How Superstars Learn to Put the Enterprise First

For a leadership team to be truly effective, its members need to be aligned around the organization’s North Star. But when a team is made up of leaders who are superstars in their own right, it’s often challenging for them to work together to make the right decisions for the organization as a whole—sometimes at the expense of their individual agendas.??

What does it take for leadership teams to be successful in today’s relentlessly changing environment??

Adopting an Enterprise-First Mindset?

For exceptionally talented high performers, putting the team first may not be instinctive. But it’s necessary. Team members need to shift to an enterprise-first mindset, reframing every decision the leadership team faces and asking:??

• Is this the right answer for the enterprise as a whole???
• Is it consistent with the organization’s purpose, strategy, and priorities???

For many leaders, joining a leadership team is often the first time that their primary team is not the team that they manage. Adopting an enterprise-first perspective requires ongoing practice and reinforcement from other team members—calling out individual-oriented behavior and celebrating enterprise-oriented behavior.?

One pharma CEO sums it up well: “When we onboard new leadership team members, one of the first things I make clear is that your first team is the executive team, not the functional team you lead. You are not here to defend your direct reports. You are here to do what’s right for our company and our stakeholders…. If someone fails to operate in this way, their time on the executive leadership team is short-lived.”?

The Head, Heart, and Hands of Effective Teaming?

Most leadership teams focus primarily on performance, without sufficiently acknowledging the need for transformation. Both are critical. Leadership teams exist to guide and inspire the work of others in their organizations. To do that, they need to draw on a set of attributes and behaviors we refer to as the “Head, Heart, and Hands.”?

• The Head?refers to agreeing on the path forward, committing to a common purpose with explicit goals and priorities, carrying out clear and robust decision making, and seeking outside-in perspectives.?
• The Heart?encompasses the fostering of trust and inclusive communication as well as caring about one another and about one another’s success. Another aspect of Heart: valuing continuous learning.?
• The Hands?involve ensuring diverse composition, clarity of responsibilities and accountabilities, and productive ways of working. It also includes emphasizing collaboration.?

Becoming a Super Team: Reflecting, Committing, Practicing?

A super team must also be willing to engage in self-reflection while defining and reinforcing a set of commitments. This takes practice, both as individuals and collectively as a team.?

Most leadership teams have a fairly good sense of what’s working and what’s not. Where they get stuck is in bridging the gap between awareness and action—between knowing and doing.??

The Head, Heart, and Hands attributes provide teams with a clear picture of what “good” looks like—what makes a super team. To get there, teams need to follow an intentional and repeatable process of reflecting, committing, and practicing?new behaviors and ways of working:??

• Reflecting allows team members to gain an understanding of the team’s current state versus its aspirations. It enables an understanding of the root causes of behaviors that impede future-state effectiveness.?
• Committing solidifies new norms and behaviors to advance progress toward the leadership team’s common goals.??

• Practicing gives the team the opportunity to test what works and what doesn’t—and to form new habits and reinforce common goals.??

Transforming a group of individual leaders into an aligned, synergistic, high-performing, transformative team takes time and commitment. There is no finish line when it comes to becoming a super team—it’s not a destination or a static ideal, but an ongoing evolution.?

Teams must routinely reflect, commit, and practice their targeted mindsets and behaviors. They must continue to refine, challenge, and push one another to be better. And by engaging with the Head, Heart, and Hands, they can begin to perform and transform. Turning superstars into a super leadership team is hard work. But the payoff is well worth the effort.?

For further reading:

• Turning Superheroes into a Super Leadership Team
• The Head, Heart, and Hands of Transformation ?
• Why the World Needs Generative Leaders
• For CEO’s, It’s About Time ?
• Great Leadership Is a Network, Not a Hierarchy ??

Want more insights from BCG? Subscribe to our email newsletters here. ?