Leadership Team Effectiveness
Your strategy now asks more of your leadership team than the last plan did. We give you an independent, confidential view of whether the team has the right people, skills, structure and behaviours for it and, for each gap, whether development will close it or a more fundamental change is needed. We can then design the changes and put them in place with you.
The problem
Decisions stall in the leadership meeting, the same issues reach the chief executive every week, and the country teams wait for calls the group team has not made. The chief executive cannot yet tell whether to change the people or the way the team is set up.
The work is for the chief executive, chair, CFO or private equity operating partner who wants an independent view first: a new leader inheriting a team, two teams brought together by an acquisition, or a review that has found the team needs work. It is the wrong fit if you want a culture or engagement survey, a 360 review, the performance management of one person, or an executive search.
What we do
Each leader completes a Belbin Team Roles profile, with Observer Assessments from colleagues. The team also rates itself in a survey based on Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team model. We then hold a confidential interview with each leader about their role, the strategy and the team. We set the findings against what the strategy asks of the team.
Stephen leads the work. As managing director of the UK subsidiary of a European Microsoft technology integrator, he rebuilt the leadership team and, with the chief executive, carried out the initial assessment of the group’s operating model.
How an engagement runs
The diagnostic takes two to four weeks. Each leader gives about three hours in total, and the chief executive and the chair about two hours more. We scope the later stages to the size of the team, and only once you have decided to continue.
1Diagnose
We agree what the assessment is for, tell every leader what to expect and who will see the findings, then run the profiles, the survey and an interview of ninety minutes to two hours with each leader. You receive a confidential report: a map of the team roles covered and missing, the interview findings grouped by function, and, for each leader, where they stand and whether development can close any gap or a change of role, structure or person is needed.
2Design
We turn the findings into a sequenced plan: redesigned roles and reporting lines, a development plan for each leader who needs one, and a role profile for any capability the team lacks. The plan is written for your own team to run without us.
3Implement
We work with the chief executive to put the plan in place, including work with the team as a group on how it runs. Coaching for individual leaders runs through our Executive Coaching service, and any search runs through the search firm you choose. Once the changes are in place, your own people run the team structure and the development plans.