When Leadership Teams Compensate Instead of Coordinate

Some leadership teams do not slow down when something is not working. They speed up.

More follow-up. More clarification. More stepping in. More effort applied to keep things moving. From the outside, this often looks like commitment, even professionalism. Meetings continue, decisions are made, and nothing appears to stall.

But if you stay close to the work, a different pattern begins to emerge. The same decisions need reinforcing. The same clarity needs re-established. The same people keep carrying what the team itself has not fully held. Progress is visible, but it does not quite hold its shape.

What begins to surface is not failure, but strain. The system is still moving, but it is no longer holding itself.

This is the difference between coordination and compensation. And many leadership teams are operating much closer to the second than they realise.

Prefer to watch first?

Here’s the short video version of this week’s idea if you’d like a quicker way into the argument before reading further.

Coordination and Its Counterfeit

Coordination is rarely discussed explicitly in leadership, yet it sits at the centre of how teams function over time. Mintzberg described coordination as the mechanism that allows complex work to align across people, decisions, and time. When it is present, systems do not need constant correction. They carry their own weight.

In leadership teams, coordination is not simply about communication. It is about whether the work holds beyond the moment in which it is created. Clarity continues after the meeting ends. Decisions travel without needing interpretation. Tension is processed within the group rather than absorbed by individuals. Meaning is shared in a way that does not require reconstruction later.

Compensation can look similar on the surface. People respond quickly, ambiguity is resolved, and momentum is maintained. Nothing appears to stall.

But the mechanism is different.

In a coordinated system, the work is held collectively. In a compensating system, it is carried.

And what is carried must be carried again.

How Compensation Becomes Structural

Compensation does not begin as a flaw. It begins as a response to something the system cannot yet hold.

A decision lacks clarity, so someone sharpens it. A conversation begins to drift, so someone redirects it. Tension appears, and someone absorbs it to keep the meeting moving. These responses are often driven by the most capable and committed people in the room, which is why they rarely raise concern at first.

But repetition changes meaning.

What worked once becomes what is expected next. What was helpful becomes structural. This is exactly how Weick described sensemaking: patterns form not because they are designed, but because they stabilise interaction over time. Argyris showed how those patterns then become routines—ways of functioning that preserve continuity without exposing what is actually shaping the system.

Compensation is one of those routines.

It keeps the work moving. It also prevents the system from seeing where it is no longer holding.

Over time, the same people begin to supply what the system cannot sustain on its own. Clarity, continuity, and tension do not disappear; they become concentrated.

At that point, leadership is no longer shared.

It is being supplied.

The Shift from Responsiveness to Dependency

As compensation settles in, the system begins to reorganise around it.

Clarity is expected to be restored. Decisions are expected to be reinforced. Tension is expected to be carried. These expectations are rarely stated, but they become embedded through repetition. Responsibility does not disappear; it becomes uneven.

This is what Hackman was pointing to in his work on teams. A real team shares responsibility for outcomes. When that responsibility becomes concentrated, the structure itself changes, even if the surface does not. The group may still meet, still decide, still move—but it is no longer functioning as a team in the full sense of the word.

This is the turning point.

Compensation becomes dependency.

And dependency is rarely visible while it is still working.

When Work Becomes Uneven

What becomes uneven is not just workload, but leadership itself.

Cognitive load begins to concentrate. A small number of people take on the responsibility for interpreting ambiguity, stabilising decisions, and maintaining continuity across conversations. Others contribute, but the responsibility for making sense of complexity is no longer shared.

Emotional load follows the same pattern. Tension, uncertainty, and relational strain are not processed collectively. They are absorbed, often quietly, by those most willing or most able to carry them. As Zembylas makes clear, emotional labour does not disappear when it is unspoken. It is redistributed.

Temporal load becomes uneven as well. The work does not end in the meeting. It extends beyond it. Decisions are clarified again, alignment is restored again, and continuity is rebuilt again. The system begins to rely on repeated effort to maintain what should have held in the first place.

This is where coordination gives way to maintenance.

Wageman’s work helps explain why this matters. Effective teams are designed around shared interdependence. When that interdependence weakens, coordination does not simply degrade. It is replaced by compensatory behaviour. The system shifts from being held by design to being held by effort.

Effort does not scale.

And systems that depend on it do not strengthen.

Why Compensation Feels Like Teamwork

One of the reasons compensation persists is that it produces results in the short term. Problems are addressed quickly, meetings move forward, and people step in without needing direction. From the outside, this can look like high-functioning collaboration.

But what you are seeing is not coordination.

It is correction.

Salas’ work on team coordination shows that effective teams rely on shared mental models—aligned understanding that allows members to anticipate and adjust without needing to rebuild meaning each time. When those models are weak, teams do not stop working. They compensate by correcting in real time.

Correction can look efficient. It can even look impressive.

But it requires continuous input.

And that input is rarely evenly distributed.

The Cost of Being Held Together

The cost of compensation is cumulative rather than immediate.

Decisions need revisiting because they did not fully hold. Clarity erodes between meetings and must be re-established. Energy is spent maintaining alignment rather than extending it into new work. The system becomes occupied with sustaining itself.

At a human level, the impact becomes more visible. Edmondson’s work shows that people contribute most effectively when they can enter conversations early and without disproportionate risk. In compensating systems, that space narrows. Some contributions arrive late, after direction has already been shaped. Others are filtered or withheld entirely.

At the same time, emotional load continues to concentrate. The system appears stable, but it is being stabilised by a small number of people.

The team is not holding itself.

It is being held.

And that distinction carries a cost.

From Compensation to Coordination: What Must Change

The shift from compensation to coordination is not a matter of increasing effort. It is a matter of changing how the system holds the work.

The first move is to make load visible. If clarity is being restored after the meeting, the system did not hold it. If decisions require explanation, they were not fully shared. If tension is being carried by individuals, it was not processed collectively. These are not individual shortcomings; they are system signals.

The second move is to hold decisions until they hold. This is where most teams move on too quickly. Agreement is mistaken for alignment, and alignment is assumed to travel. It rarely does. Holding decisions means testing whether shared understanding exists before the conversation closes. It means asking not whether people agree, but whether the meaning is stable enough to survive beyond the room. If it is not, the work is not complete.

The third move is to interrupt over-functioning. High-capacity leaders often stabilise the system by stepping in early, but early intervention reduces the need for collective thinking. When the same people consistently resolve ambiguity, the system never develops the capacity to do so itself. Deliberately holding space, even when it feels inefficient, redistributes cognitive work back to the group.

The fourth move is to redistribute ownership of tension. Heifetz’s work makes this explicit. Work that belongs to the system must remain in the system. When leaders remove discomfort too quickly, they also remove the conditions required for growth. Tension that is shared becomes productive. Tension that is absorbed becomes invisible.

These are not techniques.

They are shifts in how leadership is exercised within the system itself.

Prefer to listen and reflect a little more deeply?

I explore this idea more fully in this week’s podcast episode, where I unpack the research, the relational dynamics, and the practical leadership implications in greater depth.

Conclusion

Most leadership teams do not struggle because people are not capable. They struggle because the system has learned to compensate instead of coordinate.

Compensation keeps work moving. It also redistributes load unevenly, concentrates responsibility, and creates dependence. Over time, what looks like strength becomes something else entirely.

A system that depends on repeated individual effort is not strong.

It is fragile.

The question is not whether the team is working. It is whether the team is holding itself.

Because coordination allows alignment to persist.

Compensation requires it to be rebuilt.

And alignment that must be constantly rebuilt is not alignment at all.*

Next Step

If this is surfacing something familiar, the next step is not more effort, but greater visibility.

The free Leadership Pressure Diagnostic is designed to help teams see how pressure is shaping their interaction—so alignment becomes something the system can hold, not something individuals must continually restore.

I also encourage you to download my latest complimentary leadership paper, The Leadership Pressure Triangle

References

Argyris, C. (1991). Teaching Smart People How to Learn

Edmondson, A. C. (2019). The Fearless Organization

Hackman, J. R. (2002). Leading Teams

Heifetz, R., Grashow, A., & Linsky, M. (2009). The Practice of Adaptive Leadership

Mintzberg, H. (1979). The Structuring of Organizations

Salas, E., Sims, D. E., & Burke, C. S. (2005)

Wageman, R. (2001)

Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations

Zembylas, M. (2010)