Are Leaders Undermining Organizational Objectives, Strategy, and Priorities? How to Assess, Align, & Improve Impact

Organizations invest significant time defining strategic priorities, setting performance goals, and communicating what matters most. Yet despite clear direction, many companies find themselves asking the same frustrating question:

Why aren’t we getting the results we expected?

The answer is often uncomfortable—but critical:

Sometimes leaders, even unintentionally, undermine the very objectives they are expected to advance.

This is rarely the result of poor intent. More often, it is a result of misalignment, inconsistent leadership behavior, competing priorities, or cultural habits that quietly derail execution.

Understanding whether leadership is reinforcing or undermining strategy is one of the most important steps an organization can take toward sustained performance.

How Leaders Undermine Strategy (Often Without Realizing It)

When organizational goals stall, the issue is often less about strategy—and more about leadership behavior.

Leaders may unintentionally undermine priorities by:

• Sending mixed messages about what matters most

• Avoiding accountability conversations

• Operating in silos rather than cross-functionally

• Overriding processes instead of strengthening them

• Rewarding urgency over strategic focus

• Failing to model the behaviors they expect from others

In many organizations, strategy is sound. Execution suffers because leadership is inconsistent.

How Do You Find Out If Leadership Is the Problem?

Leaders and organizations often struggle with visibility. The senior team may believe priorities are clear, while employees experience confusion, inconsistency, or competing demands.

To uncover the truth, organizations must assess beyond the executive level.

Some of the most effective tools include:

• Stakeholder sessions with leaders and key influencers

• Focus groups with frontline and mid-level employees

• Culture and engagement diagnostics

• Leadership assessments and behavioral insight

• Cross-functional feedback loops

• Execution and accountability reviews

Without structured assessment, leaders often assume alignment that does not exist.

Three Perspectives: What Are You Doing—and What Can You Do?

To address this issue effectively, it helps to examine leadership impact from three distinct vantage points.

1. The Leader Perspective (are leaders aligning or confusing?)

What Might Leaders Be Doing That Undermines Objectives?

Most leaders do not intend to derail organizational priorities. However, leaders often create misalignment when they:

• Prioritize their own department goals over enterprise goals

• Communicate strategy once, rather than reinforcing it consistently

• Avoid conflict or difficult performance conversations

• Fail to translate goals into daily behaviors

• Over-function, creating dependency instead of ownership

• Assume clarity when others feel uncertainty

What Can Leaders Do Instead?

Leaders strengthen organizational execution when they:

• Reinforce priorities through daily decisions, not just meetings

• Clarify expectations and define success in behavioral terms

• Hold consistent accountability across people and teams

• Ask: “What does this mean for our customers and colleagues?”

• Model adaptability, ownership, and alignment

Leadership is not what you say matters. Leadership is what you reinforce.

How Stakeholders Experience Leaders

Employees often ask:

• Do they mean what they say?

• Will accountability be consistent or selective?

• Is it safe to surface issues?

  
  

Peers and other departments wonder:

• Will this leader collaborate—or compete?

• Are they aligned with enterprise priorities?

Customers experience leadership indirectly through:

• Consistency of service

• Responsiveness

• Execution quality

2. The HR Perspective (is HR empowering or enabling?)

What Might HR Be Doing That Enables Misalignment?

HR leaders are often the stewards of leadership development and culture. However, HR can unintentionally contribute to strategic drift when:

• Leadership training is disconnected from business priorities

• Development is treated as optional, not expected

• Accountability is emphasized in theory but not enforced

• Leaders are promoted without the behaviors required to succeed

• Feedback mechanisms exist, but insights are not acted upon

HR often knows what is happening—but may lack the leverage or structure to intervene effectively.

What Can HR Do?

HR drives alignment when it:

• Anchors leadership development to organizational strategy

• Builds systems for accountability, not just participation

• Uses assessment to guide development and selection

• Elevates stakeholder input into meaningful action

• Ensures leaders are clear on expectations at every level

HR’s role is not simply to develop leaders—it is to help ensure leaders are reinforcing the organization’s direction.

How Stakeholders View HR’s Role

Employees often ask HR:

• Will leadership behavior actually change?

• Will concerns be addressed or ignored?

Executives often rely on HR to answer:

• Are leaders aligned or operating independently?

• Do we have the leadership bench we need?

Boards increasingly want to know:

• Is leadership capability strong enough to execute strategy and manage risk?

3. The Senior Leader / Executive Perspective (are execuives guiding or overloading?)

What Might Executives Be Doing That Exacerbates the Situation?

Executives set the tone for organizational alignment. Yet they often unintentionally worsen misalignment by:

• Overloading the organization with too many priorities

• Rewarding results without regard to leadership behavior

• Failing to address poor leadership performance quickly

• Assuming alignment rather than assessing it

• Communicating strategy without reinforcing execution discipline

When senior leaders tolerate inconsistency, the organization mirrors it.

What Can Executives Do?

Executives strengthen execution by:

• Creating ruthless clarity around priorities

• Modeling accountability and cross-functional collaboration

• Investing in leadership development tied directly to execution

• Assessing organizational truth beyond the executive lens

• Ensuring leaders are promoted and rewarded based on behaviors, not only outcomes

Strategy is only as strong as the leadership behaviors supporting it.

How Stakeholders Experience Executive Leadership

Employees interpret executive leadership as:

• Clarity or confusion

• Trust or skepticism

• Accountability or politics

  
  

Boards evaluate executives on:

• Execution capability

• Leadership depth

• Organizational risk and continuity

Customers experience executive alignment through:

• Quality, responsiveness, consistency

• Culture-driven service outcomes

The Core Question: Are Leaders Reinforcing or Undermining?

The most important question an organization can ask is not:

Do we have a strategy?

But:

Are our leaders reinforcing it—or quietly undermining it through behavior, inconsistency, or misalignment?

Leadership alignment is not assumed. It is assessed, reinforced, and sustained.

What Organizations Can Do Now

If you want to ensure leaders are advancing—not undermining—organizational priorities:

• Start with executive and stakeholder alignment

• Use focus groups to uncover frontline reality

• Assess leadership behaviors, not just competencies

• Build accountability beyond training events

• Reinforce strategic priorities through daily leadership practice

Final Thought

Leadership is the difference between strategy on paper and strategy in action.

When leaders are aligned, organizations execute.

When leaders are inconsistent, organizations stall.

The question is not whether leadership matters.

The question is whether leadership is helping—or hurting—what matters most.

Want to Assess Leadership Alignment in Your Organization?

Talent Authority helps organizations uncover barriers to execution, strengthen leadership accountability, and align talent strategy with business priorities through stakeholder sessions, focus groups, and assessment-driven development.  

Already know this is an issue, See Page 35 in our Solutions Catalog.

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