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When it comes to team effectiveness, executive leaders are key. They have great influence on how an organisation performs, they are responsible for providing clarity of direction and alignment across the organisation, they set the tone of the culture and can role model effective leadership. That’s not to say that team effectiveness isn’t important for teams at all levels throughout an organisation but for better or worse. the executive team lays the groundwork. For long term success, organisation performance relies on senior leader performance1.
But executive teams continue to need help to function effectively. Perhaps not surprising with current external factors affecting business and its leaders. Many teams bump along fairly ineffectively with poor communication, lack of trust, poor decision making, unresolved conflict, lack of accountability and a focus directed on the wrong things. In a fast moving, complex world, executive teams need to form and perform quickly in order to help their organisations keep up with what’s going on around them.
Do you need to follow a team effectiveness model and if so which one do you use? Well, there are plenty of available approaches and models, some well-researched and others based on limited evidence – the choice can be bewildering. Some would argue for a fairly linear approach – choose a single model, evaluate your team against that model and use your data to set goals and create a development agenda.
But it’s important to understand that no one model is a best fit. I draw on several, tailored to my clients in relation to their needs and goals. Hawkins' model for leadership team coaching2 usefully considers the whole system and asks the team to consider their commission (what is the job of this team?), the context under which it operates, the relationships within the team, how the team will learn and evolve and the team’s processes. But there are many other models (Tuckman3,Katzenbach and Smith4, Drexler and Sibbet5,, Lencioni6), that often share measures in common – a shared goal, capability, communication, and trust.
My aim is to help key stakeholders to see the bigger picture through diagnosis, discovery and analysis. To that end, I will cherry pick, rather than be constrained by one model. I believe it’s important to maintain a flexible approach. Teams are inherently complex and to try and define a team by a single model is often too simplistic. In general, I lean on communication, emotional intelligence and transactional analysis, common purpose and an agreed way of working as a foundation for a team’s effectiveness. This helps clients understand the issues within and facing the team and forms the basis for a flexible and adaptable, high-level plan for the team’s development.
Fundamentally, the process is this:
· Understand what good looks like and the desired state – the key is to understand the problem, by whatever means of analysis
· Shape and implement a development plan
· Most important of all, be prepared to evolve it
But team effectiveness isn’t just a process. It’s important to view it as a complex human system with all the dimensions this entails. Key, is the ability to build trusting and psychologically safe relationships, where people feel free to speak up and contribute their ideas without fear of judgement or prejudice. The team needs to establish a common language for working together, have a shared understanding of the context in which they’re operating, a compelling common purpose and agreement on effective behaviours, and a way of holding one another to account over these.
How important are individual leaders in this process? Is the outcome determined by the team or their leader? A team needs to problem solve and stay focussed on the strategic priorities and be committed to behaving in a way that shapes a culture that’s right for the organisation, creating an environment where feedback, support, challenge and peer coaching is an everyday activity. In this way, leadership can be a shared responsibility across the team, regardless of structure or hierarchy.
The challenge of developing really effective executive teams is not new but ongoing. In a business environment where change is constant, the need for genuine support to help people to be their best, to help executive teams think whole team, whole organisation, and to form and perform quickly and efficiently is crucial. With over two decades working with senior leaders and working with the complexity in organisations, I have the skills, experience, knowledge and expertise to guide your team to excellence. If you’d like to find out more, let’s talk.
References
1 Zaccaro S, Heinen B, Shuffler, M. (2008). ‘Team leadership and team effectiveness’, in Salas E, Goodwin G, Burke C (ed.) Team effectiveness in complex organizations. New York: Routledge.
2 Hawkins, P. (2011). Leadership team coaching : developing collective transformational leadership. London ; Philadelphia: Kogan Page.
3 Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K.(2015). The wisdom of teams: Creating the high performance organization. Waltham, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.
4 Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384–399.
5 Drexler, A.B., Sibbet, D. & Forrester,R.H. (1988). ‘The team performance model’ in Reddy, W.B. & Jamison, K.(eds) Team building: Blueprints for productivity and satisfaction. NTLInstitute for Applied Behavioral Science, Alexandria, VA.
6 Lencioni, P.M. (2002). The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. London,England: Jossey-Bass.
