Most founders can tell that their leadership group is not working as well as it should. The meeting happens. People talk. Issues are raised. Then the founder spends the rest of the week stitching the company back together.
What is often missing is a clear diagnosis. Without one, founders try to fix the wrong thing. They add another meeting. They change the agenda. They hire one more senior person. The underlying pattern remains: functional leaders report on their areas, and the founder remains the integrator.
This toolkit is designed to make that pattern visible and actionable. It assesses five dimensions of leadership team health: team effectiveness, role clarity, decision rights, meeting quality, and founder dependency. Use it as a working document. Complete the diagnostic first. Then use the interpretation and priority actions to decide what to change over the next 30 to 60 days.
How to Use This Toolkit
Set aside 60 to 90 minutes. Complete the diagnostic yourself first. If possible, ask each member of the leadership group to complete the same scoring independently. Compare the results. The gaps between your view and theirs are often as useful as the scores themselves.
Score each statement from 1 to 5:
1 = Rarely true
2 = Sometimes true
3 = Mixed or inconsistent
4 = Often true
5 = Consistently true
Be honest. The value of this toolkit depends on accuracy, not optimism.
Part 1: Leadership Team Diagnostic
Section A: Team Effectiveness
The group owns company level outcomes together, not only functional outcomes.
Members raise and resolve issues that sit between functions without waiting for the founder.
The group can make meaningful progress when the founder is absent.
Disagreement is handled directly and productively.
Members hold one another accountable, not only through the founder.
Section B: Role Clarity
Each leader can state the outcomes they personally own.
The boundaries between functions are clear enough to prevent constant overlap.
There are no major company outcomes with no clear owner.
Leaders understand where their role ends and another leader’s role begins.
Role expectations have been written down and discussed, not only assumed.
Section C: Decision Rights
It is clear which decisions belong to individual leaders.
It is clear which decisions must be made jointly.
It is clear which decisions remain with the founder.
Decisions that should stay in the team rarely bounce back to the founder.
Once a decision is made, it is not regularly reopened without new information.
Section D: Meeting Quality
The leadership meeting produces decisions, not only updates.
The agenda is built around company issues, not a tour of each function.
Pre-work is sufficient for real discussion.
Follow-up is clear: owner, next action, and timing.
The meeting reduces founder coordination work rather than creating more of it.
Section E: Founder Dependency
Cross-functional issues are resolved by the leaders involved.
The founder is not the default mediator between functions.
Leaders make routine calls in their domains without waiting for approval.
The founder can miss a week without operational work stalling.
The team treats company performance as their shared job, not the founder’s job with helpers.
Scoring Guide
Total possible score: 125 (25 statements × 5)
105–125: Strong leadership team
The group is functioning as a team, not only a meeting. Focus on refinement, consistency, and preparing for the next stage of scale.
80–104: Functional but founder-centered
There is raw material for a leadership team, but the founder remains the integrator. The highest-leverage work is transferring ownership of cross-functional issues and tightening decision rights.
55–79: Meeting, not a team
Senior people gather and report. Shared ownership is weak. Meeting quality and founder dependency are likely the first places to intervene.
Below 55: High structural risk
The company is still running through the founder. Adding more meetings or more senior titles will not fix this. Start with role clarity and decision rights before expecting team behavior.
Write down your total score and the three lowest-scoring statements. Those three items should drive the next 30 days of work.
Ready to turn the score into action?
You now have a baseline for team effectiveness, role clarity, decision rights, meeting quality, and founder dependency.
Paid subscribers unlock the rest of the toolkit, including:
How to interpret the pattern behind your score
Priority actions for each weak section
Five working templates
A 30-day implementation plan
