Knowledge
W
hen you are leading highly competent, deeply knowledgeable and wellrespected senior managers, it may look like you already have a high-performing team. However, one of our clients – the director of a high-profile department within a key London authority – recognised that, while each of his seven assistant directors was performing well in their own right, there was huge scope to develop them as a unified senior leadership team. The key area he wanted to address was helping them to become a peer support for each other in order to develop their problem-solving and decision-making skills, while freeing him up to focus more on strategic direction. The quality of individual decision-making was not in question, but the lack of team-working meant any innovation and decision-making tended to be very fragmented. Opportunities for collaboration were being missed. Although the leadership team came together regularly, the focus of meetings tended to be very operational, which is not uncommon. It is easy to believe that ticking tasks off a list constitutes an effective team. So, another key objective was to help them understand the contribution that each could make in a senior leadership team context and ensure they were all harnessing those strengths.
Understanding approaches
The director was good at recognising that this sort of high-functioning senior leadership team-working
iStock
Tangible outcomes from the programme • Two of the assistant directors recognised how much synergy there was between their areas of responsibility and initiated joint site visits, with the specific intention of identifying where teams could share knowledge and skills, and collaborate for more efficient working and better outcomes. This has paid dividends, making it much easier to get things done, as everyone is brought into the same plan from the start. • As a senior management team, they have implemented ‘gateway’ meetings when all teams need to sign off on a project, so that challenges are ironed out at an earlier stage and compromises made where needed, before any frustrations set in.
• The team felt they had grown in confidence to have tricky conversations when needed. They had some challenging discussions coming up around pay and reward structures changing, but as a result of working together in the programme and learning from each other’s thoughts and approaches, they felt better equipped to handle it, knowing there would be a consistent approach and backing from them all. • They have moved desks so they work on the same floor, and now consciously sit in each other’s areas. This physical change has helped them to get to know so many more people across the different teams and has strengthened the sense of the leadership team as a unified entity for everyone else.
rarely happens of its own accord. The support and development to create this has to be intentional. We worked closely with the director to devise a three-day programme. All of the assistant directors had attended management and leadership development in the past, so this was about refreshing key skills in the context of working as a senior leadership team. We asked them to complete a questionnaire linked to our ‘Ten traits of a high-performing team’ model. The responses gave a clear picture as to where everybody felt the team’s strengths lay and what areas needed development. In a facilitated workshop, they discussed and agreed specific actions to build on areas of strength and to address some of the gaps. An early agreement was that trust needed to underpin their teamwork and communication if they were to be high performing, and this was a thread that ran through the three-day programme. We used a self-awareness tool – Clarity 4D1 – to help each person better understand their own style and approach and, critically, to understand that of their colleagues within the team. As with many selfawareness tools, this gave them a common language with which to talk about and value differences.
Tailored support
The final day was a practical workshop where each assistant director practised a scenario, with an actor playing a team member. The scenarios were based around typical workplace and relationship challenges, with each group member observing and having an opportunity to offer feedback. Developing their own skills was a prime outcome, but what it also clearly showed them was the value of support from each other. A key part of their action planning was to identify how they could maintain that peer support back in the workplace. One of the observations from everybody who took part – and especially the commissioning director – was how much had been achieved in a short period of time, because the support had been focused and tailored to achieve specific outcomes. Our key message to anyone looking to develop a high-performing team is not to leave it to chance – it needs a proactive, focused approach. If you are clear about the outcomes you want to achieve and create the support that directly helps you to achieve those, you can make huge progress in a short space of time, without having to have an enormous budget. Tracy Powley is director of operations at Focal Point – a consultancy specialising in helping organisations create inclusive environments through best-practice management and leadership development. 1 clarity4d.com 27