Consulting to Leadership Teams
New teams sometimes need help getting off on the right foot, Existing teams often need help embracing a new leader. Some teams find themselves in crisis. Other more fortunate teams are simply seeking developmental feedback-and-coaching for their members.
Sometimes the problem jumps the boundary of the team itself and includes two or three levels of management.
Whatever the need, consulting to teams can get complicated because there are so many moving parts — the cast of, the size of the team, the critical business/functional interfaces, and interpersonal relationships, the team’s relationship to the next level, pressures from outside or above.
Our firm makes a point of joining forces with the executive in charge of the team as he or she leads the improvement effort.
We routinely encounter the following three classes of team or governance problems.
- Senior managers aren’t known for their ability to build and run effective teams. The team leader makes the team too big and therefore it’s unwieldy, or settles for subpar performers. There’s tension at key interfaces that the team leader does not address or doesn’t know the full extent of. Team meetings are ineffective: they degrade into information-sharing or take up time on minor issues not worthy of the team’s attention. Or, most seriously, the team lacks the ability to think through important issues.
Our approach: through interviews and our proprietary team-assessment tools, we take stock of what’s working and what’s not. Next step: we go over the results with the team leader and decide on courses of action, some of which he or she can take unilaterally. Following steps: we then join the leader in meeting with the team or subsets of the team in surfacing and addressing problems, and in implementing solutions. - There is a disconnect between the senior team and the next level(s) down. In one case, the top team is cohesive but the next level feels, and is, in fact, left out. In another case, the top executives overpower next-level senior managers to the point where they are disenfranchised.
Our approach: Through interviews and a custom-made questionnaire, we identify the precise nature of the disconnects or dysfunctions. Again, the executive in charge of the team is our primary client. To him or her we present the full picture and explore causes and remedies.
Rather than start by bringing together the senior team and the next-level managers, we meet separately with each group. Each group receives its own survey results, gets better clarity on its own experience, and prepares to meet with the other group. The summit meeting, co-led by the executive-in-charge and us, is designed to have both levels reach a shared view of what is working, what isn’t, and what to do about it. The remedies may entail change in the way the executive operates, changes in the governance structure, or process improvements. We stay involved as the executive attempts to put the changes in place. - CEO-COO arrangements often don’t work or, notoriously, fall apart completely. True also of a three-in-a-box Office of the Chairman. The basic challenge is that, whatever the division of labor, the two or more parties all share responsibility for the entire organization, and therefore must cooperate, yet often find it difficult to do so consistently.
Our approach: The first order of business is to create conditions for the CEO and COO to connect personally, if they haven’t already done so. Without adequate chemistry, the arrangement is doomed from the start. Second, we arrange for the parties to agree to an operating cadence that allows for ample formal and informal contact. The left hand and right hand must know what each other is doing. Also, the parties must present a united front, or the rest of senior management suffers. Nor can the united front be a façade; the two parties must actually reach shared understandings. Finally, we make a practice of sitting with the parties at regular intervals to help them bring up and work through difficult issues. - Improve a senior team’s effectiveness. This includes an up-front assessment, both qualitative and quantitative. We offer a Team Versatility Index. Using data, we help the leader — along with the team — take account of the team’s purpose, structure, and operation, and then map out a plan and act on it. The leader’s own leadership is always part of the equation.
- Work with the management team to improve the organization’s effectiveness. Through quantitative and qualitative assessment, we identify imbalances and pressure points. The research helps distill the essential character of the organization, suggests how the organization needs to change, and then helps introduce the change. This process is particularly useful when integrating the different cultures of merged companies.
- Define the balances. We find it useful to define a team’s functions in terms of the balances it needs to strike. Some of these balances apply to all teams, such as the capacity to talk candidly yet constructively, respectfully, and supportively. Another is to find the quantity of strategic work vs. operational work required for good execution of the team’s goals. Every team has its own unique tensions. We help identify points of stability and instability, so the group can strike the right balances.
- Effectiveness. We create a baseline measure of team effectiveness and then change from time to time.
- Help a CEO and COO OR THREE IN A BOX build a relationship and function effectively—in an arrangement that is a delicate balance at best. Working with “two in a box” is one of our specialties, helping the two individuals define their respective roles and forge a viable relationship. We have worked with several such pairs over extended periods of time. The same approach applies to a three-person office of the CEO or Chairman.
We help good executive teams get better.
New teams sometimes need help to get off on the right foot; existing teams sometimes need help embracing a new leader. Teams sometimes find themselves needing to resolve a crisis; other times they are seeking developmental feedback. Whatever the need, consulting to teams can get complicated because there are so many moving parts — the cast of characters, the relationships, the critical business/functional interfaces, the pressures from outside. We see ourselves as supporting the team’s leader as he or she leads the improvement effort. As a result, team assignments often include one or more of the following goals:
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