Leading Your Leadership Team

Leadership Coaching Notes April 2009

Leading Your Leadership Team

I bet James $100 that individuals on his leadership team couldn’t list the same top 3 success indicators for their team. Guess who won? James wasn’t really risking $100. He was  gambling the success of his organization on a team that lacked the clarity, alignment and influence needed to optimize results. James faced a group of high-performing individuals representing personal agendas and functions, not a team working to deliver shared objectives. I challenged him to measure his leadership team’s value and success by how well his whole staff answered three critical questions. If your leadership team is wasting time, effort and results, apply what James learned. To review the overview graphic for our work, click Leadership Success Equation.

 What Worked – Can your staff answer these 3 questions?

1. How Will We Know We’ve Arrived? Staff wanted to help build a meaningful future. What was it? James led his team to analyze market realities and create a 1-page description of the organization’s desired future. The team kept speaking from this 1-page, with 1 voice, in multiple venues to clearly describe the organization’s purpose, values, top 3-5 strategic goals and resource parameters until spot checks across the staff revealed everyone could accurately name key organization success metrics and why they were important.

What You Can Do: Check: Put your own $100 on the table and offer to contribute it towards something your team values if, without discussion, they can all list the same 3-5 priority deliverables for their team. Use the exercise to discuss the impact of their results. If you have alignment, celebrate and move to question 2. If you don’t, start co-creating that clarity today. Old Chinese adage: the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today.

2. What Results Must My Work Team and I Contribute? James led his team to translate their vision into a short set of critical, specific, coordinated, and measurable operational objectives. They co-created a simple 2-page milestone plan that translated strategic goals into specific operational targets for the year and each quarter. His team publicized each unit’s key deliverables until checks showed that staff could consistently name their function’s top contributions and success metrics.

What You Can Do: Check: Can each of your direct reports name their unit’s top 2 accountabilities for achieving your organization’s annual goals? Are these accountabilities activities and intentions (e.g., meet, work, organize, coordinate) or specific deliverables and achievements (e.g., deliver, close, get board approval?) Activities and “trying” are not substantive progress. Check: How well can their staff name their unit’s top 2 accountabilities? Take one step at a time to assure they can,
this month.

3. How Are We Doing and What’s Next? Implementing the plan was the biggest challenge of all. From their “satellite,” overview position, James expected his leadership team to act as the organization’s “GPS” unit. Each month, they checked status against goals and adjusted their approach as needed to stay on the course they’d set. They created a screen saver that showed everyone the company’s progress. Each month they spoke of status vs. the top goals and focused on how everyone could move them forward. They regularly spot checked that staff understood the organization’s current standing and what was most important to achieve next.

What You Can Do: Check: How effectively does your senior team structure regular “GPS” sessions to monitor progress on key goals, plan needed course corrections and drive progress? How effectively does your team publicize successes and accountabilities for improving results to all staff? How well can each of their staffs answer question #3?

Business Impact

The journey wasn’t flawless and, even with my help each month, it took James a year to build a clearly focused and productive leadership team. Team meetings became far more rigorous and valuable. They faced the hard issues and addressed them. The clarity and disicipline they co- created within the leadership team increasingly cascaded into the organization. They became a positive model for effective teamwork and leadership. Best of all, they and staff knew that they improved business metrics. Everyone could both celebrate and sustain their new successes.

What’s Next

Leading effective change of leadership teams is hard. The challenge of having to wear two hats, one as teacher/facilitator and one as standards keeper, makes developing your leadership team alone really tough. If you or leaders of business units and major projects you know are struggling to align and focus leadership teams so they hold valuable meetings and create stronger business results, call about how a coaching and consulting program can support you with ideas, a second skillful voice for change, and a proven structure for achieving greater success. Our first conversation is always free. Bring your top challenges and goals so we make most valuable use of your time.

Liked the article? Didn’t like it? Have any questions? Drop me a line mkimbell@corporateadventure.com. I’d love to hear from you!

All the best,

Meredith Kimbell
Executive Advisor,Strategy Consultant
Corporate Adventure

Leadership Coaching Notes uses real or composite client examples drawn from 25 years of coaching and consulting with leaders committed to solving their toughest personal, interpersonal and organizational issues.
Unless otherwise attributed, all material is copyrighted by Meredith Kimbell © 2011. All rights reserved. You may reprint any or all of this material if you include the following:
“Leadership Coaching Notes © 2011 Meredith Kimbell, Corporate Adventure, Reston, VA. Used with permission.”