The leadership team blindspot
Before leaving my post at SYPartners, I interviewed my colleagues about their experience of senior leadership teams — the teams that sit at the top of an organization. Collectively, we had worked with hundreds over the course of decades. I wanted to understand what made the teams successful or unsuccessful. Naturally, I asked for examples of ideal, high-functioning senior leadership teams, and I encountered…
Awkward silence.
True, there were examples of individual leaders, and great CEO/COO or CEO/CFO partnerships. There were animated conversations about great teamwork in general. The most dramatic recent one had been the improbable rescue of all 12 young Thai soccer players and their coach from a dark underwater labyrinth a half-mile underground, requiring incredible coordination between international divers. There were also stories of terrific teamwork at lower levels of organizations. Teams that had momentum and mission, an esprit de corps, and an ability to debate difficult decisions and align themselves around them. These teams lifted everyone’s performance and achieved outstanding results.
But when it came to truly high functioning senior leadership teams we came up empty-handed.
There may be sampling bias at play here, but from what I can see in the literature this is a global phenomenon: truly high-functioning senior leadership teams are rare.
Why it matters
One of my retail client’s top leaders bluntly asked why he should care about teamwork at the top. He really disliked one of his colleagues, and his CEO did not encourage teamwork anyway.
He eventually came around (and his colleague was eventually booted off the team — which no doubt helped!), but I think he is right to be skeptical. Surely not every situation nor every organization needs teamwork at the top. I’ve worked with holding groups, where it makes more sense for the CEO to convene her direct reports purely to report on business performance.
But increasingly senior leadership teams need to operate much more effectively and cohesively because the organizational environment is getting both more complex and more unpredictable. And — like a dark underwater labyrinth — complex change can only be navigated by a team at the top that is sharing information quickly, has a global view of subtle signals across functions, and harnesses a diverse set of skills.
We know this, logically. But we are in thrall to the myth of the “great man” or “great woman”. Just think how much we lionize a Steve Jobs, and forget that Apple benefited from the extraordinary team around him (including Tim Cook and Jony Ive). Pick any organization that has managed to stay nimble in highly competitive industries — Kohl’s department stores, Netflix, Amazon, Blackrock — and we immediately think of their great CEOs. But look more closely and you will see their leadership teams are also better than average and that the CEOs have worked harder than most to cultivate the team dynamics.
It’s time to wake up to this and take teamwork at the top more seriously, be it at the very summit of an organization or indeed at any level.
Designing the leadership team: 7 questions
The degree of performance of any team starts with intention: there are well established factors to good team design, such as clearly defining who is on the team, keeping the numbers small, and having a specific charter. But these are too often ignored at the top: there may be a reluctance to define who is actually on the team and who is not, or there could be a mistaken conflation of the company’s mission and vision with the leadership team’s mission and vision. Beyond these basics, teamwork itself needs to be developed — poorer performing leadership teams spend little to no time actually working on their own development, like the tale of the shoemaker’s children who go barefoot.
I believe this has to change. Leadership at the top of organizations has to mean a collective endeavor, not the heroism of a single leader. There is so much at stake — so many interdependencies and systemic challenges that only a leadership team can navigate. Perhaps more profoundly, teamwork is essential for our humanity. Some of my most transcendent experiences have been in working through difficult problems with a true team. We could be vulnerable with each other, learn from each other and suffer together, developing a camaraderie absent from the day-to-day of transactional meetings. To ignore teamwork at the top when you are at the top is to cut yourself off from an essential part of living and being.
In that spirit, let me leave you with 7 questions to provoke you to think about the design of your leadership team:
What moment are you in? Your team should be designed for what the business needs from it now, and looking forward — not what was true last year.
What kind of team do you want? There is a spectrum of teamwork, from simple sharing of information to full-on collective decision making. It’s your decision where you want to place your team on that spectrum, and how you want the experience to feel — the main thing is to be explicit with the team itself.
Who should be on the team? This is essential to decide, and to be explicit about. The main regret I come across is that a leader took too long to replace a team member.
What is the team’s mission? The leadership team’s mission is not the company’s mission or purpose. It’s the mission that only this particular group of leaders can achieve together — and it should be informed by stakeholders.
What will the team do and not do? Getting clear on the “not do” is often the missing link in clarifying the team’s role to team members and to the organization.
How will the team work together? Call it your “social contract” or “operating norms” — either way, you will benefit from an explicit agreement on how you will work together.
What will the team learn? Team skills are unlike individual leadership skills and the best leadership teams use coaches and invest time in developing their team skills.
And here’s one last, bonus question, if you’re the one leading the team: What will you need to shift in your own behavior to make a better team?
Lead bravely,