The RIGHT leadership team

A few weeks back, I went to spend a couple of days with a new leadership team to help them make really important strategic decisions, to help them craft their vision of the future and to help them assess their talent, to help them create their short term priorities.

But here's the problem, that leadership team was not really a leadership team. And what I mean by that is not that they didn't trust each other, and therefore they weren't a team.

I've seen a lot of that as well. But what I mean is, these are not the true leaders of the organization.

You see what happened is, they came upon a situation where they were short staffed in a couple of areas on the leadership team. So what they did is decided, well, we need that area represented. So let's take two people from the next level down and make them part of the leadership team. For this one, again, we want that area represented. So let's take that one person who reported to the person on the leadership team and make them part of the leadership team.

Getting your leadership team together is not about making sure that certain areas of their business are represented. It's about getting the right people together, to make the right strategic decisions, and then own those decisions moving forward.

Well, what happened because the folks had the wrong people on the leadership team.

Number one, they weren't able to have the right conversations. And they weren't able to have the right conversations. Number one, because there wasn't that level of trust in the room, there are certain things, they don't want to tell that next level down yet within the organization. So there were a number of really, really important things that went left unsaid, which meant there were conversations that needed to be had, that weren't had and decisions that needed to be made that weren't made. The second reason why that some of the right conversations didn't happen, is because these folks didn't have the right strategic perspective on the business. So the leaders on the team would want to talk about a big strategic issue. And these three folks, who really didn't belong in the room, would take it down to a tactical, way less helpful, in the weeds, discussion. And then the true leaders in the room got so frustrated that they stopped trying to have those discussions. Now I hear all the time when I bring, when I talk, to a CEO about bringing a leadership team together, very often it's not clear who's on the leadership team. So they'll ask me, and they'll say things like, well, I want to invite these people, because they really need to learn what's going on. Or I want these areas of the business represented or this person is an up-and-coming leader, so we should have them on the team. Those all sound like they make logical sense. But none of those are the right reason to have someone on the leadership team in a strategic leadership team meeting. There are a few tests you want to think about in who you bring in that meeting. Number one, is this person going to add true, real strategic value to the meeting, they're not there to learn, they're not there to represent, they're there to add real value, number one.

Number two, is this someone that will have some level of ownership on the work moving forward, and by ownership, I don't mean they're responsible, and they're going to go do but what I mean is they've got true ownership and accountability, to make the strategic decisions on zigging and zagging in executing that strategy moving forward. And then number three, they've got to be folks that you can trust to have the open, honest discussions you need to have as a leadership team, soon as you feel like you're holding back because those folks really shouldn't know this yet. Or those folks may not be able to handle that information, or those folks may tell a bunch of other folks. They're not the right people in the room. And you're better off not having the meeting than having a bad meeting.

Because if you have a number of bad strategic leadership team meetings in a row, what happens is those leaders stop believing in those meetings. Stop believing in those decisions, and they say, You know what, I've got real work to get done. I don't need to spend time in this meeting. So what are you doing to make sure you've got the right folks in the room? Better off if you've got your you know, you've got an open position for CFO or COO on the team. You're better off. Not you know, being a little short-staffed on the leadership team, not having it represented that having the wrong people in the room. What are you doing to make sure you got the right folks in the room?