X-Model Series: Team
There’s a moment I’ve seen in almost every senior team I’ve worked with, when the mask drops and the group realises: they’re not really teaming.
They’re coordinating, updating, politely monologuing in turn, but they’re not solving problems together.
That insight is what led us to develop the X‑Model – to diagnose not only what leadership teams deliver, but how they deliver it. To understand whether their operating system is actually built for the complexity they face.
Teams that meet regularly aren’t necessarily teaming. This is at the core of Amy Edmondson’s concept of “teaming” – teamwork on the fly – which she defines not as a static state but as a dynamic, learning-driven process. Innovation and survival depend on fluid capability: the ability to form, align, learn, and reconfigure rapidly in-flight.
That’s what the Team dimension in the X‑Model measures: adaptability, conflict engagement and resolution, and collective execution.
This post dives into the third pillar of the X‑Model:
- Task – shared clarity of purpose
- Trust – relational capital and psychological safety
- Team – how well the group collaborates, challenges, iterates
- Traction – the ability to move and adapt with speed and intentionality
And Team is the workhorses’ domain – the engine that turns collaboration into real leverage.
Good people ≠ good team
You can have a room full of sharp, experienced leaders that don’t add up to a high-performing team.
We’ve seen it often. A senior group made up of functional heads, each impressive in their own right, but struggling to deliver as a unit. There’s little debate in meetings. Big issues get parked. Everyone’s polite, even warm – but you leave wondering what actually got moved forward.
Teaming isn’t the same as convening. And individual brilliance doesn’t aggregate neatly into group effectiveness.
We need to ask:
- Do they tackle ambiguity and tension together, or revert to their silos?
- Can they work through disagreement, or does discomfort get swept under the carpet?
- Is there genuine co-creation, or just status updates?
Teaming (the verb)
Many leadership groups confuse frequency with function. They meet weekly, they share papers – surely they’re a team?
Often they’re not. They’re working in parallel; aligned in PowerPoint, but fragmented in practice.
True teaming looks different. It means:
- Solving complex issues collectively – not just giving functional updates.
- Creating space to challenge assumptions – not just reinforce existing views.
- Surfacing and working through conflict – not avoiding it.
And it’s not a default state. It takes deliberate practice and social permission.
Collaboration ≠ consensus
One of the most common myths we encounter is that good teams always agree. But for high performance, healthy challenge is essential and disagreement is a resource.
We assess this in the X-Model by looking at whether a team can:
- Voice dissenting opinions without triggering defensiveness
- Test and refine ideas in real time
- Move through conflict toward resolution – not around it
These aren’t soft skills; they’re core performance capabilities. Because the real work of leadership teams is inherently complex, interdependent, and uncertain. If disagreement is off-limits, the thinking stays shallow.
What we measure in the X-Model
When we assess Team, we’re looking for signs of:
- Joint problem-solving: Is thinking done together, or delegated back to functions?
- Constructive conflict: Are tensions addressed productively, or left to fester?
- Intellectual challenge: Are decisions stress-tested, or rubber-stamped?
Our data helps teams see their current patterns clearly, giving them a map for building stronger ways of working.
Find out more about the X-Model and how it can help your team here.