Dave Stitt Bsc CEng MICE FCIOB FRSA MCC
Leadership team coach and content creator
April 2026

Real teams, real work and the discipline of joining up

‘Teams’ – that’s the theme I chose for April. Not Microsoft Teams but teams of people, and leadership teams specifically. The kind that have to work together when the stakes are high and the pressure is relentless.

I’ve been thinking about what makes a team actually function. What I’ve observed across 25 years of coaching senior teams in the Construction industry, rather than the aspirational language or what the leadership books say, is that most groups calling themselves teams aren’t teams at all. They’re collections of capable people operating in parallel, sometimes in competition, occasionally in conflict. This is where my work starts.

Silos are easier than teams

I row indoors. I compete each week in Concept2’s Workout Of The Day. Yesterday, I came first in my age category.

To perform at my best, I work with a physical trainer, YouTube rowing coach, chiropractor, physiotherapist, sports psychologist, kinesiologist, holistic dentist and recently with a yoga master.

I called them ‘my team’, but then I realised they’re not a team. They don’t work with each other, they each work with me.

Should I get them working together? Maybe. Though I quickly thought ‘no, that’s too complicated, too complex’. And there it was, in a nutshell. It’s easier to work in silos.

That’s the problem facing leadership teams in Construction. Siloed working is simpler – it involves less friction and offers clearer accountability. Until it doesn’t.

When leading a major project or business with thousands of people depending on direction and conditions, siloed leadership becomes expensive. It offers little but mixed messages, confused priorities and suboptimal productivity.

Small groups working towards common goals

In the context of my work, a team is a small group of people working together towards a common goal.

‘Small group’ – how many? This is crucial.

Years ago, I was coaching a senior leadership team. There were 17 people in the room and the MD said to me, ‘I want to increase the intensity and effectiveness of this team; how do we do that Dave?’ I had a view, though before sharing it I asked him what he thought. After a while he said: ‘We need to reduce the size of this team.’

The team became six people. They went on to nail it, with great organisation and delivering remarkable results.

Quite a few of the 17 were relieved. They didn’t really want the leadership responsibility, they just wanted to get on with their jobs.

My instinct then was no more than eight in the room. That’s been my heuristic since.

I work with six to eight people charged with providing effective leadership for big businesses and big projects in Construction. They know they’re at their best when they work together as a team. That’s the work – establishing and sustaining an effective team.

It’s a process and a rare art.

Alignment is not the same as agreement

Alignment – the word I hear most from teams. At the end of a session people share their big takeaways. Frequently over 25 years, it’s ‘that we are aligned’ which crops up most.

I’m not surprised. This is an aligning process.

Though I’m also a little dubious about alignment and here’s why.

I think alignment is on the weaker side of what we might call the ‘integrated’ continuum, with agreement on the stronger side.

In conversations, people subconsciously filter. When they hear something they can go along with, they say ‘I can go along with that’ and then declare ‘we are aligned’. When challenged at a granular level – a significant detail – it becomes clear they don’t agree.

In need of alignment, this lack of agreement gets stepped over. Until it becomes a problem.

When a team is in lock-step agreement, it is integrated. It has integrity, is complete, whole in and of itself.

Compared to integrated, alignment is loose and sloppy. It’s better to have the difficult conversation to reach agreement.

Safe spaces and straight conversations

Recently, I was asked how I enable top teams to grow and deliver.

My fleeting thought was ‘How long have you got? I’ve been at this for 25 years’, though I actually explained about creating a safe environment where they have straight conversations with each other about what really matters. On a regular cadence – from start to finish whether that be a project or a business cycle.

It’s one thing establishing joined-up team-working, but you’ve got to sustain it. Sustaining it is the point.

A colleague once said to me: ‘A one-off intervention without proper follow up is just entertainment. And we are not in the entertainment business.’ That was well over 20 years ago. Then I got serious about this work.

Unless you’ve worked with a qualified and experienced team coach, chances are your team has never experienced that safe space and those enabled conversations.

Stuff has probably been stepped over. People stayed quiet or blurted it out to the point of rudeness, with little in between. We are just not taught this stuff in business.

And if you’re sat round a boardroom table, it’s just not going to happen. The table is a huge barrier to open and honest conversations and hinders eye contact.

Project leadership teams and the complexity of joining up

Construction projects involve a bunch of organisations procured to deliver together. There’s an unstated assumption they’ll work together. They crack on.

In design, on site and up the supply chain there are thousands of people involved. Somehow, some people have to provide direction and create the conditions for all these folk to come together and get it done. Productively would be good.

Who are the people providing direction and creating the conditions?

In my experience, it’s usually, by default, senior people from key organisations: client, contractor, design, contract admin and towards the end maybe the asset user. Most of these senior people have their own personal and organisational drivers and they represent them with a passion. Looking after their own interests, they’re pulling in different directions. The thousands of people get mixed messages, though crack on regardless.

Occasionally, rarely, I get asked to bring the senior people together to form and sustain them as a project leadership team. They still have their different personal and organisational drivers, though abstract up a level, they have common project drivers.

Joining up and working together towards those higher aims and leading accordingly is what the thousands of contributors really need. They can then crack on with confidence.

When folk know where they’re going and the conditions are good, remarkable things happen. In my experience.

High performing is not the same as performing

I think there’s a lot of nonsense talked about high-performing teams.

A few days ago I asked someone what they meant by ‘high performing’ and they said ‘consistent delivery against expectation’. To me, that is performing.

Barcelona FC is (or was) a high-performing team.

I’ve been in industry for 50 years, the last 25 as a leadership team coach, and I haven’t seen one yet. Doesn’t say much of me as a coach.

To understand what it takes to become a Barcelona you have to see what goes on behind the scenes. Then try imagining that level of infrastructure and depth of coaching and practising ever happening in industry. It just isn’t. The pressures are different and won’t allow it.

Get a leadership team in industry to ‘consistently deliver against expectation’ – performing as an effective leadership team – and it’s like they’ve never known it.

In my experience their results are remarkable. That’s my work – enabling effective leadership teams. I’m proud of it, of them and of their results. Their results, not mine.

The opportunity in the room

When I’m coaching a project leadership team I look into the room and see future members of the Main Board. Literally. It’s happened many times and I’ve been around long enough to witness it.

For those people in the room this is a great opportunity to learn how people of difference, with different drivers, come together and form and sustain themselves as a leadership team. Over time they get to see and feel what it’s like to be in a joined-up leadership team and its positive impact.

Indeed, their success on this project contributes to their personal reputation for delivery. That moves them toward the Main Board.

When they get appointed to the Board, they know what a joined-up leadership team looks and feels like, and how to get there and stay there. That experience enables them to contribute at this higher level. Sometimes they go on to lead the Main Board. That Board goes on to become an effective leadership team and makes an impact – reputation, legacy.

What an opportunity.

Most people don’t get to have this opportunity.

Truth and process

If you tell the truth you don’t need a good memory.

And following process doesn’t cut it.

Those two thoughts sit alongside each other in my mind. Both are important when establishing a leadership team.

Teams need honesty more than they need harmony. They need people willing to say what they’re actually thinking, not what they think should be said.

Process can create the illusion of progress. Tick the boxes, complete the steps, declare alignment and move on.

Real team effectiveness requires going beneath process into the messier territory of trust, candour and commitment.

Bringing it together

Teams are difficult. They require discipline, humility and sustained attention.

Compared to Barcelona FC at their best, most leadership teams are about 15% effective. When they reach 40%, they become remarkable. It’s the same for their results.

The work is creating space for the difficult conversations, such as reducing team size to something workable, moving from alignment to agreement and sustaining the effort over time, not treating it as entertainment.

If you’re part of a senior leadership team in Construction you’ve already got significant responsibility. You don’t need more noise about what teams should be.

Perhaps it’s enough to pause occasionally and ask:

• Are we actually a team, or a collection of people in the same room?
• Are we together as one, or have we stepped over disagreement?
• Have we created the conditions for straight conversation?
• Are we sustaining this, or hoping one session with a facilitator will fix it?

If these reflections help you think more clearly about your own leadership team work, then they’ve done their job.

In May, I’m diving deeper into teams, it’s where ‘better’ can be found.