Four Topics, Sixteen Descriptions. How Leadership Teams Think They Understand Each Other.

Bernhard Nitz
Mar 18
4 min read

A board of four, a running transformation. The strategy was developed by a well-regarded consultancy, the programme is in place, implementation is underway. And yet the team has been stuck on the same cross-functional topics for months.

In one of the first workshops, I asked the leadership team to name the four most important strategic topics they still needed to tackle together. After a short discussion, four terms appeared on the flipchart: Operational readiness. Service. Digital transformation. Growth. All four had been identified, structured and anchored by a strategy consultancy during the strategy process. But you could sense that at least some different views were simmering beneath the surface.

Then I asked a simple question: "What do you think would happen if each person wrote one page describing what they actually understand by each of these topics – and what they think needs to be done?"

A short laugh. Then silence. One person said it out loud: "We'd end up with sixteen different descriptions. The four of us have never actually talked through these topics in depth – not without the external strategy consultants in the room."

The Problem Sits Before the Decision, Not Behind It

What that moment reveals, many leadership teams recognise from their own experience, often without being able to name it quite so clearly. A team agrees on terms and mistakes that for agreement on substance. The first happens quickly and can be demanded or imposed. The second rarely happens on its own – and certainly not under pressure.

As long as each person carries their own version of "digital transformation" (or any other strategically significant topic) in their head, conflicts arise, decisions stall or fail to land, because the foundation is missing: a shared understanding of what is actually being decided. This is not a motivation problem or a communication problem. It is a starting-point problem.

That this pattern is not unusual is confirmed by research on what organisational psychologists call shared mental models in leadership teams: teams that believe they are saying the same thing often operate from fundamentally different underlying assumptions – a finding well established in the work of Cannon-Bowers and Salas.

What Changed When the Topic Behind the Topic Was Named

As the workshop progressed, we worked together to identify what the actual bottleneck was: the understanding of roles within the board, and specifically how the team worked together on cross-departmental topics. From this emerged a shared desire for a common information base – a dashboard that would let everyone work from the same picture and enable a genuine shared direction. The intention: spend less meeting time on status updates, which a dashboard can provide, and more time on the things that actually matter.

What happened next was striking. Topics that had been stuck for months – including the definition of KPIs that had been under internal analysis for just as long without producing anything concrete – began to move within a single session. Not because the analysis had finally been completed. But because the team had, for the first time, spoken about what they actually needed and how to get into action – together, from the same starting point.

The team's first instinct was the classic route: analysis, survey, concept, sign-off, then implementation. I suggested something different: start with a simple prototype – perhaps just a single sheet of paper. Align on it within the board. Commission the analysis on that basis. Implement what can be done quickly, even if it is only two metrics at first, and then run the next iteration.

The chair's eyes lit up. He was on board immediately. The board is now working to simplified agile principles – without us ever having talked about agile leadership or agile methods.

A Facilitation Guide as a Working Tool

The approach we used in this workshop transfers to many similar situations: whenever a topic has been on the agenda for months without moving, when there is surface-level consensus but underlying disagreement, or when the next step is unclear even though the goal has formally been agreed.

The facilitation guide describes the concrete process in eight steps, with time allocations and notes for facilitation by the leader themselves. It is available for download below.

Download: Facilitation Guide (German)

When This Approach Doesn't Work

This approach assumes that the team is fundamentally willing to work together on a topic. When the real conflict runs deeper – in differing fundamental assumptions about the direction of the company, or in unresolved power dynamics – a different frame is needed, not a workshop.

If you recognise this from your own experience: a Sparring session can help identify the bottleneck in two conversations. No process, no agenda. You bring the situation. I bring an outside perspective.

Bernhard Nitz is the founder of transformind GmbH and a partner at Königswieser & Network. He works with leadership teams in corporations and SMEs across the DACH region when transformations are at risk of failing under the weight of their own complexity.