If you, as a CEO, decided to create a senior management team, where would you start? What would you do next? How would you know when you were done?
Several times in my career, I have built or helped a business owner to build a leadership team from scratch. Looking back, I can count eight organizations that invited me to help them with this specialized form of team development.
In this episode of our leadership mini-series, I’ll explain the actual steps to build a management team that I've used with other organizations. You can find how to know when this kind of work is needed in Part 1 (When to Build a Management Team) and a summary of some key lessons I’ve learned in Part 3.
7 Steps That Can’t Be Skipped
If you decided to commit to taking the steps to build a management team, what would the process look like?
In my experience, we have achieved the best results when we gave serious attention to each of these seven steps. Some of them may reveal other work that needs to be done, but I don’t believe you can skip any of these steps without negatively impacting your results.
1. Picking your team: Begin with existing functional leaders.
I define a management team as everyone who reports directly to the CEO. There should be no guesswork as to who is on the team. Most CEOs have questions about whether one or more of their senior staff has the capacity, understanding, or desire to perform at a higher level.
To answer these questions, we start by evaluating the functional needs of the organization, assessing the existing leaders, and identifying gaps in both structure and skills. We address gaps either through personal development plans (when you want to keep someone) or creating a custom Job Benchmark (when you need to add someone) to help identify the best-fit candidate.
2. Human dynamics: Develop self-awareness and other-awareness.
Trust is the foundation of team effectiveness, and trust is enhanced when team members know their own (and each other’s) strengths & weaknesses. We use a combination of leadership tools, instruments, and workshops to help them see how others bring value to the team and give them a foundation for openness. This foundation facilitates communication and enables the team to resolve conflicts on their own.
3. Assign positions: Identify and align team roles.
A team really begins to gel when the members understand and embrace their roles on the team. A role is not just their functional area (operations, finance, marketing)—it is the role they play in the team dynamic. Examples include meeting facilitator, problem-spotter, idea-generator, focus-keeper, and so on. When team members operate in their roles, they bring strength and diversity to the team and create real synergy.
4. Open a channel: Establish communication cadence & expectations.
A wise man once told me: “The three pillars of a team are communication, communication, and communication.” Team communication functions best when it is frequent, open, and clear. When building a new team, you have to spell out the communication cadence (frequency, channel, owner) as well as expectations (response time, attendance, keeping time, how to run a good meeting, how to put things on the agenda, meeting preparation, turning off phones, etc). Teams can easily waste a lot of time in meetings, so it’s important to teach them how to be focused and effective in their meetings and communication.
5. Set the ground rules: Agree on how to make decisions.
One of the ways management teams solve the problem of CEO bottlenecks is by taking responsibility to make significant decisions and see them through. There are several keys that make the difference between a good decision-making process and a bad one. These keys address consistent process, clear scope of control, and ownership of action. We walk teams through the process of setting their own ground rules and processes for decision-making.
6. Create clarity and accountability: Set goals, measures, and reporting.
A business owner will remain reluctant to give up control unless the management team demonstrates ability to truly take ownership for results. Teams begin to do this by setting goals, agreeing on how to measure results, and consistently reporting outcomes. Setting goals is a pointless exercise without accountability. If you do not have mutual accountability, you do not have a team. Successful management teams have learned effective ways to hold each other accountable for both achievement and behavior.
7. Elevate their mindset: Create and pursue a shared vision together.
How do you know when you’re done building an effective team? When they are able to come full circle to create and implement a shared vision together. In the beginning, it was the leader who saw the need for a team and had the vision for what could be possible. When you’re done, the team has demonstrated their new leadership mindset by working together to create a vision for the organization and doing all that has to be done to pursue it. That includes strategic planning, creating buy-in, effectively leading the next level of managers, and taking responsibility for the results.
The Nuts and Bolts
Over the years, we have developed a set of curriculum, tools, and processes that support each of the seven steps to build a management team. These are the nuts and bolts that help the team learn to function well and get things done together. We frequently find that existing leadership teams have gaps that need to be addressed with some of these tools and steps—but new teams need all of them to succeed.
Look for Part 3 of this mini-series to read about lessons I have learned over time about building leadership teams. And don't forget to read Part 1, describing when you would need to build a management team.
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