | What the coach observes and what direct reports report |
| Direct reports hear about decisions second-hand | Direct reports hear within an agreed time from their own executive | A short pulse of direct reports |
Consider what each seam costs in practice. A decision that sits unowned for a fortnight delays every dependent action by the same fortnight. A decision the front line learns about late is executed late or not at all. A decision reopened three times consumes three meetings and teaches the team that agreement is provisional. None of this shows up on a dashboard, which is why it persists. The cost is spread across calendars, and each person only sees their share of it. The CEO sees the whole pattern, but usually as irritation, not as a measurable loss.
How to measure without fooling yourself
Satisfaction scores from the executive team will tell you who enjoyed the sessions. They will not tell you whether the seams closed. Measure the team's own decision record before the work starts and at intervals afterwards. Use the count of reopened decisions, the time from decision to first action, and a short pulse of direct reports on whether they hear decisions promptly. Add the CEO's honest account of how much time they now spend chasing. If the numbers do not move after two quarters, the intervention has not worked, whatever the sessions felt like.
Be careful, too, about attributing movement. Executive teams change for many reasons: a new hire, a change in strategy, a quiet quarter. Record what else changed during the period. I treat any improvement I cannot link to a specific behaviour change as unproven.
When team coaching is the wrong tool
Team coaching does not fix every executive team problem. If one member is not suited to the role, the fix is a decision about that person, and coaching the team around them delays it. If the structure is wrong, such as two executives with overlapping accountability, redesign the structure first. And if the CEO is not willing to be observed and to change their own habits in the room, a team coach has no purchase. My article on when executive coaching is the wrong intervention sets out the tests, and how to realign an executive team that has lost alignment covers what to do when the team has drifted.
The distinction I would keep
An executive team is not a group of excellent individuals who happen to share a calendar. It is a decision system, and the system is tested in the gaps between its meetings. If you coach the gaps, the meetings take care of themselves.
If your executive team keeps stalling at the seams, see how I work with CEOs and executive teams or apply for a conversation.