Why Your Top Team needs Development?

In modern business, success is not solely determined by individual brilliance or groundbreaking innovations. It's increasingly reliant on the collective strength and synergy of your teams. There is one team in particular that has a big impact on your business and that's your top team. Often overlooked when it comes to development or taken for granted, this team of people also needs to continuously work on being a team.

The Myth of the Self-Sustaining Top Team

Many organizations operate under the misconception that bringing a group of high achievers at the top automatically guarantees seamless collaboration and stellar performance. However, this is not always my experience, when working with leadership within organizations. I regularly can see the impact of the top team on the business, if they are not working as effectively as they could be.

We know from the CCL that how executive teams function as a collective leadership body, & how its members interact, serve as the model that teams throughout the organization will follow. If their meetings are solely operationally focused, competing for resources, and rarely collaborating, then you will see the same behaviour in many other teams in the company.

Your leadership team member interactions serve as?a model of collaboration, camaraderie, and cohesion for the rest of your organization. If your executive team is aligned, engaged, and committed, they're more likely to collectively lead effective execution of the organization's enterprise strategy. CCL

Of course, if a team of excessively individualistic with leaders vying for resources, status, influence, and most often, their boss’s job, this leads to a fractured organization beneath them. Believe me I have seen this and it's not pretty; leading to silos and competition throughout the company

A Harvard Business Review study found that 75% of cross-functional teams are dysfunctional, failing to achieve their objectives efficiently.

The Impact on the bottom Line

Bain and Co found a correlation between highly effective top teams and companies that beat their competition in revenue growth, profitability, and total shareholder return. The consequences of overlooking top team effectiveness are profound. A team that is not acting as one can not only impede decision-making and hinder strategic execution but also foster an environment of frustration and disengagement among employees.

High performing leadership teams, average 87% employee engagement, while among lower performing leadership teams, it dropped to 45%. RHR

The research is clear: investing in top team development yields significant returns. A McKinsey study revealed that organizations with strong executive teams outperform their peers by up to 25% in total returns to shareholders. Additionally, a meta-analysis by the Journal of Applied Psychology concluded that effective team development interventions lead to a 17% increase in overall performance.

Being in the top team is challenging

Often leaders represent their function and focus on the operational demands rather than considering why are they together as a team and what are their shared objectives; their collective work to ensure strategic delivery?

According to CCL only 18% of executive teams rated their team as very effective with respect to their executive team responsibilities. Overall 65% of senior executives described their leadership team as ineffective, and only roughly 1 in 5 found their executive teams to be high performing.

Some of the most common challenges for executive teams are:

1. The team’s collective work is often vague, leading executives to focus on their role-specific accountabilities rather than the enterprise agenda.
2. The most talented, hard-charging executives are not always the most effective team players.
3. Team processes, particularly decision-making processes, are often implicit rather than explicit, leading to issues of trust.?
4. Teams do not attend to?adopting?the?standards of behavior?(norms)?that foster trust and productive relationships necessary?to?integrate?and energize the?team.
5. Leadership teams typically give little thought to their ongoing development and, as a result, they?fail to grow as a team.?
6. Effective team functioning occurs in phases and can?decrease?if the team leader?does?not consistently focus?on fostering the conditions for a high performing team. Korn Ferry

This can lead to:

• Company wide awareness not being conveyed throughout the organization
• Cross-company collaboration not happening, leading to inefficiencies and repetition with poor end to end processes
• More of a top down leadership style than one that listens into the organizational needs

Building Your Team: The Path to Success

How can CEOs and business leaders cultivate a high-performing top team? It starts with a commitment to continuous improvement and a strategic approach to team development. Which means not just having an occasional off-site where you come together and talk about business - it needs to be intentional team development.

Here are some actionable steps:

1. Understand your current team state - This requires being brave. I often conduct an interview 360 which is highly confidential. Each executive gets individual feedback on their leadership but also on their role in the team and the whole team gains feedback on how they are perceived within the business and their impact on the company. I usually use the leadership behaviours/principles as the guide and this helps to establish how the team are living the behaviours or not. Please do not even attempt this if you are not open to feedback and changing your behaviour, as it will do more damage than good. The Lencioni model is also a great place to start to understand how the team is operating and it is a really user friendly model, to work through TOGETHER.
2. Invest in developing your team - Once you have some feedback and have noted what needs to change, it's time to start the journey. I always start with purpose; What is your purpose as a leadership team, not as a functional lead, but within this team? Once the team has got their heads around that this is their "home" team and their other role is secondary when in this team, then we can move onto responsibilities. What do we need to do as a team to ensure that we deliver on the strategy? What are the individual responsibilities we have?
3. Invest in Trust: Foster a culture of trust, open communication, and psychological safety within your top team. This is the key to your success, without trust you will not get very far. This can take time and can easily be lost, especially in a more hostile team environment. Lencioni has some excellent tips on how to develop trust and I have seen teams move mountains when they start to show vulnerability rather than hiding behind a hard exterior.
4. Set your operating Principles - How will you act and behave as a team? Creating these provides you with a guideline on how to conduct meetings, what is acceptable and not. Agree these together and keep referring back to them. An example could be; "We respect the views of others", "We do not avoid difficult conversations" etc.
5. Encourage constructive conflict - Avoid the "Let's take that later" and then never do! Conflict is an important part of the team debate and enables you to reach a commitment. When you all walk out the door of the meeting you should all be behind the decision, you may not agree, but you are committed.
6. Hold each other accountable - Once you have a commitment then it's important that the team follows through. Accountability can be as simple as; "I see you were going to bring the draft sustainability strategy to this meeting, what happened?". When we hold each other accountable, we get more success. Please note that the whole team takes responsibility, not just the leader.
7. Focus on the greater good - In a leadership team it can be easy to get distracted from the common goal. Instead of thinking about your own goals -what is the bigger objective here? Instead of creating your own empire consider what is best for the company?" Keep focused on the results to guide you. Together you can achieve more.

I worked with one team where the business was on the verge of collapse. The MD complained there was no buy-in for decisions from team members and therefore leaders did their own thing. This had a ripple effect on the company with each function pulling in different directions and competing with each other! There was no collaboration or trust. After observing a 3 hour team meeting I could see one of the problems; the agenda was packed, there was no room for debate and agreement was made quickly and half heartedly - no commitment. Even when leaders took on tasks, they didn't deliver, because no one held anyone accountable. It was only because they were in a difficult situation that they called for help. Fortunately, with a lot of work, the team got back on track and turned things around.

Don't wait till you are in crisis to develop your team.

Conclusion

In today's evolving business landscape, the strength of your top team and their impact on the rest of the company is something I don't think you can overlook. Be brave and engage with your team, gather feedback, and invest in their development. The strength of your top team directly influences your company’s trajectory. Don’t let this opportunity slip away.

If you would like to understand more about confidential 360 interviews, please get in touch.

https://calendly.com/liz-rider

Liz Rider is an Organizational Psychologist, LinkedIn Top Voice on Leadership and Former Global Head of Leadership. Her expertise lies in executive coaching, leadership development, and delivering impactful speaking events for large multinationals globally. She believes that work is becoming unsustainable and through human centric leadership, we can change this.