The power of teams: why most leadership teams operate sub-optimally

After 30 years of working in large corporations and having worked with many senior leadership teams I can confidently say that most teams operate on a sub-optimal basis.  

Clearly, perfection is an unattainable aspiration.  Teams are made up of humans and we're all works in progress. However, the true power of a team lies in its ability to harness all the strengths, ideas and capabilities of its members.  This collective intelligence is what creates better strategies, improves decision-making, and drives the organisational agenda forward with clarity and alignment.  Yet most teams do not fully harness this potential.   Why?

A missing foundation: purpose and alignment

In my experience many teams fail to discuss and agree upon crucial foundational elements.  They haven't established: 

• Purpose: why does this team exist?

• Joint accountabilities: what are our collective objectives and measures of success? 

I've seen senior leadership teams waste valuable meeting time on low-priority agenda items that had nothing to do with their key objectives.  Worse, I've seen functional objectives and measures set in isolation, creating different priorities across the organisation which inevitably breeds internal conflict and confusion.

The conflict problem: harmony is not high performance

Managing different views and constructive conflict can be tricky within teams.  I've worked with senior leaders who genuinely believed they had a high performing team because there was never any disagreement.  

But if there is only ever harmony within a team this suggests that:

• the team members are not expressing their true thoughts or

• team members are not being heard if they express a different view or

• all the entire team is thinking alike 

None of these scenarios are helpful for robust strategic decision making and alignment.  Teams need to have developed strong enough relationships to be able to manage conflict constructively.  

I once worked with a team that moved from team members avoiding saying something that could cause conflict, or shouting when triggered, to a place where they could freely express differences of opinions, seek out the quieter voices, and work through arguments to get to a strong supported decision.  This transformation brought greater clarity and alignment throughout the organisation.

Intentionality and operating norms

High performing leadership teams succeed because they establish clarity on their purpose, develop strong relationships and intentionally create healthy operating norms.  These norms work not only when they are meeting together but critically, in the days and weeks between meetings.   

All teams will establish norms such as meeting attendance expectations, timeliness, how decisions are made, or who is able to speak up. Not all teams create these norms consciously. The teams that I have worked with that have invested time to intentionally align around and embed operating norms have seen a profound positive impact on their team effectiveness. 

The ripple effect of sub-optimal teams

Where leadership teams don't have clarity and alignment this impacts everyone below them in the hierarchy.  For example, one of the teams I worked with, avoided open disagreements in meetings.  The effect? They gave different, conflicting messages to the leaders of their own departments, which cascaded conflict and confusion into the organisation.  What looks like a hairline crack at a leadership level becomes a gaping chasm further down the organisation where people have to try and work through different directions and priorities, across departments.  

I have often heard leaders complain about people working in silos without realising they are one of the primary causes.

Sustained focus

Given successful leaders are often competitive and competing interests exist across functions, it takes intentional focus to create a team in which leaders operate in the interests of the whole organisation and constructively address difficult decisions where trade-offs exist.  This is particularly noticeable during times of significant change.

I've learned through years of experience and training (including becoming a certified systems coach) that there are no quick fixes. Team development takes sustained effort and focus over time—normally several months. Many leaders hope a two-day intervention will magically solve their dynamic issues, but while short sessions can be fun, real change comes from sustained focus.

The rewards for this commitment, however, are phenomenal:

• increased effectiveness of leadership team meetings

• improved speed and quality of decision making

• increased alignment across your organisation

• reduced siloed working

• a more engaging culture for all colleagues.

The good news is that you can achieve this. You just need to be willing to invest in the power of your leadership team.