With a rapidly changing world, the need for high-performance teams to solve difficult problems is more important than ever before. The good news is that humans are wired...
Today's complex, fast-changing world features speed, complexity and dense interdependencies. Problem solving in real time and focusing on continuous improvement is critical in senior leadership roles, in order to advance an organisation forward.
At its core, this requires an energetic executive team that is incredibly focused on delivering the right customer outcomes and making a positive impact throughout the entire organization. Uniting together as a harmonised collective - prioritising, communicating and co-ordinating work in alignment with a clear company vision and strategic direction.
Yet, a study from the Center of Creative Leadership found that only 1 in 5 senior executives rate their senior leadership team as "very effective."
5 Signs of Poor Performing Executive Leadership Teams
Executive team effectiveness is a competitive advantage. Led by the chief executive who ensures that the company vision is achieved through strategic decisions and strategic goals made by the executive leadership team creating an actionable strategy.
Yet, making the right strategic decisions and an effective corporate strategy aren't always achievable with an executive team who performance is under-par. Here are the five top reasons why.
1. Make slow critical decisions
According to research by Joseph Grenny, the approximate health of team or organisation performance can be measured by how quickly problems get solved.
Unfortunately, a remarkably common issue with poor performing executive leadership teams is that they are slow in making crucial decisions. They tend to revert back to issues that were thought to be closed or make decisions outside of the team without all decision makers present.
One CEO I talked to from a midsize organisation estimated that his executive leadership team wasted at least $225,000 a year or more spinning their wheels discussing complex issues and back tracking.
Senior leaders who are keen to protect their turf or resources or who don't truly understand other senior leadership roles will spend literally hours rehashing the same old issues over and over again. Simple issues are made over-complicated and it takes hours to talk things through. People simply aren't listening to one another. Instead, it's more about being heard, even when little is known on the topic at hand. The result is that business goals get missed as leaders prefer to stick with the status quo.
2. Celebrate achievements, but fail to learn from failures
In my research with organisations, effective teams spend time learning about what went right and wrong. They spend time reflecting on what has been achieved, so that they can make adaptive responses moving forward.
Low performance teams will celebrate wins, but fail to lift the lid on why senior executives and their departments are missing their targets. In this environment, effective leaders will confess that they are not being challenged.
In my research among other stakeholders, company employees will question why a lack of accountability is acceptable. It makes them fearful about business success when failure is ignored, or even dismissed. In their minds, they want to know why milestones aren't being reached, why aren't leaders responsible and what the plans are to achieve success, despite the obstacles.
High-performing teams excel at meeting their strategic goals making the whole organization accountable.
3. Avoid meetings
This is a hallmark of poor performing executive leadership teams when senior leaders make excuses to not attend executive team meetings.
After having observed countless leadership team meetings, it's little wonder that few people want to attend them. In my research with leadership teams, a paltry 43% of senior executives rate their "Team meetings are compelling and productive."
Leaders spend their time listening to one another sharing information about day operations in their business unit and their progress. No-one asks questions, challenges one another nor shares their concerns about future strategic plans. Everything is kept friendly and well, boring. Groupthink has set in and people just go along with everything in the name of team harmony.
It is little wonder that busy executives would prefer to be working than listen to mindless individual reporting that has little impact on the work they do.
4. No consultation or communication with each other outside of senior leadership team meetings
Poor performing executive teams tend to have a limited understanding oftheir fellow cross-functional C-suite executives. The result is that they tend to work in silos and don't even think to consult their peers. Execution across functions suffer because senior leaders avoid one another. This is often observed by their teams who then mimic their C-level leaders refusing to collaborate with fellow teams.
On the other hand, a high-performing team loves to learn from one another and seek advice. They recognise and respect their team member's functional expertise. You'll find top-performing executive teams will often spend time with each other outside of team meetings - calling upon each other for advice or support. This even includes sorting out issues without the CEO's involvement.
One team I worked with loved hanging out with their peers. At least once a week, some of the senior leaders would drop into a team member's office and talk about what was going on and share experiences and learnings. For one senior leader, he mentioned it was the highlight of his day.
Research on executive leadership teams by Ruth Wageman et al, found that senior leadership teams that become more capable in working together also contribute substantially to the leadership development of individual members. In other words, in high-performing executive teams, team members love being part of the team and describe the experience as significantly growing both their professional development and personal development.
5. Little effort is made to improve executive team effectiveness
Leading a team of senior executives is not easy. They all come with their own perspectives, biases, blind spots, functional expertise and strongly held opinions. Combining independent and smart people into a united front is hard work.
One of the common barriers to success with executive leadership team performance is how infrequently the chief executive spends time working with senior executives and encouraging leaders to work together to move the organisation forward. The CEO needs to spend time creating the right conditions to harness the inherent power and collective intelligence in the team.
Senior teams that are poor in collaborating, often have a chief executive that hasn't created the right team structure and dynamics to ensure a "one-firm" focus. This can have disastrous consequences for upholding a robust culture. Leaders are left to their own devices to figure out how to work together. This isn't easy for self-focused senior executives who have spent their careers being rewarded for being an individual contributor.
Top-Performing Executive Teams
A common misunderstanding is that if you gather a bunch of talented high performers they will seamlessly gel – creating a high-performing leadership team. Unfortunately, this sounds great in theory, but rarely works in practice. Getting a team of C-level leaders to understand and include one another takes time and dedication.
It requires a courageous CEO who is willing to change their behaviours to lead the team and make some tough decisions such as ensuring the right people are in senior leadership team roles, creating a clear company vision and deciding on the right team behaviours required for business success.
If you would like to learn more about executive team building or how to improve trust and alignment in your executive leadership team, download the free executive team insights paper
