How to Build High-Performance Executive Teams

Your executive team is costing or earning you millions every day through their decisions.

While some companies surge ahead of their competitors on the strength of their leadership teams, others watch their best-laid plans fail at the execution level.

Most CEOs know the difference lies in their core team—but building the right one remains their toughest challenge.

Let’s look at what sets successful executive teams apart, drawing from both the front lines of business and the latest research.

The 4 Pillars of Executive Team Excellence

1. Building Your Core Team

When building a world-class executive team, most leaders start by deciding which roles they need to fill. The typical C-suite positions—CFO, CCO, COO, CIO, CHRO, CSO—form the foundation. 

Your natural instinct might be to focus on candidates with flawless resumes: top schools, impressive experience, and track records at leading companies. But here’s the surprising truth: hiring the cream of the crop doesn’t guarantee a high-performing C-suite. 

While impressive resumes matter, they’re only part of the story. What’s more important is how well executives perform as a team rather than as individuals. The true measure of executive success lies in how they solve problems, make decisions, and collaborate with others. These qualities ultimately determine their value to your team.Consider the example of Microsoft under Satya Nadella. When rebuilding his leadership team, he specifically looked for leaders who could work across divisions and break down silos. His choice of Amy Hood as CFO proved brilliant because she did more than manage finances—she helped shape Microsoft’s technological direction. This emphasis on collaborative leadership helped drive Microsoft’s market value from $300 billion to over $3 trillion between 2014 and 2024.

2. Making Better Decisions

Once you’ve got your executive team and you’ve settled on its members, you need rules for how they’ll work together. 

Gibson and Birkinshaw’s research shows that good teams have clear guidelines about who makes which calls. Some decisions need everyone at the table, others don’t. 

The key is establishing clear decision rights and processes upfront. Start by categorizing decisions: which ones need full executive team input (like major strategic shifts or cross-functional initiatives), which can be made by pairs or small groups of executives (like decisions affecting multiple but not all departments), and which should remain with individual leaders (like decisions primarily affecting their own function). 

Then create simple protocols for each type. For instance, you might require that cross-functional decisions include mandatory consultation with affected departments before a final call is made, or that strategic decisions need both discussion time and a cooling-off period before being finalized. What matters isn’t the exact system you choose, but that everyone understands it and commits to following it.

3. Getting Communication Right

Good decisions come from good information. That sounds obvious, right? But it’s not just about having the right data or sitting in the right meetings—it’s about how teams actually talk to each other.

MIT researcher Alex Pentland discovered something we probably all intuitively know: the best teams don’t just talk during scheduled meetings. They have casual, unplanned conversations too—the kind that happen in hallways or over coffee—where real concerns and ideas bubble up naturally. Most of us have had our best insights during an impromptu chat rather than a formal presentation.

Pentland found that the structure of meetings matters too. Breaking into smaller groups before coming back together as a team can work wonders. In smaller groups, the quieter voices get a chance to speak. We’ve all been in those meetings where two or three people dominate the conversation while everyone else stays silent. Smaller breakouts flip that dynamic.

4. Handling Conflict and Trust

PPsychologist John Gottman’s research on relationship conflict applies surprisingly well to executive teams too. After studying thousands of interactions, he identified four behaviors that kill trust: criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt.

Look closely at struggling executive teams and you’ll spot these behaviors everywhere—the CFO who criticizes every new initiative, the CTO who gets defensive about project delays, the CMO who stonewalls requests for marketing data, or worst of all, the subtle contempt that can develop between long-standing rivals on the team.

Research by Jehn and Mannix helps us understand exactly why these behaviors are so damaging. They found that healthy executive teams need three types of conflict:

• Task conflict (disagreement about what to do) 
• Process conflict (disagreement about how to do it) 
• Relationship conflict (personal friction)  

But here’s where Gottman’s insights become important: when criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, or contempt enter the picture, they instantly transform productive task and process conflicts into relationship conflicts. A debate about strategy (task conflict) becomes personal when one executive’s criticism triggers another’s defensiveness. A discussion about resource allocation (process conflict) turns toxic when one leader stonewalls and another responds with contempt.

Smart teams build specific practices to prevent this destructive cycle: establishing clear decision-making processes at the start of projects, explicitly discussing how conflict will be handled, and having regular check-ins about team dynamics—not just project status. These aren’t just good habits—they’re defense mechanisms against Gottman’s four horsemen of trust destruction. Teams that maintain these practices keep task and process conflicts productive while preventing the relationship conflicts that can tear an executive team apart.

The Power of Partnership in Building Executive Teams

The hardest part of leading a company isn’t the strategy or the market dynamics—it’s building the right executive team. 

Every CEO we know grapples with this challenge, often alone. They read the leadership books, attend the conferences, seek advice from their board. But many still struggle to create that elusive chemistry that turns talented individuals into an extraordinary leadership team.

Working with an executive search and leadership advisory firm like Stanton Chase can transform this challenge in ways that surprise many CEOs. Beyond the obvious role of finding candidates, these partnerships help CEOs see their teams through a clearer lens. 

The most valuable insights often come from understanding what’s missing. Maybe your team is packed with brilliant strategists but lacks practical executors? Or perhaps you’ve built a team of outstanding individual performers who struggle to collaborate effectively? A skilled executive search partner spots these patterns and helps you correct course before problems emerge.

At Stanton Chase, we understand these challenges because we’ve lived them ourselves. When you need help finding great executives, developing their capabilities, or planning for succession, you’re working with leaders who have sat in your chair.

About the Author

Michael Lavoie is Managing Partner at Stanton Chase Montreal, with over 15 years of experience in executive search and organizational consulting in the professional services, financial services, and non-profit sectors. Before joining Stanton Chase, he built an extensive network throughout Quebec’s business community, giving him valuable insights into building effective leadership teams. Michael is known for his smooth, confidence-inspiring approach to executive recruitment.