About 6 years ago, in a private conference room of a Paris hotel, I sat silent as two grown men yelled business-oriented insults at each other. One of them — a bearded and bespectacled, seasoned and mostly soft-spoken executive — finally had enough and stormed out of the room.

As our team assembled the next morning, the executive quietly mentioned a family emergency that required him to return home to another country. Acknowledging nothing of the tension from the day before, he apologized to the nine other executives for missing the rest of our four-day offsite — and exited.

Just another ordinary day as part of the highly dysfunctional executive team of a $1b revenue company...