If you wish to be a high performing leadership team it is not enough to just do the job. You have to be good at cooperating while doing it.
“Of course, people know how to cooperate!”
According to Phil Sandal one of the pioneers in team coaching and CEO of Team Coaching International this is a very common assumption.
The thing is that international research tells us differently. Less than 10 % of teams saw themselves as high performing in a survey from Team Coaching International*.
10 %! This is a small number during times when demands on companies and organizations are high and where good and efficient teamwork is in focus.
How about the cooperation in the leadership team?
One task belonging to leaders is to support and develop the organization and the people, who create the results and deliver the package.
How do you team up for that task in your leadership team?
Is your performance level a match for what the business and organization need?
High performing leadership team, what is it actually?
Performance is a slightly burdened term, which is often heard as sole achievement. But if you want lasting and sustainable performance that is not enough.
Performance is not just about achievement. About solving the task. It is also about how you feel while doing it. For high performance in teams it is about how relations support problem solving and creation of results. In short, how you feel about each other.
If you want to be a high performing leadership team you have to look for productivity strengths and relational strengths alike.
The productivity strengths could be your ability to make the right decisions and execute them. The relational strengths could be to trust each other’s abilities and intentions and to address necessary issues and dilemmas even if it is uncomfortable.
- Productivity strengths – to solve a task
- Relational strengths – to cooperate on a task
Some leaders are so focused on solving the task that they forget to consider their abilities to cooperate. That be internally with the other leaders or externally with the primary stake holders including the employees.
Do you need a high-performance check?
You might think the leadership team is doing well and that it is the employees that does not meet your demands and expectations. It might be that:
- Your employees lack engagement.
- The controversies are not solved constructively or aren’t even addressed.
- You experience misunderstandings between departments.
- You feel you have to do your employees work to get good enough results.
But…, There is only one way if you wish to develop your business and to have the organization working at its best and that is to develop yourself as a leadership team. To develop the way you solve your leadership tasks and to develop how you cooperate.
Sometimes you need to revitalize your leadership team. To consider how you can improve on your cooperative skills to solve the leadership tasks in the best possible way.
What do you think? Do you need a main inspection?
*Source: Analyses by Team Coaching International based on more than 4000 teams during a period of 10 years.