How leadership teams create buy-in.
How leadership teams create buy-in.
The senior leadership team had worked with each other for some time. It was a team of 10 and they represented all areas of the business. Everyone got on at a personal level, but the team wasn’t quite as dynamic as it could be. A couple of interesting things were happening. First, when the CEO wasn’t in the office at the time of their regular weekly catchup, the meeting didn’t happen. Second, when members of the SLT were giving updates on how things were going they were very good at reporting back on their own silo. Third, there wasn’t a lot of discussion, deliberation or decision across the team – this was typically done between the CEO and each respective leader, they didn’t really operate as a team. They were more like a group.
What’s the difference between a team and a group?
It’s always useful to have some distinctions around whether you have (or need) groups or teams. Gordon Curphy, an expert in the areas of groups and teams provides the following definitions:
A group is a collection of people who have individual goals, and they operate quite independently of the other people in the group. If one person in the group doesn’t achieve their goals, this won’t have an impact on the rest of the members of the group
A team is a collection of people who have shared goals. They win and die together. They have a shared identity, and they work collaboratively to achieve the results for the team.
It’s often interesting that businesses talk about having a strong team-based culture, that teams are how things get done. In some cases, this is true but in other cases, the label ‘team’ has been assigned liberally without really thinking about what needs to be done and the best way to go about it.
We determine whether we need teams or groups based on the outcome we are trying to achieve. We don’t want to create a team when one person can get the job done and this is the most efficient and effective way of getting the results needed.
What’s the problem with silo’s?
Nothing! Providing you don’t need the team to come together, share resources, share ideas, share problem-solving, be able to do things when the leader is not there, have each others backs etc.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t know many senior leadership teams who intentionally want to operate in silos. What is interesting though is we often see more siloed groups at the top than cohesive collaborative teams. Now, this isn’t always the case so if you are on the side of being a winning team, hats off to you and keep doing what you are already doing so well.
If you feel like you’re in a senior leadership team where there is some opportunity to increase your impact and leverage your results, there could be an opportunity to take a look at what you are trying to achieve and determine if you are working in the most effective way to achieve that.
There are a couple of things that could be of value for you to consider and these are:
Understanding your collective ‘inner game’
Deliberately creating opportunities for more buy-in
Understanding your collective ‘inner game’
As a senior leadership team, one of the critical things to understand is your collective inner game. This is having awareness around your collective strengths, your collective blind spots or derailers and your collective motives and values. All of these things will be what is shaping your current culture in your organisation, so you want to be sure you are creating the culture you want in an intentional way. It’s challenging to do this if you don’t understand your team’s collective inner game.
You can't change what you are not consciously aware of.
How do teams create buy-in?
One of the key things about winning teams or teams that are high performing is they create the culture of the team together – this is not something that is done to them.
A team that has great buy-in has usually spent time together discussing the context that they are operating within and how this context might impact the results they are trying to achieve.
A team that has great buy-in will have, together, defined their purpose (their why) and their mission (their objectives, goals and targets).
A team that has great buy-in will have openly assessed and discussed the talent on the team. They know their current bench strength and they know where their talent gaps are. What’s interesting about winning teams though is they don’t let these talent gaps prevent them from getting on and achieving their goals to the collective best of their abilities.
A team that has great buy-in has discussed and agreed on what their rules of engagement will be. How they are going to operate together as a team. What they will stand for and what they won’t. By going through this process together, a winning team will be comfortable holding each other to account. They won’t expect the leader to always be the one who has these ‘alignment’ conversations.
A team that has great buy-in will also have a shared identity. They are clear that the results required of the team are what matters over individual stardom. They are also clear on how they need to make decisions, how they can use their resources, and what winning means and looks like.
Need some help?
The steps to build buy-in are relatively straightforward and are things teams can do for themselves if they have the know-how. Understanding your collective inner game may require a bit more help from a certified expert.
If you would like to have a conversation about shifting the dial on the way your senior leadership team operates together to achieve your strategy and develop your culture, we should chat. Not only am I certified to provide you with some meaningful data in this area, but I have worked with many executive / senior leadership teams to understand how they can create more leverage and impact, through understanding their collective inner game.
Take a look at my Inner Game of Impactful Teams Programme to see if this would be of interest to you.
If you’re still not sure, let’s jump on the phone and have a no-obligation chat. It would be great to connect with you.