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It started with a joke whispered on the project floor: “Thursday decisions die by Friday.”The brand was a household favourite, yet every senior-team call devolved into polite status slides and a covert race to mute.

Downstream, directors stalled, deadlines slipped, and competitors sprinted ahead. What looked like operational drag was really a leadership design flaw: an over-dependence on one heroic boss and a culture allergic to challenge.

During the kick-off of their Senior Leadership Team Accelerator, I rolled in a flip-chart titled Elephants & Mythsand asked eight executives to write “the story you tell yourself about this team – and the frustration you never voice.”

Minutes later the page overflowed: We rescue our own departments → We avoid conflict in front of the CEO → We agree in meetings, revise in corridors.

We read each aloud. Laughter mingled with hard truths; confrontation melted into curiosity. Everyone realised the real enemy wasn’t a colleague. It was the made-up rules, shared frustrations and unvoiced requests between them.

That moment triggered a 9-month overhaul built on the Let Go Leadership pillars of psychological safety, shared ownership and healthy conflict.

Nine months on, the company clawed back significant figures in delayed revenue, cut senior-meeting time by a third, lifted engagement from 61 to 78 and promoted two internal successors – without losing a single leader.

The Five ‘Let Go Leadership’ Shifts That Turned Bottlenecks into Builders:

1 | Step Back so Others Can Step Up Sofia’s light-bulb moment shared in Let Go Leadership says it all: “My team doesn’t need to step up; I need to step back.” When leaders answer first, teams stay passive. Hold the silence, ask “Who wants to own this?”, then stay out of the way. Track success by how little bounces back to you, not by how many fires you put out.

2 | Normalise Mistakes Innovation collapses when mis-steps carry career risk. Start a weekly huddle with, “What risk did you take or dodge last week, and what could it teach us?” Celebrate the learning, not just the win. When mistakes become shared data, smart risk-taking and speed skyrockets.

3 | Shut Down Triangulation – Coach the Relationship Nothing corrodes trust faster than corridor complaints. When someone brings you a gripe about a peer, resist the rescue. Coach them to have the conversation directly; if needed, mediate only with both parties in the room. Transparency keeps relationships and execution intact.

4 | Invite Objections – Literally Dependence thrives where challenge is absent. Add a rotating Devil’s Advocate seat to decision meetings. Their task: surface blind spots, stress-test optimism, and poke holes in groupthink. Rotate the role so everyone flexes the challenge muscle and no one is branded “difficult.”

5 | Rebrand Conflict as Creative Fuel Teams that debate well, innovate well. Swap the word conflict for creative tension and use a simple flow: State the idea → Share the data → Explore opposing data → Decide & Commit. After tough debates, debrief: “What worked about our clash, and what will we refine next time?” Every disagreement then becomes an investment in sharper thinking rather than a withdrawal from goodwill.

Lead a senior leadership team and wonder how you really stack up against high-performing peers?

Send me a private message with the word “Benchmark” and I’ll share a complimentary, no-strings Leadership Team Survey from our Senior Leadership Team Accelerator programme so you can see exactly where your leadership team excels – and where the unseen elephants are stomping on growth.