A Play on 'E'LT

A Note from Our Founder

Years ago, as part of the talent development team of Vail Resorts, my colleague and I were asked to transform regional leaders who were competing across multiple locations, geographies, and countries into an ‘Enterprise’ Leadership Team, focused on a shared vision.

We accepted the challenge!

By the end of the summer, the Lift Operations Managers had fundamentally transformed into the Lift Operations Leadership Team (lovingly referred to as LOLT), making enterprise decisions, sharing talents and resources, and solving industry problems as a true leadership team. The Mountain Operations Directors were next in line and followed suit the next summer.

Check out this 5-minute video showing the transformation, below:

Today, Vail Resorts owns and operates over 40 resorts, with each department across the globe functioning with an enterprise mindset.?

Recently, we have been working with a number of clients who present with:

“We have good skills in each discipline among the executive team, but we are not acting as one team. We are lacking the level of trust and transparency needed to move the business forward.”

Whether they know it or not, what they are asking for is a transformation from a traditional Executive Leadership Team to an ‘Enterprise’ Leadership Team.?

And they have come to the right place!

Read on for more about the difference between the two, and a few tips to get you started on your transformational journey.

Gretchen

Transforming the ELT: What does it mean to be an Enterprise Leadership Team?

What do you think of when you see the acronym ELT? Most of us hear ‘Executive Leadership Team’. But what if instead, ‘Enterprise Leadership Team’ rolled off your tongue?

What might your image of the team, and therefore the way in which it functions together, change? Moreover, how might the outputs and results be different under this redefined acronym??

A traditional ELT approach, that of an Executive Leadership Team — while familiar and comfortable to most of us — can lead to dysfunction not only on the immediate team, but across the whole of the organization, resulting in:

• siloed teams focused on their own goals and challenges?
• defensive leaders who feel like they have to fight for their positions or opinions
• mental and emotional tax on individuals competing for resources against their counterparts?
• confusion and conflict at the lower ranks?
• inefficiencies in executing work to be done?
• customer dissatisfaction
• and lost profits

But what if there was another way? What if executive leaders could organize and operate in such a way that encouraged flexible roles, trust amongst leadership, and shared responsibility in order to support a more innovative way of running the business and supporting the mental, emotional, and operational needs of their teams?

Read more about transforming your team into an Enterprise Leadership Team

Stay Tuned: The next 5 months…

Over the next five months, we’ll be diving deeper into how to build a true Enterprise Leadership Team, whether at the executive level, the regional level, or any level of the organization. In doing so, we will walk the wheel of our proprietary PRIDE Model (Purpose, Roles, Infrastructure, Dynamics, Execute), focusing on one element each month. Stay tuned for next month’s article, which will focus on Purpose and the role it plays in transforming your team and your organization.

Cheat Sheet: Tips to Get You Started

In the meantime, below are a few tips to get you started in transforming your team into a highly effective Enterprise Leadership Team.

LEARN | Things for you to learn

• Emotional intelligence and selflessness — having emotional awareness and conscious responses that elevate yourself and team members to self-transcendence?
• New definitions of ownership and accountability — shifting from functional to shared goals, measurements, and rewards
• The practice of courage and transparency — make courageous decisions that consider the whole while explaining the thinking behind decisions and actions

UNLEARN | Things for you to unlearn

• Defensiveness — perceiving questions from others as judgment or doubt in your capabilities or competence?
• Status Quo — the way you’ve “always done things”?
• False Confidence — the need to be the person with the answers

PERMISSION | Things for you to give yourself and others permission to do/feel/be

• Discomfort — to feel uncomfortable
• Question — to question and be questioned?
• Challenge and share — to challenge fiefdoms and allow your own to be challenged, while sharing resources and talents across the enterprise

We encourage you to share the above article and these tips with your team and explore what this might look like in practice in your organization.?

Our Proprietary PRIDE Model: Redesigned

Our newly redesigned PRIDE Model is based on?30 years?observing five key?elements that create the?environment for healthy,?high performing teams: Purpose, Roles,?Infrastructure, Dynamics,?and Execute.

Where all 5 elements come together is the nexus for transformation.

As a little teaser into the next 5 months, below is an image of how the PRIDE model can be the catalyst for your team to move from ‘forming’ all the way to ‘transforming’, where the magic really happens.

Relevant Articles from Integrated Growth

Weathering the Storm

When transforming from the traditional ELT to an EnterpriseLeadership Team, it is very likely your team will hit some speed bumps as you hit the storming phase of team development. This article highlights the necessity for storming and offers perspective and guidance for not only embracing this phase, but leveraging it.

Creating a Culture of Innovation & Agility – on Purpose

A powerful outcome of functioning as an Enterprise Leadership Team is that innovation and agility become a way of life at every level of the organization. By the ‘E’LT modeling this behavior, others follow suit. This article digs into creating a culture of innovation and agility in your organization.

Additional Featured Articles

Enterprise Leadership: New Leadership For A New World (Forbes)

How to Build an Enterprise Leadership Team (Center for Management and Organization Effectiveness)

Have an idea or request for a future newsletter topic? Let us know in the comments below!

Gretchen Reid is the Founder and Chief Change and Leadership Architect for Integrated Growth.?She has spent over 30 years coaching leaders and creating award-winning Leadership and Talent Development Programs.

Integrated Growth specializes in organizational effectiveness and leadership consulting. We build award winning leadership development programs, facilitate strategic planning and team development initiatives, and provide coaching for leaders and their teams.?Our team of highly skilled consultants and executive coaches solve real problems real time, helping you to achieve your greatest mission.