The Business Leadership Team is fundamentally different from other kinds of business team. However a key barrier to effective leadership team working is that Leadership Teams often operate as a group of individual leaders accountable for delivery within their own functions.
This creates inevitable tensions, which limit the effectiveness of the top team. The performance of the senior leadership team sends strong messages to the organisation and the market. This is an essential area of organisational performance which should not be underestimated
xecteam will benefit your business when:
- the leadership team is newly formed - or its composition has recently changed
- the team faces new business challenges or competitive threats and needs to react quickly
- relations between team members are problematic – more time is spent on politics than running the business
- a recent merger or acquisition has lead to a complete re-structure
Xancam's approach
We begin by working with the CEO and individual leadership team members to identify the particular business pressures that they face in leading their organisation – this sets the context for the activity. We then conduct sessions with the individual directors to discuss their perceptions of how well the leadership team works together, and run group sessions involving the whole team. As appropriate, we will use 360 feedback, conduct one to one coaching sessions with individual directors and observe ‘live’ board meetings to assess group dynamics.
An important feature of our approach is to benchmark the leadership team’s performance against comparable leadership teams so that we can identify the priorities that need to be addressed to lead the business effectively. Our interventions are firmly placed in the context of what the business must achieve, and we always work with our client to agree clear action points targeted to promote individual, team and whole business performance.
Clients who have used xecteam
 |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|
Top Tips
The leadership team shouldn’t always act as a team
leadership teams are inefficient when they re-hash every single issue as a group in an attempt to achieve consensus – it usually makes more sense to devolve issues to individual team members’ areas of expertise
Good leadership teams use conflict well
the best leadership teams make effective use of conflict and challenge because it stimulates debate and leads to richer decisions
Team behaviour does not guarantee team performance at the top
there are a range of issues for a leadership team to address if it is to be effective – working well as a team is not enough on its own
Surprisingly few business decisions need the whole leadership team’s involvement
only those that have genuine cross-business impact benefit from the whole team’s input
Leadership teams needn’t agree on everything…
but the best leadership teams adopt a position of ’cabinet responsibility’ – differences are discussed in private but a consistent message is expressed in public
