Building high performing teams is one thing, building high performing leadership teams is a completely different kettle of fish! If you’ve worked anywhere near a leadership team before, you know that getting the synergies of key thinkers aligned is a pretty difficult task. So how do you build high performing leadership teams? Your first understand why they’re inherently on the path to self-destruction.
The 6 Steps of Self-Destruction
Let’s first identify why leadership teams are different from ordinary teams. There are many reasons but the ones that stick out for me are:
1. Most executives are appointed on the basis of:
- Individual leadership skills
- Their professional competency
- The results they have delivered
They’re almost never assessed on their ability to
- Be a constructive team player, or
- How their style compliments the rest of the team
2. Executive leadership teams are often not “real” teams since they have members that are either there on historical, temporary or worse political reasons. CEO’s usually take the easy way out by letting people join a leadership team without having an actual reason to be there, just to avoid confrontation.
Spot Check: Ask your CEO and each executive team member how many members they think are on your company’s leadership team. I promise you that the answers even from the people that are on the team will vary wildly.
3. Leadership teams don’t untangle the different functions they have (decision making, coordination, information sharing) and combine them into one meeting. They assume that every team member needs to be present in each meeting, creating confusion, boredom and often frustration amongst its members.
4. Executive leadership teams are often either bogged down by the operations of the business or have the opinion that they should focus solely on strategy. Few leadership teams create a clear division between their two main roles: delivering results today and building capabilities to deliver results tomorrow.
Spot Check: Ask each individual top team member what the purpose of their leadership team is. Don’t confuse the team purpose with the company’s strategy. See how many different answers you get.
5. Most leadership team members are like the United Nations and see themselves as the representative of their function/division/department. Few see their main role as leading and making the best decisions for the entire company.
6. Few CEO’s understand the power of a high performing team and see little value in investing in team building and creating conducive team dynamics. Building a high performing team is hard work and requires significant conviction and investment from the leader as well as other members.
Spot Check: When was the last time your company leadership team spent a significant amount of time together, not talking about the company’s results or strategy but how they as a team could lead the company better?
What Leadership Teams Should Be Doing
Now that we know why leadership teams are so different than “regular” ones it becomes easier to identify what they should be focusing on. Being able to check off the 5 points below will ensure that your leadership team is on its way to success rather than destruction.
1. Real Team: Make sure you only have people on the team that need to be there, have the motivation and skills to add value to the team. Take out (no matter what the short term consequences are) people that don’t add value, are de-railers or are in the team for the wrong reasons.
2. Team Charter: Create clarity on the roles, responsibilities and what your team’s purpose is. Agree on how you’ll work together and how you to hold people accountable for delivering on their commitments and behaving in the agreed manner.
3. Team Governance: Discuss and agree how you will make decisions, involve and inform stakeholders, prepare for meetings, set agenda’s, follow up on results and how you will structure your meetings to ensure you delineate the operational, strategic and team maintenance components
4. Team Meetings: Structure your team meetings around the different functions you play. My favorite meeting structure is Patrick Lencioni, who in his book The Advantage advocates to have:
- Daily 10 minute huddles to discuss issues
- Weekly ops meetings to discuss results and operational items
- Ad-hoc specific topic meetings, and
- Quarterly ‘feet-in-the-air’, how-are-we doing, what is happening in our industry discussions and are we on the right track conversations.
5. Invest in Team Dynamics: At a regular interval, ideally a 2 day session once a year and quarterly 1/2 day follow up sessions, talk about how you as a team are performing, investing in forging personal bonds and discussing how you are leading the organisation. Do a pulse check of all your stakeholders (not only employees) to understand how they assess your team performance and get clarity on future expectations.
Let me know how your company’s leadership team is performing on the spot checks above. As always you are invited to leave your thoughts and personal experiences below.
Learn how you can take your leadership teams through a growth model which will help them mature on a personal and professional level by following me on LinkedIn and subscribing to the Keijzer Community.
Paul Keijzer is the CEO and Founder of Engage Consulting and the co-Founder of The Talent Games, which aims to transform HR by digitising talent processes and creating more engaging and productive workplaces through gamification and mobile technology. As a global HR and Leadership Management expert, Paul knows how to combine business insights with people insights to transform organisations and put them on the path to growth.