Organizational success depends upon a strong, well-functioning leadership team. Without the right people at the table to make decisions and ensure implementation, the other things you do to improve your effectiveness—marketing studies, strategic plans, staff training, restructuring, even fund raising—will have limited impact.

Two recent studies from the corporate world underscore the importance of an able leadership team. In Good to Great, a study of businesses that leapt ahead of their competitors, and stayed ahead for at least fifteen years, Jim Collins notes that even before having a plan, the CEOs of these companies built strong senior management teams. Marcus Buckingham, in First, Break All the Rules, argues that having the right kind of managers correlates directly with profitability.

In nonprofit organizations, we often find that the leadership team is made up of individuals who have risen to positions of management responsibility, sometimes by virtue of seniority, with extensive experience in a particular discipline or function, but with little formal management education. Sometimes these individuals have natural talents for management and leadership, sometimes not.

The challenge in creating an effective leadership team is twofold:

1. Getting the best combination of people on the team, with the right individual and collective characteristics.
2. Developing the best culture and processes to enable the team to work effectively.

The People

What are the traits/talents you look for in a leader?
Based on the studies cited above, as well as my conversations with leaders of nonprofit organizations, here are the qualities most often cited for effective members of a leadership team. An effective leader is:

• Open—someone who really listens and is not defensive, who is eager to learn from others and is ready to share his or her own knowledge and perspectives.

• Fair—someone who sees the big picture and acts in the best interest of the whole, someone whose standards are fair.

• Caring—someone who cares for the well being of others, who acts in their interest, although not to the detriment of the whole organization.

• Responsible—someone who is pro-active, who takes responsibility for self and for the whole.

• Modest—someone who is quick to credit others for success, and ready to accept responsibility for mistakes.

• Reliable—someone who is self-disciplined, who will do whatever it takes to get the job done.

• Emotionally Mature—someone who is aware of and is able to express emotions without disrupting a group process or hurting a relationship, and who is aware of and responsive to the emotions of others.

• Positive—someone who is confident about the future, neither naively optimistic, nor cynically pessimistic.

In building a leadership team, how do you identify people with these traits/talents?
Think about these traits and how they are manifested in the behavior of people who possess them. For example, an "open" person asks questions of others, not in a judgmental way, but in a way that shows sincere interest. A "responsible" person will offer possible solutions to a problem, and not just complain about it. A "reliable" person delivers on time, or lets you know in advance if there will be a delay.

For each of the above traits, make a list of corresponding behaviors, by observing people who possess them. This will be your checklist for getting the right people on your leadership team.

There is a saying that "we hire people for what they have done, and fire them for who they are." Far better to hire them for who they are, and if necessary help them learn the technical skills and knowledge needed for a particular job. If they have the right traits, they will have little difficulty picking up the necessary skills and knowledge.

Of course, as you advertise a position or begin an interview, do not say you are looking for someone who is open, fair, responsible, and so forth. Clever job applicants will use your words to describe themselves. Instead, design the hiring process so that you can observe the applicant's behavior, and measure it against your checklist. When she describes a project she worked on, does her language reveal a sense of modesty and openness? When he tells you about a time he disciplined a subordinate, does he speak in terms of fairness and emotional maturity? As the applicant describes what she has achieved, you listen for how she did it.

See Hiring the Right People and other management briefings to help you create an effective hiring process.

If members of the existing leadership team lack the desired traits/talents, can they change? What can you do to help them change?
The best managers, as reported in First, Break All the Rules, assert that people do not change very much. Do not waste time trying to put in what is not there. Rather, the challenge is to draw out the talents that people already have. The first step, then, is to build on the positive traits of the members of your leadership team. Find ways to acknowledge, encourage, and hold up as models the right behaviors. You can do this both by coaching individual members, and by having the team talk about their best traits and behaviors.

Practice Appreciative Inquiry. This technique assumes that every team functions well sometime, and enables you to build on your strengths. Bring your team together to:

1. Describe those exceptional moments when the team has functioned at its best.

2. Discover the life-giving properties that were present during those exceptional moments: the structure, dynamics, and other associated conditions.

3. Dream about what the team would look, feel and be like if those exceptional moments and life-giving properties were the norm rather than the exception.

4. Design specific principles and practices that will enable the team to function at its best more often.

If this approach to change intrigues you, read our review of The Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry by Annis Hammond, and then contact Qm2 for more information and guidance.

Still, there may be some individuals who lack key leadership traits: the person who cannot control his emotions, or the person who never follows through on her commitments. In such cases you should work with the individual to probe for causes of such behavior, help them to recognize how it effects the performance of the team, and try to find ways for them to change. If, after a time it is clear that they cannot change, then you should conclude that they are not a good fit for the requirements of the position. When the best managers reach this conclusion, they first try to change the position to make better use of the person's talents, and if that is not possible, they fire the person and help them find a position with a better fit elsewhere.

Do you have the right mix of people on the leadership team?
The traits identified above comprise the core of a healthy leadership team. You should strive to possess them, both as individuals and as a group. Beyond the core traits, however, you should look for diversity. A variety of skills, perspectives, knowledge, and styles will help you better see opportunities and understand problems. If as a group you are open, fair, and emotionally mature, you will be able to use your diversity to great advantage, initiating projects and developing services that no individual could conceive and do alone.

A good way to identify and appreciate the diversity on your team is to use the Qm2 Managerial Style Assessment, also known as the PAEI assessment, where P stands for Producer, A for Administrator, E for Entrepreneur, and I for Integrator. You can find more about this on the website. This tool can lead to a healthy team discussion about how members are different, how they are the same, and how they complement and can support one another.

The Process

In addition to having the right people, you also need the right processes to perform effectively as a team.

Are meetings efficient and effective? Do they focus on the most important issues?

A common complaint is that an organization has too many meetings. For a leadership team, the concerns may be that the meetings are unfocused, frequently rescheduled, and fail to get at what is really important. These complaints and concerns reflect a lack of discipline in the organization.

Every meeting should have a purpose that is clear to everyone involved. This is fundamental. The purpose may be to share information, to identify issues, to solve problems, to come up with new ideas, to recognize the contributions of staff, etc. The first step in improving your meetings is to clearly state the purpose of each. The purpose for each meeting should be important, straightforward and simple. Once you know the purpose, set the agenda and design the process so that you stay focused on the purpose.

There are many Qm2 management briefings on this website that can help you improve your meetings, especially Twelve Steps to Magnificent Meetings and How to Turn Your Monthly Management Meeting into a RAP (Review and Action Planning) Session.

Is the process for making decisions clear and sound?
If you have not done so, your team should discuss how you make decisions. In some cases decisions may be made by the team as a whole, in others by the executive director after listening to the team. Sometimes, in urgent situations, someone may have to act first, and then solicit input, explaining the need for a quick decision. Regardless of the situation, good decision-making should be based on:

• Inclusion—ensure that you (the executive or the team) have input from people with important knowledge and points of view, including those who will have to implement the decision.

• Dialogue—seek input sincerely, before you make up your mind, so that you can fully understand the situation and make an informed decision. Even those who disagree with your decision will support it if they feel they have been heard.

• Good Information—base decisions on reasonably complete and accurate data. If someone is asserting a fact, seek to understand the data that backs up the information. However, you do not have to be 100% certain about the data before you act. Use your best judgment.

• Timeliness—take enough time for inclusion and dialogue, but don't overdo it. Sometimes people have to agree to disagree, make the best decision given the circumstances, and move on.

• Communication—make sure everyone who will be affected by the decision knows about it.

See Democraship, Cooperative Decision Making, and other Qm² management briefings related to decision-making.

Is there sufficient, constructive conflict?
This question relates to the value of diversity discussed above. A good team fosters different points of view, and has a climate where members can express their views with passion. The desire is to learn from one another, in the belief that a full airing of different opinions will result in insights and ultimately a decision that no single individual saw in the beginning.

This is not always easy. It takes practice to get good at dialogue. You need to master awareness of three conversations occurring simultaneously:

• The Intellectual Conversation—what people think about the issue.

• The Emotional Conversation—how they feel about the issue.

• The Identity Conversation—how the issue relates to their values, principles and sense of self-worth.

To explore the concept of dialogue further, read Definition of Dialogue and reviews of Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone, et at; and The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict into Cooperation by Daniel Yankelovich.

Dialogue can be an especially difficult practice to master. You may want to consider engaging a Qm² associate to serve as a facilitator and coach for your team.

Do members take responsibility for the effectiveness of the team? How often does the team assess its own performance?

The single most important practice for improving the quality of a leadership team is for the team to evaluate itself regularly. The team should articulate its own standards of performance and behavior, and routinely ask itself how it is doing. This could take the form of a quick assessment:

• What are we doing that works especially well, that we should build on?

• What are we doing that does not work well, that we should stop doing?

• What are we not doing, that we should be doing?

Qm² has more formal assessment tools for tuning up teams and meetings. We can help you design one to fit your needs. Contact us.

Between team meetings is there good coordination, communication, and accountability for assignments and tasks?
Although most of the important decisions are made in meetings, action on those decisions take place during the course of the daily work. This requires discipline, on the part of individuals and on the part of the organization. You need systems and procedures to support the required actions.

You may lack the appropriate systems for coordination and communication of actions. It may be that you have no systems in place, or the systems you have actually impede cooperation and getting the work accomplished. If people in the organization do not work well together across functional boundaries, the leadership team needs to address this.

One way to start is to institute Strategic Job Descriptions for every employee, which state:

1. Your first responsibility is the success of the whole organization. Do whatever it takes to ensure that the organization succeeds.

2. Your second responsibility is to help your colleagues succeed in their duties. Provide them with the support and information they need.

3. Your third responsibility is to accomplish the functions of your particular job.

Strategic Job Descriptions form the foundation for getting the work done. You can then create procedures for communication and coordination that further the work, and do not impede it.

See the management briefing Strategic Job Descriptions for a complete explanation of this concept.

Action

When I ask members of leadership teams how their teams function, answers most often range from "okay" to "terrible." Sometimes the answer is: "we're great, except for one or two members." In fact, no team is ever as strong as it could be, because strong teams, by definition, are always trying to get better.

You can choose to accept your team the way it is and try to focus on just getting the work done. The trouble is, a poorly functioning leadership team acts as a drag on the organization, preventing you from making progress as quickly as you might.

Alternatively, you can choose to take steps to strengthen your team. By taking action now, you will soon see dramatic improvement in what your organization can accomplish.

This briefing presents a comprehensive approach to building a strong leadership team. If you are ready, contact Qm2 to discuss tailoring these tools and concepts to your specific needs.