Most CEOs trying to get more from their leadership team are looking in the wrong place. Here’s what the Navy SEALs reveal about where the real constraint sits – and what to do about it.
The leader who thought he had B-Players
How can you increase the performance of your leadership team?
Drenched and shivering, Mike had a very similar question.
It was day 3 of the infamous Hell Week of US Navy SEAL training. He’d been assigned six men to lead through the exercises, but his team kept finishing dead last.
So the instructors piled on extra punishments, making Hell Week even more hellish for Mike and his men.
“I have a bunch of B-Players,” thought Mike. They lagged far behind the other crews – especially Crew 2, who were on a winning streak, dominating the competition.
How come that leader had been given the A-Players?
As if reading his mind, the Senior Instructor spoke up:
“Let’s swap the boat crew leaders from the best and the worst crews and see what happens.”
We’ll see how that story finished in a moment, but here’s why it matters to you.
Most CEOs know the weight of being the one who ultimately holds everything together – the decisions, the standards, the momentum. Your exec team is capable. But somewhere along the way, you became the load-bearing wall. And you can feel it.
Key initiatives slow to a crawl.
Opportunities are missed.
Growth slows.
Which means you’re likely having to push, co-ordinate and drive the strategic change yourself. It’s exhausting and insufficient.
The mirror question
The question becomes: how can you change this fast?
After all, you’ve probably found the usual tactics only get you so far:
Inspiring, Explaining, Supporting.
You work hard to get buy-in. People nod and agree… and still revert to old behaviours.
Challenging.
You dial up the pressure and follow up harder. But what was meant to be accountability turns into a strange mix of accommodation, nagging, and blowing your fuse.
Swapping out.
You decide you need “higher quality people” and go through the costly and time-consuming process of replacing several execs. Some hits, some misses. The team dynamic shifts a little, but far too slowly.
When none of these tactics work, your sense of what’s possible starts to shrink. You start to accept “this is all we can really achieve” and settle for a smaller vision determined by the current performance of your team.
This was Mike’s situation. His team (Crew 6) was losing every challenge during Hell Week, and he envied Jeff, leader of the winning Crew 2, who seemed to have all the A-Players.
But then the instructors threw him a lifeline. They swapped him and Jeff. He was now in charge of the winning team.
The next exercise was gruelling for all twelve crews. Mike’s new crew landed back on shore and claimed second place. Solid enough, although they’d slipped from top spot.
But when Mike saw who’d beaten them, he was astonished. His old team, the “no-hopers” of Crew 6!
The only difference? The leader. No longer him, but Jeff.
So, is it true your leadership team can’t operate at the level now required?
Or, it is that YOU are not leading at the level now required?
Whilst you may need to bring in new blood at times, the biggest increase in leverage comes not from individual execs, but from what the CEO expects, tolerates, and models.
When executives show up late to meetings, do you shrug it off?
When commitments slip, do you complain but tolerate it?
When a team member takes an action, do you chase for updates?
When someone presents half-baked work, do you jump in and fix it yourself?
The question that really counts: where are you modelling, tolerating or enabling mediocrity in your executive team – and what would it look like to hold them to a higher standard?
Why knowing isn’t enough
The real constraint on your team is not the individual execs. It’s your own leadership:
- the standards you allow yourself to hold
- the range of behaviours you’re comfortable with
- how you deal with pushback from your team
- your default responses when results wobble
The problem: this is isn’t new news. You know it already.
You sense your leadership could be stronger, and know your specific limiting pattern – whether that’s lack of clarity and consistency, being too controlling and directive, people-pleasing and over-accommodation, or failing to hold people properly to account.
You can also see how your team has adapted to these patterns. That’s what’s limiting your ability to drive the next level of growth.
But insight alone isn’t enough to break them. Here’s what actually happens.
You walk into the meeting intending to hold the line, but in the pivotal moment:
- You decide you’re fighting enough battles. This one can wait.
- You’ve had this conversation before and you know how they’ll react.
- You know you’ve been cutting the same corner yourself.
So you say most of what you meant to say, but you don’t hold the standard. You soften, step in, or let things slide. You delay the conversation, avoid the consequence, or take the work back yourself.
And another quarter goes by.
This is perfectly normal. These habits – being liked, being needed, being the fixer – served you for decades. Which is why it’s almost impossible to shift them alone.
You need someone who can see your pattern when you’re in it, who won’t be convinced by your rationalisations, and who can help you hold the standard you claim you want but keep abandoning, until it sticks.
Your team can’t do this (you’re their boss). Your peers can’t do this (they’re in the same trap). You need a forcing function.
The next step
Every two months, I host a private working session – a Crucible – for founders and CEOs who are ready to move beyond the insight and make the defining leadership shift their team has been waiting for.
The shift rarely comes from discussion, alignment, or gradual improvement.
It comes when you make a defining move that resets how the team leads together – finally declaring and enforcing a consequence, for example, or structurally removing yourself from a key decision-making process. Made clearly, publicly, and without hedging.
In 90 minutes, you won’t discuss what should change. You’ll identify and make a move that permanently shifts how your team owns priorities, decisions, and outcomes.
If you’re running a substantial business and you recognise yourself in what you’ve read here, the Crucible Alliance is where this work continues – with a rhythm, a community, and a cadence designed to keep you moving forward.
Or if you’d rather start with a conversation, book a Preferred Future call here and we’ll look at what’s live for you right now.
