transform your team of leaders into a leadership team
I recently got a question in my lōglab Facebook community which I wanted to share as I know this is something many companies struggle with:
“I am the CEO of a 200-person company. I have a leadership team that consists of 5 executive leaders. I hired each of them and they are all competent. Over time, I have developed a great relationship with each of them. However, I am not sure if they’ve developed good relationships with each other. While they are cordial, I find that we aren’t operating as a team. Do you have any ideas on what I can do to get the team to operate more cohesively?”
I usually tell the CEO in these situations that she has a team of leaders, not a leadership team. There are many reasons why this happens, here are a few things key things to consider:
Are your leaders serving as company leaders or functional leaders?
Oftentimes, I find in these situations that you have competent leaders who are good at running their functions but struggle with looking at the big picture of how their functions impact the company. They consume trends, ideas, and initiatives and act from the perspective of their functions first rather than the company. You have to evaluate whether this is happening within your team and coach the leaders to broaden their perspectives. This is a hard pill to swallow but not all competent functional leaders are able to think this way so you will have to evaluate over time whether your leaders are capable.
Who are your leaders prioritizing – their direct reports or their peers?
This is Patrick Lencioni’s first team principle. Often you find that your leaders are prioritizing their direct reports over the leadership team. Introducing a first team concept can help you start to build cohesiveness amongst the team. While this is a simple concept, I think it’s very hard to achieve because it pushes leaders into uncomfortable positions with their own teams. To my first point, leaders need to be able to set company context when working with their own teams.
Is your team is engaging in low-grade bonding?
The other day a friend of mine introduced this term to me and I loved it because I see it in so many leadership teams. This is the meeting after the meeting or the slacking or texting to each other while the meeting is going on. This is also the single escalation practice. Rather than a leader trying to work something out with peers and escalating together if they reach an impasse, a leader escalates directly to you and expects you to fix it because he or she doesn’t like what the peer is doing or saying. This is detrimental to trust in the leadership team and must be eliminated as a practice. You as the CEO must stand firm on this principle and set the ground rules.
Hope those tips help!
