Improving Your Leadership Team – Where Do You Start?
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
Mastering Self Leadership: The First Pillar
Evaluate how well you understand and utilize your strengths daily to excel in your role and maintain passion for your work.
Monitor your emotional state and your ability to handle it effectively to maintain composure and focus.
Reflect on whether you prioritize actions within your control and accept circumstances beyond your control to reduce stress and enhance control over your life and work.
Proactively Structuring Your Team: The Second Pillar
Ensure each major function in your leadership team has one accountable person without stretching any team member too thin.
Develop a 12-quarter business forecast that guides proactive decisions on leadership team additions and changes based on future business goals.
Implement job scorecards with defined mission responsibilities, success metrics, and competencies for each role.
Additionally, foster a mastermind group of peers to challenge and support leadership team members and maintain a network of professional external services for comprehensive team support.
Finding the Right People: The Third Pillar
Proactively build a virtual bench of potential top-tier candidates for the leadership team and direct reports to ensure readiness when positions become available.
Develop a robust internal leadership development process to groom future leaders from within the organization.
Implement an effective employee referral program to attract top talent, with a goal of generating at least one third of leadership position candidates through referrals.
Building a Resilient Culture: The Fourth Pillar
Core Values: Develop, communicate, and embody a set of core values that are more than just words on a wall—they should drive daily behaviors and decisions.
Inspiring Core Purpose: Define a compelling "why" that motivates each member of the leadership team, transcending mere tasks and focusing on the deeper purpose of the company's existence.
Vision Evangelism: Ensure each team member is not only aware of but actively champions the company's long-term (10+ years) and midterm (3-year) vision, embodying the role of a true evangelist.
Thanks for listening!
Apply for a free coaching call with me
Get a Free Gift ⬇️
🆓 The limitless organization short video course
Connect with me
www.instagram.com/mikegoldmancoach/
www.facebook.com/mikegoldmancoach/
www.www.linkedin.com/in/mgoldman10/
I invite you to assess your team In all these areas by taking an online 30-question assessment for both you and your team at
-
Every week on this show, we talk about either I talk about it or a guest talks about some way to improve your leadership team, but how do we know that we have a great leadership team. How do we know where we need to improve this? With So many different things we could focus on. It could become overwhelming.
So that's what I want to talk about on this episode is how do you know you have a great leadership team , but more importantly, because you're always working on the team, you're never going to wake up one morning and say, my God, I have a great leadership team. I don't have any more work to do.
How cool is that? That's never going to happen. You're always going to find ways to improve. So I want to talk a little bit about how you know you have a great leadership team, but more importantly, how do you know where to focus in our nonstop journey to keep improving the team? So
let me start quickly with something I've covered on a previous podcast.
So I'm going to do it quickly. And if you want to understand more, go back to that other podcast, but honestly the way you know you have a great leadership team. Is if you have a great company, that's what we're striving for anyway. So I believe there are three characteristics of a great company. Again, I'm going to go through this quickly, have a whole podcast episode, not too long ago, look it up called the three characteristics of a great company.
But the first characteristic is top and bottom line growth. If you are not consistently and significantly growing the company from a dollar standpoint, both top line and bottom line, then you've got work to do there. I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do that.
That's number one. Number two and you need all of these to have a great company. Number two is that you have created a growing fulfilling environment within your company, if you're growing consistently, but you and everybody else wake up every morning and you're miserable going into work, then I don't think you have a great company. And 3rd is
you need to be adding significant value to the world. And when I say world, it doesn't mean you are you know, feeding the poor or you are solving, you know, the you know, climate issues, if you are, that's wonderful. But when I say adding value to the world, I mean, are you having significant impact on whoever's important to you?
It may be your clients, your vendors, your shareholders, your employees, certainly. So those three characteristics. And if you have any two out of three, I don't believe you have a great company. At least you don't have a sustainably great company. Number one, top and bottom line growth. Number two, growing, fulfilling environment.
Number three, you're adding real value to the world. So let's start there. If you're doing those, if you've got those three things consistently, then that's a pretty good clue that you're doing a lot right. You're doing a lot more right than wrong on your leadership team. But, I want to spend most of our time this episode diving deeper.
Because if you don't have those three things consistently, then you need to understand where to start. Where, if you say Mike, as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. What problems do I solve first on my leadership team? And even if you're at the point where you're saying, man, I'm getting 50 percent top and bottom line growth every year.
I love coming into work every day. So does the rest of our team and man, we're adding crazy value to the world. If you don't continue to work on the leadership team at some point. That's going to end. So either way, let's talk about how you prioritize where to start in working on your leadership team.
And to do that, I want to use an assessment. I'm literally going to take you through question by question. A 30 question assessment. And before you sign off right now and say, Oh my God, I don't want to listen to 30 questions, you know, trust me, it's going to add a ton of value. Just hearing those questions.
And even if you're not sitting somewhere where you could literally, you know, type on your keyboard or get a pen and pencil and answer the questions. If you're in a car, if you're taking a walk, if you're having a run, I promise you just listening through these questions, there are certain questions that are going to spark an idea for you and say, ah, that's where I need to improve.
And the idea of me taking you through these 30 questions, which, by the way, are not really 30 questions, there are 30 best practices of a great leadership team, what I call in my book, a breakthrough leadership team, there are 30 best practices. And for each one, the assessment is, do you strongly agree that that's the best practice you are living every day?
Do you agree? Are you kind of neutral? I'm not sure. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. Do you disagree or do you strongly disagree? Now as I take you through these questions and I apologize, you're going to hear some crinkling of paper because I literally have these questions in front of me. So, you may hear some crinkling of paper as I go through them.
But as I'm going through the questions and I'll share this again at the end, my coaching for you, is not only should you answer these questions. But you and the rest of your team should answer the question. So if you are a business owner, CEO, you and your leadership team should be answering the questions.
If you are someone on a team or on the leadership team or any team, it should be you and your peers answering these questions and whoever you're reporting into, because if you answer the questions, you know what you think, which is important, but if your team does it. You understand as a team where you're strong, where you're weak, where you need to work.
And you also understand where there's alignment or misalignment on the team. So I believe there are six pillars of building a great leadership team, a breakthrough leadership team. And there are five questions per pillar. So I'm just going to start, you know, and go through it.
So the first pillar is all about mastering self leadership.
So these five questions, these five best practices all have to do with self leadership. But again, for each one answer, whether you strongly agree. You're kind of neutral, you agree sometimes, you disagree other times. You disagree, or you strongly disagree with the statement, given the level you are living this best practice yourself and with your team.
And here in self leadership, it's about you. It's not about the team. So the first question is I am, or the first best practice statement I should say is I am continuously learning and improving no matter who you are on the team. If you are not learning and improving every day, you will become, or you may already be a weak link on that team.
If you are the leader of the team, the team's only gonna scale as fast as you are. So if you're not learning and growing every day, you're holding your team back from doing that. So first question, I am continuously learning and improving. Do you strongly disagree, agree, neutral, disagree or strongly disagree?
Let's keep going, and I'm not gonna list those five out for you every time. I'm just gonna say the statement and know your answer is gonna be anything. Strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree. Strongly disagree. Next statement. I understand and leverage my strengths every day. Leveraging your strengths means you're doing what you're best at, a good part of every day.
It also means you're going to continue to love what you do. So second question, I understand and leverage my strengths every day. Third question under self leadership, I am aware of my emotional state and have the ability to effectively manage it. There is an episode on emotional intelligence. Which is
not too far from now. I did that interview as I'm recording this, not too long ago. And we have a whole episode on emotional intelligence. So you may want to listen to that if this is an issue for you. But again, third question, I am aware of my emotional state and have the ability to effectively manage it.
Fourth question, I focus on those things I can control and accept those things I can't. I focus on those things I can control and accept those things I can't. I have leaders that answer this and say to me, well, what's the right answer? And there's no right answer to these things. But if you can't accept those things that are outside of your control, that's going to lead to a lot of stress.
The more we focus on what we can control, the more we're going to take control of our lives and take control of our businesses. So that's the fourth question. Fifth question. When I need help, I am comfortable asking for it. When I need help, I'm comfortable asking for it. Now that's about you. We're going to have a similar question down the road.
When we talk about culture, about safety on the team, you may not be comfortable asking because it's not a safe space on your team, but this is about you being able to feel vulnerable. So those are the five questions under self leadership. or five best practice statements.
I'm continuously learning and improving. I understand and leverage my strengths every day. I'm aware of my emotional state and have the ability to effectively manage it. I focus on those things I can control and accept the things I can't. When I need help, I'm comfortable asking for it.
Second pillar I call proactively structuring your team.
So obviously this is all about your team structure. First statement. Our leadership team is structured so that each major function has one person accountable and no member of the leadership team is stretched to thin. Again, you can strongly agree, agree. You could be neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree.
Second question. Our leadership team has a 12 quarter forecast for the business that drives proactive decisions regarding additions and changes to the leadership team structure. So in that first question, you're understanding the structure today. Do we know each function? Do we know who's accountable?
And in my definition, accountability is always one and only one person. The second statement is about the future. It's about proactively driving towards if I'm going to triple my business in the next two years, what changes do I need to make to the structure of my leadership team? So I can start thinking about that and taking action on it now versus waiting until a whole bunch of crap is falling through the cracks.
Third statement under structuring, proactively structuring your leadership team, each leadership team role has a job scorecard that includes the mission responsibilities, measures of success and competencies required for the role. Notice I did not say job description. I said job scorecard. Now, regardless of what you call it, in my mind, a job scorecard is a job description on steroids and the piece that's constantly missing from job descriptions are those measures of success.
It's not enough to say I'm accountable for marketing. I need to know how I'm going to measure success. Is it because I've created a beautiful website or the logo looks great? Or are you looking for 10 marketing qualified leads per week? Fourth statement under proactively structuring your leadership team.
Each member of the leadership team is part of a mastermind group of peers that help challenge it, challenge them and act as a sounding board. There are a whole lot of CEO peer advisory groups out there like, you know, YPO, Vistage, Tech Canada, Entrepreneur's Organization, McKay Executive Forum, Women's President's Organization, but you can also do something informally.
Do you have that group of peers that can kick you in the butt when you need it, pat you on the back when you need it? And is there an opportunity for everybody on the leadership team to have a group like that? Fifth statement, we have a professional services, a team consisting of exceptional attorneys, accountants, coaches, bankers, and other critical external services.
So it's not just about your internal team. It's about the support you have. So those are the five statements under pillar two. And again, for each one, everything from strongly to agree all the way down to strongly disagree.
The third pillar of building a great leadership team, a breakthrough leadership team, is finding the right people.
Again, five statements here. First one. We proactively build a virtual bench of potential A players for the leadership team and the leadership team's direct reports. I'm going to say that again. We proactively build a virtual bench of potential a players for the leadership team and the leadership teams direct reports.
Don't wait until you have the need to post a job on LinkedIn. That's the worst way to find a job. The idea is to dig the well before you're thirsty. Build a virtual bench of superstars so they're there when you need them. Second statement, we have an effective process to develop strong leaders to fill new leadership team needs from within the organization.
So the first statement was all about going outside, building that virtual bench. The second is, are we building that bench internally through an effective process to develop strong leaders? Third statement. And again, you may be picking out one or two of these. You may be thinking, Oh, my God, I need help with all of these.
The idea of me taking you through each one for this episode is not so we could overwhelm you when you go back and say, Oh my God, I've got 28 things I've got to work on. The idea is for you and ideally working with your team to say of all those things, what are the one or two that are most important? So I hope this is not overwhelming you.
It's helping you make some decisions as to what's most important. Third statement under finding the right people. We have an effective employee referral program that generates at least one third of our candidates for leadership positions and their direct reports. If you have a great culture, if you have a great team, you want to find most of your people through great people you have knowing under other great people.
And the best way to incent that is through a great employee referral program. By the way, where you're paying big bucks, think about what you pay a recruiter. Why wouldn't you pay your people big bucks to refer great folks? Fourth statement. We have a thorough screening, interviewing, and evaluation process that ensures 90 percent of leadership team hires are A players.
Now I recommend there's a great book called who the A method for hiring. Great methodology called top grading, but pick a great methodology. Just have a thorough screening, interviewing and evaluation process. Don't wing it. Fifth statement under this third pillar of finding the right people is every leadership team member has a strong number two, who has the potential to be their successor.
Let's go to the fourth pillar, which is, building a resilient culture. Fourth statement. Our leadership team has developed, communicated, and lives by a set of core values that anchors our culture and is non negotiable. Core values. And when I talk about core values is not a beautiful poster on the wall.
It's not something you put on your website because your vendors and your prospective clients are going to think it looks great. It's internal core values are a set of non negotiable behaviors that you live and breathe every single day. Second statement under building a resilient culture, each member of the leadership team rallies behind an inspiring core purpose that answers the question, why does our company exist?
Not what you do, but why you do it with a big enough "why" people will do anything that needs to get done. The how doesn't matter if you've got a big enough why. Third statement, each leadership team member is a true believer and evangelist for our company's long term, 10 years or more, and midterm, just three year vision.
Each leadership team is a true believer and evangelist for our company's longterm and midterm vision. They don't only need to understand it. They need to be an evangelist of it. If they're not an evangelist of it, they may be a great person, but they may not be the right fit for your team. Fourth statement under building a resilient culture.
Our leadership team is a safe place for us to be honest and vulnerable, to freely admit mistakes, to ask for help and to ask for forgiveness. If you don't have a safe place on your leadership team, you are not having the discussions and the debates that you need to have. And you are, you're not maximizing that team.
You're hurting the team. So we need to create that safe space. And again, as a reminder for each one of the questions. Do you strongly agree? Agree? Are you neutral? Go back and forth. Do you disagree? Or do you strongly disagree? Fifth statement under building a resilient culture. Members of the leadership team consistently hold themselves and others on the team accountable
for their commitments that typically starts at the top. If the CEO, if the leader of the team is not holding themselves and others accountable, accountability dies. And if accountability dies, man, you're going to be having, you know, quarterly planning sessions, annual planning sessions, no one's going to give a rip because they know you're not going to follow through on that stuff.
Kills the team. It kills the company.
Next pillar, fifth out of six, is executing with discipline. First statement, our leadership team is aligned around no more than five priorities for the year and the quarter. In fact, with my leadership teams, I like it to be two, three, or four. Five is kind of pushing the limit. And when I talk to leaders and I say, what are your priorities for the year?
More often than not, they'll list out twelve things for me. Well, if everything's a priority, nothing's a priority. So this first statement, our leadership team is aligned around no more than five priorities for the year and the quarter. Second statement, there's clear accountability, one owner and a clear measure of success.
That's what I mean by clear accountability. There's clear accountability for each annual and quarterly priority. There may be multiple people responsible, but is there one person accountable? With a clear measure of success. That's the second statement. Third, we measure and hold each leader accountable to two to three leading and lagging key performance indicators. Leading are...
well, let me start with lagging. A lagging key performance indicator is the measure of a result. Anything on your P and L revenue, net income, gross margin. Those are all lagging measures. A leading measure is the measure of an activity that drives a result. And while your annual and quarterly priorities are things you work on to improve the business, that's like working on the business.
The idea of two to three leading and lagging key performance indicators, that's working in the business. So that's like, making sure your VP of sales is responsible for bringing in a certain amount of new revenue every week, every month, every quarter. Fourth statement under executing with discipline, our planning and communication rhythm
allows us to effectively plan and adjust throughout the year and quarter to take advantage of opportunities and attack major challenge. When I call a planning and communication, you may call a meeting rhythm or a meeting pulse. It's you know, annual planning, quarterly planning, monthly check in and education, weekly accountability meetings, daily huddles.
Do you have that rhythm that allows you to plan, adjust, communicate effectively? And then fifth statement under executing with discipline, our planning and communication rhythm drives effective communication across the leadership team and cascades down from and up to the leadership team. Let me say that again.
Our planning and communication rhythm drives effective communication across the leadership team and cascades down from and up to the leadership team. So whereas the previous statement was about planning and adjusting, this is about communication effectively going up and down from into the leadership team.
So those are the five statements under executing with discipline. We're rounding the home stretch.
Now let's talk about the five statements under continuously developing and improving the team. This is my favorite pillar because it's the one I'm writing my next book on, writing as I speak. So developing and improving the team.
This is all about assessing talent, coaching talent, developing talent, and making the tough decisions to cut the cord on talent that doesn't fit. So let's talk about the five statements here. First, as a leadership team, we spend time each quarter learning and growing together. That might be through reading books together, going to conferences, learning new tools, new techniques, et cetera.
Second statement. All leadership team members are held accountable to their own learning and development plans, both professional development plans and personal. So maybe learning some great new leadership skills or you know, learning, you know, about a new tool or technique you need inside your company, a new industry skill that you need, or it may be personal development like yoga, meditation, you know, exercise, things like that.
So all leadership team members are held accountable to their own learning and development plans, personal and professional. Third statement, all leadership team members are held accountable for ensuring their direct reports have learning and development plans, both professional and personal. Fourth, our leadership team assesses the talent of their direct reports quarterly and defines 90 day action steps, which might include coaching, mentoring, challenging them, warning them, you know, for each direct report.
So it's not an annual performance review. It's quarterly as a leadership team assessing talent, discussing and debating talent, coming up with 90 day action plans. And then the fifth and last question is our leadership team holds one another accountable for maximizing their team's talent as well as making the tough decision to cut the cord where necessary.
So those are the 30 statements that become what I call my breakthrough leadership team assessment.
Now, again, my coaching to you is if you receive value from that, you will get five X the value. If you get the members of your team to take that assessment as well. Now you could ask them to listen to this episode of my podcast and do it and that would be great,
they'll get some value. Or if you go to Mike/goldman.com and we'll put this in the show notes. If you go to Mike/goldman.com/BLTassessment. You will get a link to take the assessment yourself so you can actually get a report that shows you the assessment. There's a nice little bar chart and some red, yellow, green.
So you know where you have some issues and where you're strong. But in addition to that, you can give that same link to other members of your team. And you could see where you're aligned, misaligned and how you're doing as a team versus just what you think. So I hope that was helpful. You want a great team.
If you want a great company, I'll get that right. If you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. I hope this breakthrough leadership team assessment gets you closer to that today. Again, go to Mike/goldman.com/BLTassessment. To take it electronically, get your team to take it. I look forward to talking to you again soon. Bye bye.