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You: I’m proud of the team. They’ve really stepped up.
Your boss: Yeah? How so?
You: They’re owning it. Helping each other. Calling out issues. Getting stuff done. It’s starting to feel like a real team.
(pause)
Your boss: Which team are you talking about?
You probably didn’t even hesitate before answering. And that’s the problem.
...
You may not realize it, but you are on at least two teams.
The team you lead—and the team you lead with.
Most of us don’t think that way. We default to calling the team we lead “my team.” We refer to the other one—our peer group—as “the senior team” or “the leadership team.”
Which, if we’re honest, we think of as our boss’s team.
Wrong.
Patrick Lencioni makes this clear in The Advantage.
“Leaders are not there simply to represent the departments that they lead and manage but rather to solve problems that stand in the way of achieving success for the whole organization.”
In most cases, the opposite is true.
“When members of a leadership team feel a stronger sense of commitment and loyalty to the team they lead than the one they’re a member of, then the team they’re a member of becomes like the U.S. Congress or the United Nations: it’s just a place where people come together to lobby for their constituents.”
It’s a simple but powerful idea.
Team 2 is the team you lead. Team 1 is the team you lead with.
Embracing that mindset is a cure.
A cure for siloed thinking, turf wars, misaligned priorities, slow decision making, bureaucracy, and swirl.
Siloed thinking is “my part works.”
It’s staying in your lane, hoarding information, and building up coordination debt—the hidden cost of not working across teams.
Turf wars are “that’s mine.”
When leaders defend their patch instead of solving for the whole. The political intrigue. The meeting after the meeting. Passive-aggressive infighting.
Misaligned priorities: “We’re not on the same page.”
Every team is pulling in a slightly different direction. One’s sprinting. One’s stalled. One is solving the wrong problem.
Slow decision making: “Let’s circle back.”
No one owns the call—or worse, everyone’s waiting on each other. More data is requested. Problems drift. Cans are kicked.
Bureaucracy or “check in with me first”
Process becomes a proxy for trust. Hierarchy matters. Rules trump relationships. Forms and formality prevails.
Swirl: “Haven’t we had this conversation before?”
Rework and rehashing. Stuff moves at a glacial pace. Ducks are lined up, the order is questioned, and the ducks line up again.
That shift—from leading your team to leading with a first team mindset—changes everything.
It pulls you out of silos and shortcuts toward enterprise success.
These six rules make it real.
#1. Lead with one face.
#2. Say the hard thing.
#3. Hold each other to the standard.
#4. Own the outcomes.
#5. Speak as one.
#6. Make it make sense.
Here’s what each rule looks like in the wild.
It’s easy to act differently between Team 1 and Team 2.
The power dynamics are different. You’re not the most senior person in the room anymore. The stakes are higher. The audience is tougher. Someone has a bigger box than you on the org chart.
That creates pressure: to posture, to protect, to play it safe.
But here’s the thing: consistency builds trust.
People notice the difference when you’re open with your team but guarded with your peers. When you micromanage one way but defer in another. When you show empathy down but act defensively across.
Don’t wear two faces.
Authenticity isn’t a performance; it's a pattern. And people are watching.
You avoid conflict because you’re nice.
You’ve learned the hard way. Say the wrong thing: to a peer, to a boss, and it bites you. So you hedge. You soften. You caveat. You wait for someone else to go first.
But here’s the thing: Silence doesn’t keep the peace, it keeps the problem.
Team 1 isn’t about being nice; it’s about being clear. Candid. It’s what Lencioni calls “mining for conflict.” Actively looking for the tough conversations that most teams bury. Because when problems stay hidden, so does progress.
That means naming the issue. Surfacing the tension. Challenging the thinking—early, openly, and in the room.
You don’t have to be rude, but you have to be real. Deliver feedback in the moment, not after the fact.
Team 1 embraces candor during the conversation.
This is a key component of operational excellence—setting standards, then raising them.
It’s hard to set a standard. Harder still to live up to it. Hardest of all? Calling it out when someone doesn’t.
But that’s the job.
Accountability isn’t just vertical.
If someone’s off track, say it.
If something’s slipping, step in.
Feedback—sharing concerns as unmet needs, and asking team members to step up—should be the norm on Team 1 and Team 2.
Holding each other accountable to agree on standards, especially when no-one else does. Especially when it’s uncomfortable.
Especially when no one else is saying it.
True team 1 thinking is about creating outcomes.
Not just for your function—but for the business. Team 1 leaders walk out aligned—even if they walk in disagreeing.
It’s stepping outside the hierarchy. Sharing in enterprise success, not creating silos and protecting turf. This gets easier when outcomes are discussed, agreed, and shared.
Team 1 means shared goals. Shared accountability. One scoreboard. One outcome.
You can still advocate for your team. You should. But you also own the tradeoffs. The compromises. The messy middle.
This is where many leaders slip. They nod in the room—then shift the story afterward.
“It wasn’t my call.”
“They decided.”
“We’ll see how it plays out.”
That’s managerial ventriloquism. You become the mouthpiece for a decision you don’t own. And your Team 2 hears that.
Team 1 leaders speak with one voice.
They walk out aligned. Not to carry on the conversation in the corridor, but to carry the message with clarity and conviction.
To own the decision.
Decisions made in Team 1 don’t matter if they don’t land in Team 2.
It’s easy to repeat the “what.” Much harder to explain the “why.”
But that’s the job—translation, not transmission.
Your team doesn’t need cryptic slides or a word-for-word recap. They need message discipline. Clarity. Context. Simplicity. Better yet—radical simplicity.
If it’s not clear enough to remember, it’s not clear enough to act on.
If the message changes by the time it hits the front line, it’s not a cascade—it’s a game of telephone.
Making it make sense isn't just about what you—or they—say. It’s what they remember. What they repeat. What they act on.
So: which team are you showing up for?
Gavin McMahon is a founder and Chief Content Officer for fassforward consulting group. He leads Learning Design and Product development across fassforward’s range of services. This crosses diverse topics, including Leadership, Culture, Decision-making, Information design, Storytelling, and Customer Experience. He is also a contributor to Forbes Business Council.
Eugene Yoon is a graphic designer and illustrator at fassforward. She is a crafter of Visual Logic. Eugene is multifaceted and works on various types of projects, including but not limited to product design, UX and web design, data visualization, print design, advertising, and presentation design.
