Successful Leadership Is Really a Team Sport
We live in the culture of the celebrity CEO. The press
focuses on the leader in the corner office and the more colorful,
the better. But if you read past the headlines and
picture captions, you'll usually find the people who
actually move the organization forward
-the executive team.
Powerful tool or functional reporting group? Turf wars or
aligned decision making? Asset or liability?
Often it depends on whether-and how-the leader at the top
chooses to harness the power of the team.
There's Your Vision and There's the Shared Vision
Shared organization vision, strategies and values are critical to
creating a high-performance culture. But too often
we've seen leaders at the top come up with their personal
vision and spend a lot of time selling the organization on
its merits.
Successful leaders we've worked with start by involving their executive
teams in creating a shared vision, long-term direction and organization
priorities. The result: increased buy-in and
personal accountability of every member of the team for
supporting agreed-to goals. Two benefits articulated
by many leaders: time saved by everyone's being on the
same page in the face of issues and decisions-and fewer
turf wars in which people revert to their silos like
jackrabbits down a hole.
Agree on the Team's Role and Get Out of the Way
Shared vision is one thing, but ensuring that the executive team
can effectively act on it is another. Tom Murphy, CIO
at Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, admits that his former
leadership style actually "facilitated and rewarded the
silo mentality," and that his team
-and the organization at large-needed time to trust him and see that his commitment to doing things differently was real.
Sometimes it's not just an issue of trust for team members; they are
merely accustomed to the top leader being the team's
mouthpiece. Then it's up to the leader to remove him or
herself from the spotlight. Though his group is well
down the road of "spreading out leadership," Chris
Dodds, CFO at Charles Schwab & Co., observes that it is
still a challenge "to help people find their own
voice." Walking the talk for him, he says, often
means giving people permission to take the reins. At
times it may require "ordering them to do it."
No leader can effectively lead without a clear personal vision,
says CIO Murphy. He admits that the challenge of going
from successful "legacy builder" to a new mission
of "developing and empowering other leaders" kept
him awake at night soul-searching and pondering the
commitment. Two years later, he can point to multiple
successes in some very tough times and be proud that
"99% of what we've accomplished we've done as a
team." He finds it particularly rewarding that
"the organization has learned to draw strength, passion
and energy from within itself."
Take a Look at the Team's Members
Using language borrowed from the Marshall Plan, Gaston Caperton,
CEO of The College Board and former Governor of West
Virginia, says the challenge lies in ensuring there are
"offensively minded people on the team." In his
experience, once those people who want responsibility are in
place, there are "only pluses" when their
collective power is shared.
Granted, personnel decisions at this level may require some of the toughest
choices a leader must make. Yet it's up to the leader
to ensure that all members of the team share and act on the
team's collective vision. CIO Murphy observes,
"It hurts the entire organization if someone's behavior
is contradictory...Dramatic actions [such as letting
executives go] can send a signal that the leader is walking
the talk
-and can vitalize others."
