Two intense days in Athens with a management team.
Meaningful conversations. Radical candor. Deep feedback.
No glossy talk about “team spirit” - but the real work: facing what stands between potential and performance.
Most executive teams never reach high performance - not because they lack intelligence or ambition,
but because they lack the courage to look at themselves.
They protect comfort over truth, status over connection, and control over trust.
Google’s research on team effectiveness pointed to five decisive factors:
Psychological Safety, Dependability, Structure & Clarity, Meaning, and Impact.
Simple words - but few teams embody them.
Because psychological safety isn’t about being nice.
It’s about being honest, even when it’s uncomfortable.
In our work with leadership teams, we go deeper - beyond behaviors and KPIs -into the architecture of consciousness and energy that drives team performance.
Using the BRITE Team Effectiveness framework from Leadership Circle, we assess and develop teams across five essential dimensions that define how collective energy flows:
Mindset - Do we share mental models, or are we trapped in unspoken assumptions and personal narratives?
Structure - Are roles, decision rules, and interfaces enabling flow — or blocking it?
Safety - Is there trust, truth-telling, and room for conflict without fear?
Information Processing - How do we think together? Are we capable of real dialogue, or do we debate to win?
Results - Do we turn insight and energy into consistent, meaningful impact?
When these five dimensions align, something shifts.
The team starts to breathe as one living system - not a collection of smart individuals, but a conscious field capable of sensing, adapting, and creating together.
That’s what we mean by High-Performing Teams.
Not just efficiency and clarity - but depth, awareness, and courage.
It’s not a state to achieve; it’s a practice to inhabit.
A space where truth becomes the highest form of respect.
So here’s the real question:
- What are the conversations your team keeps avoiding?
- And what would become possible if you stopped protecting comfort - and started protecting truth?