“Don’t run for office. You are already elected.” Jack Welch

“Collaboration across boundaries is fundamentally different.”
Carly Fiorina

Executive leadership teams, the groups of senior level executives –typically led by the CEO—that drive an organization, have a substantial effect on the company’s culture, work environment, strategic direction, and productivity. A well- or poorly-run team can literally mean success or failure in any sized company, because of its impact on an organization’s ability to innovate, respond to market challenges, communicate with investors, foster employee loyalty, and manage productivity.

Given these high stakes, how can an organization’s leader maximize the effectiveness of its executive leadership team? In our experience, these teams operate using different work styles, usually based on the preferences of the CEO. The two most common styles are:

Leader-centric. In this model, the CEO uses team meetings to share information, consult with other executives on important issues, and coordinate execution of decisions that the CEO has made. The CEO’s style is a forceful one: the team’s members maintain loyalty within that style, fully expecting that the CEO will make most of the key decisions. Jack Welch, in his book Winning, describes a leader-centric style this way: “By nature, some people are consensus builders. Some people long to be loved by everyone. Those behaviors can really get you in the soup if you are a leader….You are not a leader to win a popularity contest – you are a leader to lead.” (p. 72)

Versatile. In the second model, the CEO aspires to build a more collaborative executive team. While these CEOs still hold the keys, they regularly seek to differentiate between decisions that are best made collaboratively, via team discussion and consensus, and those made by the CEO after consultation and input. In Tough Choices, Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard, describes this style of team leadership: “Collaboration requires more consultation and agreement among peers. It requires acceptance of accountability while sharing resources. It means trusting others to do their job while knowing that others must trust you to do the same.” (pp. 138-139)

The model a CEO chooses can be influenced by a number of factors, but the biggest influencer is the CEO’s own beliefs about leadership, and their own perceived—or real—strengths and weaknesses as a leader. CEOs who prefer the leader-centric style are often less comfortable with the personal relationship-building part of their job. They are less skilled with the role of coaching and facilitating, one that is generally required to build a highly interdependent leadership team. Their executive team meetings tend to be more formal and reserved, because they are less comfortable with open discussion, debating different viewpoints, and using varying team decision-making styles based on the requirements of the issue at hand.

The Advantages and Challenges of Versatile Teams

Both research and real-world experience indicate that versatile, collaborative leadership teams position their companies for the best opportunities to succeed. The process of building such a team helps prepare senior executives for success in their positions, supports healthy discussion on vital issues, and sets a tone throughout the company that engages and values people. This extra effort has provided a recipe for productivity and innovation at many companies.

But to build a healthy versatile team, leaders must both believe that the model can succeed and have the skills to build one. It’s no small task.

A versatile team requires an investment of time and effort to build and nurture it, because success involves generating both the trust and the agreement among peers that Fiorina describes. Strong relationships between the CEO and each individual team member – and between the team members themselves – can greatly contribute to its effectiveness. Here’s where self-understanding and versatility on the part of the CEO will be particularly helpful, because there will be times when a direct, leader-centric approach is appropriate (such as in the early stages of the team’s development), and others when the collaborative style will yield more productive outcomes.

Avoiding Pitfalls
Make no mistake: in advocating the versatile team leadership model, we are not suggesting that CEOs abdicate their decision-making responsibilities. As Welch writes, successful collaborative CEOs do not believe that all decisions should be made by consensus. They are fully aware of decisions that need to be made alone, made in consultation with certain other individual executives, or delegated to others.

Successful leaders DO take the time to consider how decisions should best be made, and have the conviction to act on those decisions. By doing so, they avoid some pitfalls of ineffective collaborative processes, such as:

• Subtly manipulating the process to gain desired outcomes,

• Pretending to involve team members in decisions that are already made, or

• Slowing down the organization by seeking consensus on decisions that should have been made by an individual.

The good news is that a mindful, sustained executive investment in building a collaborative team yields great dividends, as team members bring their best work to the table with them, feeling valued as creative contributors. Clarity of roles is also vital, and keeps the team on course and focused. Participating in a well-functioning team is exciting, invigorating and highly productive, setting the stage for excellence throughout the organization and powerful impact on that ever-important bottom line.

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The Question: A team is a group of individuals committed to each other and a common goal. What specific goals must the senior management team (CEO and direct reports) of your company accomplish, beyond basic business and financial objectives, to provide leadership and support for the success of your company?

From Bev Dusso, Executive Director, Tubman Family Alliance, Minneapolis

The leadership team must build and maintain a communication pattern and commitment to learning and creativity that will provoke higher-level reflection, thought, and solutions or innovations. They must balance the continuous change challenge with respect and recognition for constancy of regular and excellent service delivery and operating activity. They must celebrate missteps and the resulting new methods, more - and loudly! They must continuously watch metrics and consider how to use the information they yield.

Finally, the senior leadership team must provide sufficient process and support technology in routine business activities to release their teams into creative, reflective practice as a regular part of understanding our customers in their communities, and developing the future services/products to be delivered to meet the mission of the organization.

From Ken Hamm, CEO, First Choice Health Network, Seattle

Having been in the CEO role for a bit more than a year, what I have learned is pretty basic and intuitive: it is very important to have alignment of goals among the senior team. The result is that it is much easier for the organization to succeed if everyone is aligned around the same goals. Alternatively, it is much easier to fail if the senior team is not aligned toward common goals. I would also include focus and transparency as part of alignment. It is very easy to get distracted from longer-term goals by day-to-day issues. But if the senior team is aligned and focused, with monthly review of those goals, it is very hard to get off track.

These big picture goals need to be communicated with clarity and frequency to the organization. Transparency can help with this communication as well. Frequent communication of project status enhances clarity. There is really not a risk of over communicating something to an organization.

From Eric Paulson, Chairman, Navarre Corporation, New Hope

To successfully lead and support our organization’s success, we rely on the senior management team to:

1. Maintain an understanding of the ethics and company values under which we operate to accomplish all goals.
    

2. Create a compensation structure that incentivizes growth combined with profits.
    

3. Accomplish a new revitalized organization structure that better addresses today’s market place.
    

4. Structure the organization with the right people and provide an environment for growth.
    

5. Update our systems to provide information and technical continuity with customers and vendors alike.
    

6. Continue to combine technical know-how with liability.

From Jeff Fritz, President, Lighthouse 1, Minnetonka

Most businesses have similar fundamental principles that will drive success. What is often overlooked is the human planning element necessary to execute on a business plan. Four areas the leadership team is required to watch are:

Team Unity. It amazes me how team building exercises for teams (from the executive management team to cross-functional strategy teams) can have a profound effect on job satisfaction and productive progress to goal attainment.

Role Clarity. When people understand their position, their top 3 priorities, and what success looks like, they can move unencumbered towards goal attainment. When they lack role clarity they tend to cycle on their frustration and spend time bringing others into their frustration.

Communication Preferences. Executives can clear the way for effective communication when they recognize that not all people have the same style of communication. This recognition of different approaches can make coaching more effective, and assessment tools can be very helpful in this initiative.

Trust and Support. As long as someone is on the team they deserve trust and support from leadership. This can be difficult if there is a perception of failure with an individual or team. During the assessment of the root issue I look at the following gates. If it is a capability issue, we need to train. If it is a performance issue, we need to coach or replace. If the company is hiring talented, energetic team members and there are still significant performance issues, it’s probably a management issue and likely stems from the management’s ability to execute areas 1-3 above.

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In response to client requests, the Bailey Consulting Group has developed a new series of course offerings that help new and emerging leaders understand the core competencies needed for effective leadership. As with our other programs, this workshop is grounded in our foundational concepts of maturity, versatility, and relationship-based leadership as key characteristics of successful leaders.

We created Leadership Skill Series to fill a key development need in many companies: to help employees manage the transition from managing themselves to leading others. The workshop begins with a full day of activity that includes assessment, skill and values development, and action planning for their new roles.

We then offer up to six additional modules, each a four-hour session, that can be tailored to an organization’s specific needs. These modules include:

• Leading the Function, which encourages developing and communicating a vision that guides functions, departments, or projects.
   

• Leading Individuals, which covers key components of employee engagement, motivation and interaction.
   

• Leading Teams, which addresses the dynamics of effective and productive teams, and makes a distinction between managing individual results and managing team results.
   

• Building and Leveraging Relationships, which establishes the importance of building and nurturing authentic and trusting relationships and networks with peers, superiors and business partners.
   

• Leading Change, Conflict and Crisis, which helps leaders recognize the dynamics of change and transition, and the roles they can play to effectively lead through such situations.
   

• Moving Ahead, which encourages planning for future opportunities, recognizing individual needs for new skills, and assessing readiness for growth.

Leaders who complete our Leadership Skills Series curriculum will learn a common framework, new competencies, and recognize real action steps they can take to become successful in their new roles. Moreover, those who participate together will gain camaraderie with people in similar roles through these shared experiences, setting the stage for support and future leadership development.

Is your organization interested in learning more about this new program?
Contact Martha Carlson at mcarlson@thebaileygroup.com, and she’ll be pleased to share more details with you.

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First of all, we apologize for any inconvenience: because of a family emergency, we have rescheduled our open Taking Charge of Your Career workshop, originally scheduled for February 27th, to Wednesday, March 21st, 2007.

Here’s what has NOT changed: the time (8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.), the place (Doubletree Park Place, 394 at Hwy. 100 in St. Louis Park), or the content.

Kindly allow us to clarify that last point. The Taking Charge of Your Career workshop is an open version of a program that the Bailey Group has led as an employee engagement tool within numerous organizations. It is designed to help key individual contributors, high achievers, and even new leaders within organizations learn steps they can take to feel more fulfilled and proactive as they build their careers. (Please note that this is not a ‘taste’ of a Bailey Group workshop, but actually a complete eight-hour seminar.)

Many companies struggle to increase the engagement and commitment of their employees. Evidence from multiple sources demonstrates that engaged, committed employees have a dramatic impact on organizational productivity and ultimately profitability. Taking Charge is designed specifically to address this issue. This workshop helps employees identify and communicate their talents and development needs to their managers, and teaches participants how to create and implement, together with their managers, development plans that help to unlock their unused potential.

This personalized approach to employee engagement has been successfully used within organizations such as Allina, Datacard, Wells Fargo and Ameriprise. Individuals who have participated in past Taking Charge sessions report a renewed energy for their work, an interest in thinking outside of the ‘cubicle,’ and greater recognition of their share of responsibility in achieving career success. Their companies see engaged employees who contribute at a higher level and learn to take more initiative in their jobs and careers.

Spaces are still available for Taking Charge on March 21. Cost is $350 per person, and includes lunch, snacks and materials. If you would like to see first-hand our approach to employee engagement, or have some key employees who would benefit from such a day-long offsite experience, contact us at 763-545-5997 or send an email to bktaylor@thebaileygroup.com.

Special note to anyone in career transition: we have several scholarships available to help cover costs of the workshop. Please let us know if you are interested.

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