Teamwork at the Top

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Teamwork at the Top

By Gregory LeStage et al., | Harvard Business Review Magazine | September–October 2024 Issue

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Teaming is difficult at any level, but for top teams, the challenges expand exponentially. They are responsible for addressing their organization’s weightiest and most complex problems, so their struggles are almost existential.

What could our senior leadership team achieve if we worked at full potential? And what’s keeping us from achieving it? Those were the questions the leaders at Root Capital found themselves asking in 2022.  That’s what the team at Root Capital did: The leaders acknowledged that the hard, deliberate, and sustained effort that it takes to become a team is actually part and parcel of being a team.

Based on their case study, the authors identified five behavior traits that effective top teams have in common: direction, discipline, drive, dynamism, and collaboration. These traits are collective: They characterize the behaviors of the team as a whole, not those of its individual members.  

1. Direction. How a top team works together to set the organization’s direction—its purpose, vision, and strategy—is a cornerstone of its effectiveness. Team members must be aligned on and share ownership of their short- and long-term priorities. They must exhibit public commitment to one another and their strategy, even when facing pressure from outside forces and other teams within the organization.
2. Discipline. For many top teams, a lack of discipline, particularly in managing meetings, can be at the core of problems.  In order to make and execute decisions consistently, have productive meetings, and practice healthy norms and routines, team members need to have a clear understanding of their own and one another’s roles—and all too often, they don’t. 
3. Drive. Top teams with drive prepare assiduously, debate constructively, and are industrious and resilient over the long term. They know how to prepare for and surmount obstacles.
4. Dynamism. In business, as in life, allowing for the possibility of failure is important because it’s a prime source for learning and positive change. But top teams typically avoid practicing this behavior. In the high-stakes world they work in, failure can be a terrifying prospect, but aversion to risk undercuts dynamism and means that leaders can’t respond effectively to change.  A better approach is for top teams to publicly recognize the opportunities for learning that failure provides.
5. Collaboration. The very heart of teaming is collaboration. It combines direction, discipline, drive, and dynamism, and it thrives in an environment of connection, inclusion, and trust. Collaborative behaviors include developing personal relationships, giving everybody an equal voice, and sticking to commitments.

Top teams seeking to become more effective can take these four steps:  

1. Commit and invest.  Make an explicit commitment to invest time and money establishing and nurturing the five traits discussed earlier.
2. Hold up the mirror. To determine how you’re currently working together, conduct a team-effectiveness diagnostic.
3. Map the journey and begin. Next, plan your team’s journey to new collective behaviors.
4. And maintain momentum. 

Following through on those steps is hard but rewarding. Several enabling factors can help:  get together, build habits, Be opportunistic in a sense use meeting for other purposes to build teams as well, be adaptable, make teaming real and applicable, reinforce habits, measure progress, and communicate.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. Teaming is difficult at any level, but for top teams, the challenges expand exponentially. They are responsible for addressing their organization’s weightiest and most complex problems, so their struggles are almost existential.
2. What could senior leadership team achieve if the others worked at full potential? And what’s keeping them from achieving it?   Based on their case study, the authors identified five behavior traits that effective top teams have in common: Direction – How a top team works together to set the organization’s direction—its purpose, vision, and strategy?  Discipline – have productive meetings and practice healthy norms and routines.  Drive. prepare assiduously, debate constructively, and are industrious and resilient over the long term. Dynamism – publicly recognize the opportunities for learning that failure provides.  Collaboration – it thrives in an environment of connection, inclusion, and trust.
3. Top teams seeking to become more effective can take these four steps:  commit and invest, hold up the mirror, map the journey and begin, and maintain momentum.

Full Article

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Topics:  Leadership, Teams, Trust, Collaboration, Discipline, Learning from failure, Dynamic