You know how it goes. Everyone on your senior leadership team gets along when the money is flowing, and everything falls apart when it's not.

When times get tight, the CFO wants to blame the COO and the director of marketing just wants to remind everyone that they have an MBA.

It gets ugly – and it's not good for business.

When things get ugly among your leadership team, it's time to invest in leadership coaching. Here's a look at how to bring your team together when everything else is falling apart.

Turn on the lights

Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to dissension on your senior leadership team.

There are few things as divisive as back-biting and trying to hide the elephant in the room. No matter how talented and tenacious your team is, it will surely fall apart if its members are working against one another behind each other's backs.

If you think there's a schism on your team, your first step should be to shed a light on the problems. Find a way through your leadership coaching to get people to talk openly and honestly about their issues. Then (and only then) you will be able to begin to address them.

Promote partnership

Miscommunication. Competition. Concern about one's position within the company. These are all common causes of contention among members of leadership teams.

One effective way to deal with these problems is to have the competing and contentious members of your senior leadership team work together on projects. It doesn't have to be an actual project – it can be part of your training.

In fact, making competing employees work together during training provides you with better control over the situation. You can provide guidance, advice, and leadership coaching to show the two (or three, or four, or more) members of your senior staff how to work together.

At the end of the day, your goal should be to show them that the goals of the company trump their individual goals. And it works.

Get aligned with the goals

It's funny, but personal conflicts that roll over into the professional realm seem to dissipate as soon as members of your leadership team are reminded of the company's overall goals. Well, maybe it's not so funny. After all, if your senior leadership team can't work together to accomplish your company's goals, they might be gone.

One great way to get rid of tension among members of your team is to make sure your leadership coaching is always (always!) aligned with and focused on your company's goals. Make sure your team knows exactly what your company's goals are – and exactly what their roles are in achieving those goals.

This might (and probably will) involve tailoring your leadership coaching and sales training to each member's way of thinking. And that's okay.

All you have to do is understand whole brain thinking and apply it to your leadership coaching and training. If you can get inside their heads and truly understand how they process information and make decisions, you will be able to keep your team together (and working together) in good times and bad.

Moving forward

It's easy to overlook schisms between team members when times are good. But the best leaders know how to bring their teams together when times are tough. At the end of the day, it's your job to ensure that competition, kingdom-building, and insecurities don't come between your company and its goals.

That means you have to shed a light on it, promote partnership, and ensure that your employees understand that the company is bigger than their egos.