How Great Exec Teams Manage Acquisition Tension

Acquisitions are among the most demanding opportunities a leadership team will go through together. I’ve yet to meet one that didn’t feel the weight of it. The deal complexity alone is enough to test even the strongest teams, not to mention the dynamics that no amount of financial modelling accounts for: the various tensions in the room, the hard conversations happening outside of meetings, the possible sense that not everyone is quite as aligned as they appear. Leaders will pressure-test the deal terms, the synergies, and the integration plan. Far fewer pressure-test how well the team itself is holding together. This is what makes all the difference.

What we know from research: Research examining 109 UK acquisitions found that when executives are working through an acquisition together, certain detrimental patterns tend to emerge, such as forming alliances, steering conversations toward preferred outcomes and sharing information selectively. This is a predictable consequence of high-stakes situations, real uncertainty and a group of capable people with different views. The broader the range of expertise around the table, the more pronounced it tends to be. However, the findings suggest that when the board steps into an active advisory role alongside the executive team, offering counsel and perspective rather than simply monitoring from a distance, it can protect acquisition performance even when those complex dynamics run high. The reality is, boards that engage this way help executives communicate and work through their differences more constructively, rather than leaving those tensions to compromise the outcome.

My POV: Acquisitions test executive teams in ways that normal operating conditions simply do not. Different people bring different instincts about the right target, price, and timing. That is exactly as it should be. What is less often considered is whether the team has the depth of trust to work through those differences well, and whether the board is being used to its full potential. In a previous insight, we explored the idea of the board and executive team operating as a Strategic Leadership System. This research adds weight to that idea: when that system is working well, it not only improves strategic decisions in general. It can also protect the outcomes of some of the most consequential decisions a leadership team will ever make.

As a Leader, what can you do?

• Invest in how your senior team works together well before a deal is on the table. The mutual trust and shared norms that allow a team to navigate real disagreement without it becoming political are built over time, not in the middle of a high-stakes negotiation. Investing in how your leadership team functions together in normal conditions pays significant dividends when the pressure of a deal arrives. A useful question to bring to your team outside of any live deal is, “When we have strong differences on a big decision, how can we work through that well?” The conversation that follows will tell you a huge amount.
• Set the expectation early that competing views are part of the process, not a problem to manage. Before an acquisition gathers momentum, have a direct conversation with your leadership team about how you will handle disagreement along the way. Something like: “We will each have different instincts on this. I’d rather we work through them together than have them play out in hallway conversations and quiet alliances.” Teams that have this conversation early tend to navigate the pressures of a deal with far less internal friction.
• Bring board members in as active advisers earlier in the process, not just as decision-makers at key points. When the board engages in this way, sharing perspective, asking probing questions and helping executives think through competing views, it improves how the executive team communicates and collaborates internally. This is different from the board’s governance role, and the distinction matters. Consider creating space where board members can offer counsel before positions among the executive team become entrenched: “We’d value your thinking on the tensions we’re working through before we land on a recommendation.”

What difference will it make? The quality of decision-making is noticeably different when your senior team is operating with strong cohesion, and your board is actively engaged as an advisory presence. Less energy goes into managing internal friction and more into evaluating the deal itself. You surface the right concerns at the right time, make sharper calls under pressure and arrive at integration planning with a unified team rather than one still divided by the debates that came before. The acquisitions most likely to deliver on their strategic promise are not necessarily those where everyone agreed from the start, but the ones where disagreement was well-managed all the way through.

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