WHY DO SENIOR EXECUTIVES OFTEN MAKE LOUSY TEAM LEADERS? (PART ONE)

What we need to do is learn to work in the system, by which I mean that everybody, every team, every platform, every division, every component is there not for individual competitive profit or recognition, but for contribution to the system as a whole on a win-win basis.
W. Edward Deming

From my experience and observations over many years of working with executive teams, I will admit that leading a senior executive team is not easy. You have a bunch of high-strung thoroughbreds snorting and pawing to run their own races and when the bell rings you are often saddled with nothing but dust and commotion when it comes to engaging them to share the leadership of the enterprise with you.  However executive teams more often than not spin their wheels and are dysfunctional, a condition that is entirely avoidable.  Although I can’t tell you the number of times I have heard an executive team leader, CEO, or otherwise, bemoan the state of their ‘dysfunctional’ team only for my diagnosis to reveal that is it their ineffective team leadership that is the key issue driving the dysfunction.

One executive leader called me in to discuss his dissatisfaction regarding his team’s effectiveness and lack of “team playing”. In fact, he was considering making some significant team membership changes because of this. I was surprised to find that he was puzzled when I asked him if there were any ground rules and high-performance team principles that the team had understood and agreed to as an enterprise team, something I consider Team 101. He said, “No…they would think that this was below them at their level”! While executive team members most likely know their accountabilities related to the function or business they run, the additional expectations as enterprise leaders may be very ambiguous and even conflicting to them. A common yet misguided assumption is, “Hey they are smart people – they should be able to figure it out how to work together”. WRONG.

Why do executive team leaders often think that well-known principles and practices that govern the development of high-performing teams lower down in the organization don’t apply to their executive team?