Cohesion Lab

Leadership Team Intensive for Trust, Alignment, and Velocity

Good people. Strong leaders. And still, everything slows down.

When leadership teams lack cohesion, progress stalls. Not because of talent, but because of misalignment, unresolved friction, and unclear operating agreements.

Cohesion Lab is a high-intensity leadership team reset that builds trust, clarifies roles, and establishes shared decision-making so teams move together with smooth, decisive confidence.

"We came in as a collection of strong individuals. We left as a team with shared language, clear roles, and real trust. The change was immediate." CTO, Series B Fintech Company

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The Challenge

You are experiencing:

🔹 "We are not rowing in the same direction"
🔹 Interpersonal friction that everyone feels but no one addresses
🔹 Unclear roles and decision rights
🔹 Misaligned priorities where leaders optimize for functions, not the enterprise
🔹 Avoided conflict that turns into last-minute crises
🔹 Low trust where people are polite in meetings and critical in private

This is costing you:

🟣 Strategic execution suffers as even good plans stall without alignment
🟣 Decision paralysis because unclear ownership forces full-team debates
🟣 Talent loss as high performers disengage or leave
🟣 CEO and founder exhaustion from constant mediation
🟣 Momentum loss because teams cannot move faster than their trust level

What Makes This Different

This is not a team offsite with trust falls or personality assessments. Cohesion Lab is a structured leadership team intensive that diagnoses real team dynamics, navigates live conflicts, clarifies decision rights, and establishes operating agreements, followed by a six-week implementation phase to ensure changes hold under pressure.

You leave with operating frameworks, not just insights.

What You Get

A 1 to 2 day intensive with a six-week implementation runway

Pre-Work (2 Weeks Before)

✔ Individual leadership diagnostics
✔ Team dynamics survey
✔ Role clarity audit
✔ One-to-one stakeholder interviews

Day 1-2: Intensive

✔ Trust-building foundations including psychological safety and conflict styles
✔ Navigate real tensions using structured conflict resolution
✔ Clarify roles and decision rights using RACI mapping
✔ Build leadership team operating agreements
✔ Define shared success metrics

Weeks 3-8: Implementation Runway

✔ Biweekly check-ins with the leadership team
✔ Real-time coaching on applying agreements in live situations
✔ Refinement sessions as issues surface
✔ Sustainability design to prevent drift

Core Outputs

🏆

Leadership Team Charter

Clear articulation of team purpose, values, and operating principles

📊

Decision Rights Matrix

Explicit ownership of decisions and escalation paths

📝

Communication Protocols

How the team meets, communicates, and shares information

⚡

Conflict Resolution Playbook

How tensions are addressed early and productively

📈

Shared Leadership Dashboard

Visibility into commitments, decisions, and team health

How It Works

Pre-Work

Week 1-2

✔ Individual diagnostics, team dynamics survey
✔ Role clarity audit
✔ Stakeholder interviews

Intensive

Week 3

✔ 1-2 day in-person session: trust-building, conflict navigation, role clarification, operating agreements

Implementation

Week 4-9

✔ Biweekly check-ins, real-time coaching, refinement sessions, sustainability design

Delivery format: In-person intensive in Northern California or at your site, with virtual implementation support.

Outcomes

Measurable Results

✔ Trust and psychological safety increase
✔ Cross-functional decision velocity improves
✔ Fewer escalations reach the CEO or founder
✔ Meeting effectiveness increases
✔ Conflict is addressed proactively rather than avoided

The Operating Shift

→ From individual performers to a cohesive leadership team
→ From unclear roles to explicit decision rights
→ From avoided conflict to productive disagreement
→ From surface politeness to genuine trust
→ From CEO as hub to distributed leadership

Before

"Meetings feel tense. People are polite but not honest. We revisit the same decisions. No one is clear on ownership. I am exhausted from mediating."

After

"We have shared agreements. Roles are clear. Conflicts get resolved quickly because we have a process. The team trusts each other enough to move fast. I am leading strategy instead of refereeing."

Cohesion Lab replaces personality-dependent leadership with shared operating agreements.

Who This Is For

Leadership teams of 5 to 12 leaders experiencing friction, misalignment, or trust gaps that are slowing execution.

✔ New leadership teams forming after growth, acquisition, or leadership transition
✔ Experienced teams that have drifted into dysfunction or misalignment
✔ Founder and leadership teams needing to reset dynamics as the company scales
✔ Cross-functional leadership teams struggling to align across product, engineering, sales, and operations

How Cohesion Lab Fits into the ALIGN Operating System™

Cohesion Lab is a targeted leadership team intervention within the broader ALIGN ecosystem.

It often serves as:

✔ A reset for leadership teams before scaling ALIGN OS™
✔ A corrective intervention when misalignment is slowing execution
✔ A foundation for Culture by Design™ and enterprise-wide alignment

Cohesion Lab focuses on team-level cohesion so broader organizational systems can function effectively.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why an intensive instead of ongoing coaching?

What if our team has serious interpersonal conflict?

Do we need external facilitation?

What is the time commitment?

Can this be done virtually?

What if we need support after the six weeks?

Ready to reset your leadership team and restore execution velocity?

Schedule a 30-minute discovery call. We will discuss your team's specific challenges, assess readiness, and design the right Cohesion Lab format.

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