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A month and a half into this new year and I am already hearing from leaders about companies that have key employees who are leaving for a new job, or are contemplating doing so. In my recent columns in the Metrowest Daily News I have noted that with this trend likely to develop as the year progresses, leaders and managers need to attend to employee engagement strategies.
A recent consultation got me thinking about this further: how does an organization make sure that senior leadership teams are engaged and productive? Folks who are in senior leadership roles throughout an organization are key employees. Those who form a senior leadership team certainly need to be kept engaged in a volatile time.
With the complexity of operating a business in the current economy only ever increasing, more and more organizations are moving to a model where a CEO or other senior leader – say a division head – creates a senior leadership team to cover all of the tasks required of leadership.
Creating a working team of such high-performing leaders is challenging, and in fact more often than not, these types of teams work sub-optimally. The risk that emerges from such sub-optimal teamwork is that a few of these key leaders may become frustrated – and in the worst case, leave.
Fortunately there are some great resources for those who are involved in these types of senior leadership work-groups. Ruth Wageman of Dartmouth, along with colleagues from the Hay Group, have studied senior leadership teams to determine what leads to effective teamwork at the senior leadership level.
In their book Senior leadership teams: What it takes to make them great, Wageman and her co-authors detail six elements that lead to senior team success – but to get it right, these authors argue, you must form a real team from the beginning, and this team formation is also where many get off-track. The book suggests three elements critical to senior team formation.
Be clear who is on your leadership team. Many times teams at the top ranks of the corporate hierarchy are too large. Perhaps in an effort to collect as much information as possible for decision making, senior teams tend to involve a disparate group of people. A times, not everyone knows exactly who is a member and who is not. Additionally, smaller is better: keeping a team to less than 10 seems to correlate with higher performance.
Set a clear purpose for your team. Identify the specific work the team is constructed to perform. Create a name for the team, as this helps with forming identity separate from regular responsibilities. In addition, re-check to be sure that those identified members of the team are clearly aligned with the purpose. If you can identify members who habitually create resistance or slow the group in singular ways, it may be best to move them off the team. Be mindful that folks at this level of the organization need to agree that the work the team is being asked to do is meaningful. Don’t waste their time. All team members must recognize and commit to the clear purpose you develop.
Set clear expectations. A leadership group that is formed in an ad-hoc manner won’t likely become highly effective. Specifically set the duration of the group’s term. Likely this will correlate with the defined purpose of the group. Set the expectations for meeting attendance, time commitments, and accountability for related work. You will want a clear agenda for team meetings, with materials required for review or reporting provided ahead of time. This helps the group move data to decisions.
When high performing employees are presented with an identified team, a clear set of priorities and tasks, and clear expectations for how work is to be completed, they can then best use their own talents to achieve results. Forming a group that provides these boundaries helps team members actively engage and take accountability for not only their actions, but those of the team as well.
It is also less likely that a group of key employees who are engaged with other senior employees in meaningful work are going to be out on the street interviewing with your competitors.
