A Team of Leaders, or a Leadership Team?
This is a question we’ve been wrestling with. Most of us have plenty of talented people at the table. We’ve got the brains, and we’ve got people with expertise in their areas. But are they working together as a leadership team? Are they taking responsibility for the whole organization, or is each person focused primarily on their own function?
One way to tell is to listen for the question people ask first. Is it “How’s my area doing?” or “How’s the organization doing?”
How the Two Teams Operate
On a team of leaders, I come into the meeting and report to the senior leader on how my function is doing. My peers are at the table, and they hear my update. We might share resources or ideas across functions, but when an issue comes up, we tend to take it to the senior leader before working it through with each other.
Part of what gets in the way is structural. In many organizations, we look at how the organization did overall, but my own success is measured mostly by the results of the team and function I lead.
On a leadership team, the people around the table take responsibility for how the whole organization performs. They might give updates on their own groups, but they spend most of their time solving problems and making decisions that require them to work together.
They also make trade-offs together. Where should we put our time, money, and attention? Once they’ve made a decision, they leave the room aligned and communicate it consistently to their teams.
Leaders often tell me, “I’ve got a leadership team, but it’s the people on the team who are the challenge.” People are certainly part of it. So is the way the team thinks about its work and how we’ve set it up to operate.
It’s worth stepping back and asking how we design our meetings and what we empower people to decide together. Without thinking about it, we can set up a team to operate as a collection of functions. That can happen in the C-suite or within a function that has several teams of its own.
What Gets In the Way
This may ring a bell. Each function is responsible for its own work, and updates all go to the same senior leader. It happens in the Monday meeting, when we’re sitting around the table, and again when everyone sends in their Friday reports. That setup can make candor feel risky.
Imagine the product team has been going all out for two quarters and is ready for a Q1 launch. They announce it at the Monday meeting, and Sales says, “What? We had no idea. Did we even ask customers if this was something they wanted?” Meanwhile, Marketing is thinking, “We had no idea either. We don’t have anything prepared to help Sales with the launch.”
The senior leader becomes both the bridge between functions and the bottleneck. The leader gives the go-ahead for a Q1 launch. The product team builds it. Then Sales goes to the leader and says, “We don’t know anything about this, and we don’t think our clients want it.” The product gets shelved until Q2, Q3, or maybe forever.
When one person has to connect all the pieces, decisions can stall or get undone. It happens whenever the team needs to think beyond what’s happening in each function.
I’ve been in that Monday morning meeting, listening to each function give an update and wondering, “Why am I here? Just to report my results?” You can ask that same question whether you lead, sit on, or observe a team in finance, sales, product, or the C-suite.
What a Leadership Team Does Differently
A leadership team has a shared direction. You might also call it the team’s purpose. The team focuses on work that only it can do. For an organization’s leadership team, that includes setting the overall strategy, deciding where to focus this year, and thinking about how those choices set the organization up for the next three years.
There’s also clarity about who owns which decisions. The team knows what it needs to decide together and which decisions belong closer to where the work happens.
Candor becomes part of the conversation. People are willing to speak plainly and challenge each other. At the enterprise level, someone can ask, “Is this the best use of our energy, time, and resources?” On a finance team, the question might be, “Is this the best use of our resources to deliver what the organization needs from us?”
Then there’s follow-through. When team members leave the meeting aligned, that alignment comes through in what they tell their teams. You’ve probably heard a leader share a decision about strategy or resources and then add, “Yeah, but it wasn’t my decision.” I know I have.
When that happens, the people who report to that leader may wonder, “Why should I work with those other teams if my leader doesn’t agree with where we’re going?” When leaders share a consistent message across the organization, everyone understands what they’re working toward. And when one area gets less attention, people can see how that decision serves the organization as a whole.
Think About Your Best Leadership Team
Take a moment to think about a team you lead, observe, or are affected by. Which of these dynamics do you recognize? How do they affect the way the team works and the way you work with it?
We’ve all got war stories, but let’s start with a good one. Think about the best leadership team you’ve been part of. What made it different? Did you see a shared purpose, clarity about who made decisions, or a willingness to own those decisions together? Was there something else that made the team work so well?
