Why Your Leadership Team Won't Hold Each Other Accountable
Most leadership teams confuse being supportive with avoiding difficult conversations.
I had a head of sales who was consistently missing the forecast. Not by a little, by 20-30% every quarter. My head of operations knew it. My head of finance knew it. Everyone on the leadership team could see the pattern.
But when we sat in leadership meetings, no one said anything. They'd make eye contact with me, waiting for me to address it. In one-on-ones, they'd complain privately: "What are we going to do about sales?" But in the room, with the sales leader present, silence.
I kept waiting for the team to self-regulate. I'd read all the books about high-performing teams holding each other accountable. I thought if I just gave it time, peer pressure would kick in.
It never did. Every hard conversation flowed through me. I was the only one willing to name the problem in the room.
I call this the Peer Pressure Gap—the pattern where leaders hold their direct reports accountable but refuse to call out their peers. It's one of the most common dysfunctions I see on leadership teams, and it creates a bottleneck that prevents companies from scaling past the founder's personal capacity.
The Warning Signs
The pattern is easy to spot once you know what to look for. Complaints travel sideways to the CEO instead of directly to the person who needs to hear them. "Hey, can you talk to marketing about the lead quality?" "I think you need to address the engineering delays." The founder becomes a messenger service for feedback that should flow peer-to-peer.
In meetings, there's a conspicuous absence of challenge. People present updates, others nod, and the discussion moves on. The hard questions don't get asked—at least not until the founder asks them. Then suddenly everyone has opinions they'd been holding back.
When someone misses a commitment, the team waits to see if the CEO will address it. If the CEO doesn't notice or doesn't say anything, the miss gets absorbed without comment. Over time, the team learns that commitments are really just intentions, and the only accountability that matters comes from the top.
There's often a lot of supportive language masking avoidance. "I'm sure they're doing their best." "They've got a lot on their plate." "It's been a tough quarter for everyone." Being supportive and holding someone accountable aren't mutually exclusive, but teams often treat them as if they were.
Why This Pattern Is So Common
The first reason is that peer accountability feels risky. Calling out a colleague might damage the relationship. It might create awkwardness in future meetings. It might backfire if the CEO doesn't support you. It's safer to stay quiet and let the boss handle it.
The second reason is that many leaders simply never learned how to give peer feedback. They know how to manage down—they've had training, they've developed the skill. But giving feedback laterally, to someone who doesn't report to you, is a different muscle. Most people haven't developed it.
The third reason is that founders inadvertently train their teams to rely on them. When a leader comes with a complaint about a peer, the natural instinct is to fix it—to have the conversation yourself, to address it in the next one-on-one. Every time you do this, you reinforce the pattern that accountability flows through you.
Finally, there's often an unspoken norm against "calling people out." The team has developed a culture of niceness that treats direct feedback as aggression. In this environment, the person who holds peers accountable becomes the bad guy, not the person who missed the commitment.
What You're Losing
The most immediate cost is that you become the accountability bottleneck. Every standard that matters only gets enforced if you enforce it. That limits your team's capacity to whatever you can personally monitor and address. At $5M, that might be manageable. At $20M, it's impossible.
The second cost is speed. When accountability has to flow through the CEO, there's lag time. Problems fester while waiting for the next one-on-one or the next leadership meeting. Issues that could be addressed in real-time take weeks to surface and resolve.
There's also a significant cultural cost. When peer accountability is absent, B and C players can hide. The team's standards drift toward the lowest common denominator because no one's willing to enforce higher expectations. Your A players notice this—and they start wondering why they're working so hard when mediocrity is tolerated.
Perhaps most damaging: you can never step back. If you're the only source of accountability, the team can't function at a high level without you. That's a problem if you ever want to take a real vacation, focus on strategic work, or prepare the business for an exit.
How High-Performing Teams Handle This
The foundation is explicit permission—and expectation—that peers will hold each other accountable. This isn't implied; it's stated directly. "Part of being on this leadership team is calling out issues when you see them, even when it's uncomfortable."
High-performing teams create structures that make peer accountability easier. They use weekly commitment tracking where each leader states what they'll accomplish and the team reviews completion rates together. When someone's at 60% completion while others are at 85%, the gap is visible to everyone. The conversation happens naturally.
The key mindset shift is reframing accountability as support, not criticism. When I call out that you missed a commitment, I'm not attacking you—I'm helping you succeed. I'm showing that I care enough about your performance and the team's results to have an uncomfortable conversation.
Leaders on these teams also hold themselves accountable publicly. They name their own misses before others have to. They explain what happened and what they're changing. This models the behavior and makes it safe for others to do the same.
Testing Your Leadership Team
Ask yourself: when was the last time one of your leadership team members called out another—in a meeting, directly, about a missed commitment or underperformance? If you can't remember, or if it's been months, you have a Peer Pressure Gap.
Try this experiment: in your next leadership meeting, stay quiet when an obvious issue comes up. See how long it takes for someone else to name it. See if anyone names it at all. Your silence will reveal the team's true accountability culture.
Ask your leaders privately: "Is there anything you've been hesitant to raise directly with a peer? Something you've wanted to address but haven't?" The answers will tell you where the gaps are hiding.
Where to Start
The shift starts with you naming the pattern. Tell your leadership team that you've realized all accountability flows through you, and that's not sustainable. You need them to hold each other to the same standards they'd hold their own teams.
Create a structure that forces visibility. Implement a weekly commitment review where each leader shares what they committed to, what they accomplished, and what got in the way. Make completion rates visible to everyone. Let the data create the accountability conversation.
When a leader comes to you with a complaint about a peer, redirect them. "Have you talked to them about this directly?" If not, that's the first step. Your job is to coach them through the peer conversation, not to have it for them.
Model the behavior yourself. When you miss a commitment, name it publicly before anyone else has to. Show that accountability and respect can coexist.
Questions for You and Your Team
Before moving on, take a few minutes to reflect on these questions. The goal isn't to have perfect answers—it's to surface whether this pattern might be affecting your team.
When one of your leadership team members misses a commitment, who addresses it first—you or their peers? If it's always you, you've built a hub-and-spoke accountability system.
Could you take a two-week vacation with no email and trust that your leadership team would maintain standards without you? If not, peer accountability isn't strong enough to sustain performance.
What would happen if you stayed completely silent in leadership meetings when issues arose? Would anyone else step up to address them? Your silence is the test of whether the team can self-regulate.
Take the Next Step
If you want to see where your leadership team stands on accountability and five other critical dimensions, take the Leadership Team Assessment. It's a free 15-minute diagnostic that scores your team across the factors that determine whether you'll scale smoothly or hit the same walls repeatedly.
Take the Leadership Team Assessment
If you'd like help building a culture of peer accountability on your leadership team, I offer a free 60-minute consultation.
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About the Author
Bruce Eckfeldt is a strategic business coach and exit planning advisor who helps founder-CEOs of growth-stage companies scale systematically and exit successfully. A former Inc. 500 CEO who built and sold his own company, he brings real-world operational experience to strategic planning and leadership development. He's a certified ScalingUp and 3HAG/Metronomics coach, Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA), an Inc. Magazine contributor, and host of the "From Angel to Exit" podcast. Bruce works with growth companies in complex industries, guiding leadership teams through growth challenges and exit preparation. Reach him at bruce@eckfeldt.com with any questions or if you want more information or to book a call with him.
