During my steep learning curve in the United States of America, I have learnt as it is said that “Many hands make work easier” even before I came across many other expressions pressing upon the importance of teamwork. After reading “Senior Leadership Teams” (Wageman, Nunes, Burruss, & Hackman, 2008), I realized that there is much more to a team building process than actually perceived of. The tasks that senior leadership teams are assigned are not mere walk in the parks like school assignments but actually important event handling which involves investment and return, therefore challenging their already acclaimed leader statuses. These leaders are adequately skilled and well versed with their own duties and responsibilities as they already run their respective organizational units. The main objective of this exercise is precisely that, to grow their individual unit which eventually benefits the whole organization. Therefore, creating such an environment and a suitable team is no easy task, not one that every CEO is capable of. There is no such thing as a perfect team, therefore the best a CEO can do is to provide suitable conditions to grow and execute such a team. The book; interestingly identifies 6 such conditions that can be provided, the first three being called essential and the next three “enablers”.
The prerequisites for a good team performance are the three essential conditions. For this purpose, the leaders need to create a real team, provide clear cut goals and tasks for that team to achieve and finally choosing the right kind of people for a specific team. For creating a real team, the leader needs to be very clear in his mind about the role and task of the team he is about to set-up. If an organization is making changes to its structure like an overseas move, rapid growth strategy any other factor that may threat the actual existence of the organization, the team selected has to be one with members who can foresee the future and make strong result-oriented decisions. The authors identify four major types of senior leadership teams. The first is “informational team” which advices the individual leaders about the changing environment and new developments in an organization. “Consultation teams” are formed to provide ideas and consultations to the CEO regarding key decisions that have to be taken. The third type of team is the “coordination team” whose job is join heads while conducting joint leadership activities, so all the leaders are on the same page. The final kind is the decision making team, whose members combine to form a think-tank when a critical decision has to be taken. Once you decide what kind of task the team has to achieve, it becomes easier to pick the members making up the team. For example, if a company is thinking of moving overseas or expanding, the leaders from marketing, financial, manufacturing, and HR divisions will be needed for forming up a decision making and coordination teams. However, it is necessary to set clear goals for these ad hock teams also providing them enough time to work together and function as a single unit. Once a team has these traits embodied in them, it can safely be said that it is a real team. Moreover, a clear goal; as stated before needs to be a challenging one to bring out the best from the team. This challenge however should be a team challenge rather than an individual one.
The enablers are the next three conditions out of the six, which are utilized to facilitate the task of senior leadership teams. These conditions are a solid structure, supportive organizational context and competent team coaching. For building a solid base or structure, one needs to call in a small group of competent individuals. These members should be selected on some peculiar trait so they bring something out of the box on the table in the whole group. The next step is to give them well-defined goals or tasks for a short period of time, so that they can gel together and work in an efficient manner. It is very important to establish protocols which are the parameters in which the team can play with its decisions and tasking. The team should be well supported with all that they need i.e. resources, information and rewards. Team coaching is the third enabler in whom the team member interacts with you to highlight his progress or problems he is facing, all for the reasons of betterments in his department. This includes clarifying team boundaries, rules and regulations and especially checking up on team members who fall out of line whether unintentionally or intentionally. This also includes changing the protocol based on the feedback by the team members. Any person, who can do the above mentioned job, is said to be the perfect coach and consequently the most suitable person for being the chief executive.
However, saying all this, a senior leadership team member needs to perceive team integrity. Each member of the team is expected to adhere to the following rules. The first rule which is the most important one is to keep the conversation between him and the senior executive confidential. The second task is to implement the decisions made by the team. Finally, it is his prime duty to keep issues that affect the organization the most as top priority, even if the said issue is not of his particular domain. However, there are always one or more members who are working against the team interest to fulfill their personal interests. It is the prime duty of the team leader to identify these people and remove them from the team and find a suitable replacement within no time and define his task in the team as an individual and as a team player, so that the efficiency of the team is not hampered. Therefore, the need of “Onboarding” arises. “Onboarding” is a tool used to help the senior executive to prepare for the role as a part of the leadership team. The new member has to be briefed on three essential issues regarding the expectations from him, on an individual basis, as a team member and as the role of senior leadership team member.
In my personal view the leader of a senior leadership team, should possess the some traits which are a little different from the order suggested by the authors in the book. Firstly I would frame out the task of the team and then select the members according to the individual needs of the team as a whole. Afterwards, I will chalk out the protocols governing the members as individual and as a team. This will include the purpose of each team member, the information/resources required and available along with the meeting schedule. In the very first meeting, I will lay down the mission statement and structure of the team. Documentation of each and everything is very important so the wheel is not invented again and again. Therefore the agenda discussed and decisions made will be listed in a memorandum which will be circulated to all the team members so that the members know what to expect in the next meeting along with the salient points of the previous one. Lastly, even after the team has been able to defeat a problem successfully, a feedback meeting will be called, whose agenda will be to look back on our performance and recommend methods for teams in the future facing similar kind of problems, giving them a much needed jump start.
References
Wageman, R., Nunes, D. A., Burruss, J. A., & Hackman, R. (2008). Senior Leadership Teams. Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation: USA.
