Leadership Team Development
Leadership behaviour dictates the culture of an organisation.
It’s well known that the behaviour of an organisation’s leaders set the tone of its culture. Those companies whose leadership pay lip-service to their values do so at their peril. In fact, if you can’t develop a leadership team’s ability to walk the talk our recommendation would be to not publish any corporate values or other cultural artefacts. Why? The damage that gets caused to people’s trust in their organisation when leaders don’t demonstrate its’ values is considerable and results in low levels of engagement which in turn leads to low levels of performance.
Leadership team development should be the first place an organisation directs its training and development resources to, because it is where the greatest impact can be made.
When our clients first come to us looking for support in the development of their team, they often describe that there is some combination of too much politics, too little listening, lack of connection and dysfunction. Many times, what they have is a ‘Team of Champions’ and not a ‘Championship Team’.
What’s required for a leadership team to become a championship team are 7 fundamentals.
The first of those is that the members of the team adopt a growth mindset. A growth mindset is what it sounds like – having an appreciation of and openness to evolving over time and a willingness to move outside of your comfort zone to make that happen. This is distinct from a fixed mindset – where your attention is on staying inside your comfort zone and avoiding failure. Without this shift any developmental efforts will be patchy at best.
The second fundamental is that the team has a shared set of strategic goals they they are jointly accountable for achieving, in fact they are goals that cannot be achieved without the team operating as a team.
The third is that the team develops a 100% commitment to creating a culture that enables high performance in all aspects of the business. This inevitably means they need to work on their ability to manage and inspire their people.
The fourth is that the team has the skills to establish and maintain trust, that each individual has the ability to manage their relationships with their peers – and that the team has the ability to manage its’ relationship with all of its stakeholders.
The fifth, related to the first fundamental, is that the members of the team have the openness to learn from others, to appreciate and seek diverse views and to let go of their own egos.
The sixth is that the team has a mature, advanced capability in engaging in robust, courageous and challenging conversations in order to generate creative strategic solutions.
The final fundamental is that each member of the team is highly skilled at having the tough conversations to support one another in delivering on what they are accountable for – not just operationally but behaviourally. Without this final piece there will not be accountability.
The development of these fundamentals needs to happen with each individual and at the dimension of team. It is very rare to find a team who are highly competent in all, and the development of the team takes time.
How Hewsons and our methodologies develop your team
Utilising our Authentic Leadership Development Cycle ™ we consult, design interventions and programmes to develop leaders and their team by introducing and integrating the mindsets and tools required for success.
As a result of this leadership team development, the teams we work with become authentically committed to the development and support of their people and to being accountable for creating a high performing culture.
Teams we have worked with have produced significant results. Bonding as a team and with that exceeding production targets, increasing profit, reducing churn, successfully bringing up leaders, increased engagement scores, attraction of great people – even in regional locations – and confidently turning crises into opportunities.
If your team is interested in higher performance, being a true ‘championship team’ and operating true to your organisation’s values, you are invited to enquire about how Hewsons can help propel your team’s growth and results.
“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.”
Warren G Bennis
“Over the last six months Carolyn has coached us as a group in working as a true Executive Team, empowering our Management team and coached each of the executives into a higher level of individual performance. The increased level of outcomes we are achieving as an Executive Team after the intervention by Carolyn is both obvious and significant.”
Des Wheeler
CEO, Maverick Biosciences
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