What Makes an Effective Senior Leadership Team?

Why capable leaders do not automatically make an effective team

Put a group of experienced, capable leaders around a table and you would expect them to make a strong leadership team. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't.

We see senior teams where every individual is good at their job, committed to the organisation and working incredibly hard. Yet something is still getting in the way of the team performing at its best.

Meetings become a round of operational updates. The difficult conversation happens after the meeting rather than in it. People agree around the table, then return to their functions and pull in slightly different directions. There is plenty of activity, but not always enough collective leadership.

This can be a signal that the team has reached a point where what got it this far will not get it where it needs to go next.

Senior teams have a different job to do

One of the challenges for senior leadership teams is that their members usually have two jobs. They lead their own function and they are also members of the team responsible for the organisation as a whole.

Those priorities will not always sit neatly together.

A Finance Director, HR Director or Operations Director needs to advocate for what their area requires. But around the executive table, they also need to step beyond their functional position and make decisions in the interests of the whole organisation.

That takes trust, challenge, clarity and a willingness to have conversations that may be uncomfortable.

Research on team effectiveness repeatedly points to the importance of factors such as clear direction, strong relationships, psychological safety, productive challenge and shared accountability. None of those happen just because the people involved are senior.

Team coaching isn't only for teams in trouble

This came up in several of our recent conversations with HR and L&D leaders. There can still be an assumption that team coaching is something you bring in when a senior team is dysfunctional.

Of course, that might be one use, but that is not to say it can’t be used for high-performing teams too.

Some of the most interesting team coaching work is with capable teams that are already delivering. They are not trying to repair a disaster. They want to raise their game: improve the quality of debate, spend more time on strategic issues, challenge one another better, make stronger collective decisions or lead significant change together.

We saw this in one of our own team coaching programmes. The senior commercial leadership team was already experienced and successful. The work was about building greater trust, creating better strategic dialogue and strengthening collective leadership. The point was not to 'fix' the team, it was to help a good team become even more effective together.

But don't start with team coaching

If someone tells us, 'This team needs team coaching', our first question is usually some version of: what is happening?

Before deciding on the intervention, we need to understand the team and the organisation around it.

That might mean speaking individually with team members, talking to key stakeholders, observing leadership meetings and understanding the organisation's strategy and what it needs from this team over the next 12 months.

We want to know what is working as well as what is not. Where does the team need to get to? What would be different if it got there? And, importantly, what would that achieve for the organisation?

Sometimes that work confirms that team coaching is appropriate. Sometimes it identifies something that needs attention first, perhaps unresolved conflict, mediation or systemic issues with the culture of the organisation. Calling everything a 'team issue' can hide what is really going on.

What does good team coaching look like?

Once the groundwork is done, the coaching itself should stay connected to the work of the team.

For many of the senior teams we support, that means a half-day session roughly once a month. The space between sessions is where the learning transitions out of the learning environment, because the team has time to put different behaviours into practice in live meetings, decisions and conversations.

We also review progress at midpoint and endpoint against what the team and organisation wanted to achieve.

There is a growing evidence base for team coaching.

If you’re looking at coaching for your teams, start with this question: What does this particular team need to achieve, what is getting in its way, and is team coaching the right way to help it get there?

And if you need any guidance along the way, we’re happy to chat. Get in touch.