Michael Sabbag

Not all conflict on an executive team is bad. Disagreeing over the right course of action is healthy and often necessary. It's when disagreement turns personal that trust erodes. But most teams don't stop at avoiding the personal kind. They stop having the healthy kind too. Here are 5 reasons executive teams avoid hard conversations even when everyone in the room knows the conversation needs to happen.

The thing that built your company is often the same thing driving your best people away. I once worked with the founder of an organization who had grown it past 50 employees. By any measure, he was successful. But he couldn't see what was holding his team back. In every executive meeting and in every one-on-one, he was the one making decisions. He wanted the details on every part of the business, then told each person what to do next. Early on, that instinct was the reason th

Your best executive hires rarely quit over money. They quit because somewhere along the way, they stopped having a voice. Here's the pattern I see over and over on executive teams: A leader joins excited to represent their function. They come in with ideas, a point of view, ready to shape direction and work with the team. Then reality sets in. They notice a handful of people actually make the decisions. Everyone else is in the room, but not really in the conversation.

Most executives I talk to feel pressure to "use AI" but can't articulate what problem it solves for their business. That's the first sign something is off. You don't need to understand how to build an agent or train a model. You need to know enough to ask: Is this making our strategy execution sharper, or is it just expensive experimentation? When a team pitches AI, don't ask about the technology. Ask: · What business outcome does it change? · What is the ex

Most senior leaders think accountability means following up until something gets done. It doesn't. That's micromanagement with a corner office. Real accountability, the kind that actually improves performance and strengthens executive teams, is built on trust. Without it, every check-in feels like surveillance and every question feels like an accusation. And the leaders you're trying to hold accountable spend more energy managing your perception of them than doing the act

Most executive team meetings fail because of bad design. I once worked at an organization where the COO ran our executive committee meeting the same way every time. He went around the room asking for updates. Each leader reported on their function. Discussion happened. Sometimes it was lively. But when the meeting ended, there were rarely clear takeaways. No commitments. No accountability. Every leader went back to their function and did what they thought was best. We e

Most dysfunctional executive teams aren't made up of bad people. They're made up of good people following a broken example. I worked with the executive team of a hospital where the CEO's leadership style was command-and-control. In team meetings, leaders only spoke when they needed to. Nobody offered ideas. Nobody challenged assumptions. Nobody collaborated. When those same leaders went back to their departments, they did exactly what they had just experienced. The resu

Most executive teams think they have a strategy problem. They don't. They have a priorities problem. And underneath that is a politics problem. I was brought in to work with the board of an organization that was eager to build their strategy. But before we could get to strategy, I needed to understand how this group operated. What I saw was a room full of talented, capable leaders. But each one focused almost entirely on their own point of view. Every conversation becam

Every leader knows trust matters. Very few leaders deliberately build it. Most executive teams assume trust will develop over time through shared experience, good intentions, and the occasional team offsite. Sometimes it does. But more often, teams go years operating at a fraction of their potential because nobody ever made trust an intentional practice. Here's what I've seen trust look like in action. I worked with a fast-growing technology company whose executive te

I once sat in an executive team meeting where everyone looked busy, confident, and productive. And, unknowingly, disconnected. The CEO went around the room asking for progress updates. Each executive spent about ten minutes walking through everything their team was working on. The energy was good. The reports were detailed. It felt like a well-oiled machine. When they finished, I asked the CEO one question. "What are your top priorities right now?" She listed them. Only about

Most leaders think misalignment is a strategy problem. It's not. It's a people problem that cost the organization in many ways. And most organizations are paying that cost without realizing it. I worked with a leadership team that argued constantly but never actually decided anything. Every executive meeting ended with unresolved tension and no clear direction. So, everyone walked back to their function and did what made sense to them. Here's what that looked like in practice

I once worked with an executive team that thought they were aligned. Every meeting ran smoothly. When the COO spoke, heads nodded. Decisions got made quickly. On the surface, it looked like a high-functioning team. But after the meetings, the hallway conversations told a different story. Executives were privately questioning the risks of decisions to which they had just publicly agreed. People felt they couldn't voice a different point of view during the meeting. And when eve

Is your L&D strategy still living in 2010? Most organizations don't realize it is. The signs are subtle but once you see them, you can't unsee them. Here are 5 signs your L&D strategy is stuck in the past:1. Your L&D team waits to be told what to build. 1. If your trainers are order-takers waiting for a manager to say "we need a training on X" then that's a 2010 mindset. Modern L&D professionals sit at the table with leaders, diagnose the real root cause of performance is

Most executive teams think they have an execution problem. They don't. They have a cohesion problem. I've worked with enough leadership teams to know the signs: meetings that produce activity but not decisions, priorities that shift with whoever has the most political capital, accountability that exists on paper but evaporates under pressure. And underneath all of it there is a group of talented individuals who are not actually functioning as a team. Patrick Lencioni ca

$1.2 million. That's what broken performance management was costing us every year. Not in consultant fees. Not in HR overhead. In turnover. When I became the SVP of Talent at Learn.com , the company didn’t have a performance management process. Some managers met with their employees regularly. Some never did. There were no annual reviews or structured conversations on development. But people were leaving. Constantly. And when we dug into the exit data, the story was painful a

Organizations say they want high performers. They want to only hire the best because “people are their greatest asset”. However, that’s a li

No matter what role we are in, we all have the responsibility to lead. This can mean a lot of things and look different depending on the sit

One factor that is critical in order for people to perform is tools and resources they need to effectively and efficiently do their job. In

Have you ever seen a star performer hired just to flounder where you work? In this post, Michael discuss the environment factor and how it i

What role does ones talent play in their performance. And how does that impact their perceived fit? In this post, Michael defines this facto