ABOUT THIS EPISODE
A team of leaders is not a leadership team. Most executive groups spend their meetings sharing information silo by silo, defer every decision to the person at the head of the table, and then relitigate the whole thing in one-on-ones afterwards.
Host Ashish Kothari sits down with Alexander and Janice Caillet, co-founders of Corentus and two of the most experienced team coaches in the world. They walk through the two telltale signs that your team is really a working group, the collective work products only a true team can produce, and how one executive team cut 100 meeting hours a year while finishing its strategic plan in half the time by doing it together. What the top team does echoes through every cross-functional meeting below it.
For CEOs, executive team members, and anyone tired of drowning in meetings that decide nothing.
What You Will Learn:
1. Diagnose before you fix.
If the meeting is information sharing silo by silo, and the real problem solving happens afterwards in one-on-ones, you have a working group. Name it honestly.
2. Give the team work only the team can do.
The strategic plan, succession, board prep, culture change. Move information sharing to pre-reads and reserve the room for deciding.
3. Wear both hats at once.
Walk in as a functional leader and as a member of the organization's leadership team. Compromise stops feeling like losing when you are solving for the whole organization.
4. Have a move for the standoff.
Stop and name it, hear each side's perspective and needs, then build the solution together. Even half of that lowers the temperature.
5. How you meet is the culture.
Everyone below is watching how the top team gets along. Run one experiment this week and watch what changes.
Episode Chapters:
- 02:58 The clearest signs a leadership team is really just a working group: siloed updates in meetings and real decisions happening in side conversations afterward.
- 07:20 The core shift to stronger teamwork: shared goals, collective work products, intentional meeting design, and clearer decision-making.
- 14:52 Why every executive needs to wear two hats: representing their function while acting as a member of the enterprise team.
- 18:09 The RAFT self-awareness framework: how thinking, feelings, actions, and results shape the way leaders show up.
- 20:29 A practical way to move through conflict: pause, hear each perspective, uncover needs, and work toward a shared solution.
- 32:45 The strategic-planning example: how one executive team reduced ineffective meeting time and completed planning in roughly half the time by doing the hard work together.
Resources:
Connect with the Guests
LinkedIn: Alexander Cailett
LinkedIn: Janice Cailett
Company website:
Connect with the Host
LinkedIn: Ashish Kothari
Website: Happiness Squad
Book: Hardwired For Happiness
YouTube: Happiness Squad Channel
TEDx: How to make flourishing your competitive edge
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