Leadership Teams and Roles

A leadership team is a group of two or more people who lead organizations that represent diverse functions, geographies, or areas of expertise, and who are committed to collaboratively serve some significant organizational purpose for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. By definition, these leaders hold such positions as senior vice president, department or division head, country manager, business unit leader, brand leader, or executive committee member. They are leaders of their own functional or geographic organizations who have been asked to join and work together to add value beyond what they and their organizations respectively provide.

Effective Leadership Team

Many leadership team members recognize that it takes a different set of competencies to be an effective member of a leadership team than it does to lead their own functional or cross-functional teams.

If there is tension between the leadership team members’ functional or geographic leadership role and their role as a leadership team member, there often is a tendency for leadership team members to fight. There are several reasons why these conflicts occur:

• Personal or functional agendas or goals can take precedence over leadership team agendas or goals
• The team members’ personal needs for independence, power, or control override their needs for inclusion, collaboration, and trust
• Concerns over budgets or shares of the pie take priority over strategic concerns for the overall enterprise
• There may be competition among team members to get the team leader role.

However, by fulfilling three essential conditions, your team will be effective:

1. Commitment to accountability

It’s important to align the leadership team around a common purpose and set of goals or objectives that they mutually assume responsibility for achieving. These goals are the rallying point for the leadership team and give them a sense of both identity and value in other words, the reason for their existence as a team. When positive progress occurs, team members have the willingness and ability to acknowledge success; and when there are problems and deviations, team members have the ability to identify issues quickly with a perspective of problem solving, not blaming.

2. Culture of team trust

High-performing leadership teams must operate in an environment that reflects the two most important components of team trust: credibility (an ability to make decisions, deliver results, deliver on promises, admit mistakes, and proactively resolve issues) and empathy (an ability to listen and understand, be nonjudgmental, and be concerned and supportive of each other). Because members of a leadership team are potential competitors for their leader’s position, it is even more critical that they continuously work at demonstrating their ability to give and receive each other’s trust.

3. Emotional intelligent leadership team behaviors

This is the ability of a team to establish norms and prioritize key leadership practices that govern how leadership team members want to behave with each other in order to maximize their overall effectiveness. High-performing leadership team interactions and discussions are characterized as open and respectful with the intent of thoughtful issue resolution.

Leadership Roles

No matter what your specific management position entails, being a leader is not an easy job to have. You must wear many different hats and respond to the needs of many different people not just your own team members and employees, but your managers and the people you are serving and for whom you are creating and delivering your product or service, too.

Everyone has a different leadership style, philosophy and way of executing her vision while leading her company or team. However, great leaders must always fill certain roles in order to do their jobs well, achieve progress and make their personal and company vision a success.

1. Strategist

As a leader, your work involves developing a plan for your company and the work you and your team members do. Your responsibilities include outlining specific goals for your company and determining the steps you and your employees need to take to achieve them. You should also establish what metrics you will use for evaluating whether you have achieved your goals and plans. Determine what success means upfront:

• Do you want to increase sales numbers?
• Are you looking to streamline your processes?
• Is there a particular area, product, or department that you would like to improve?

Figuring out what success looks like will help you hone your strategy and the steps you will take to achieve it. Clearly define the best measures to evaluate specific goals, too. What kind of data will you generate? How can you use it to measure your efforts?

2. Communicator

Communication is crucial for all organizational leaders and really any employee at any stage in her career. You need to be able to communicate your ideas to your employees, the public, and your managers. You will also communicate with people on a regular basis; even sending a quick email, running or participating in a meeting and making a phone call are forms of communication. Whether you’re a new manager relaying plans for the company, implementing organizational change or simply communicating day-to-day procedures and expectations, effective communication is one of the most important skills a leader can have.

3. Innovator

You didn’t rise to the top solely because you possess strong skills in your industry although that is surely the case. Your capacity for innovation helped get you there, too. Good leaders don’t just continue to do things the way they’ve always been done or sit back and let “followers” carry out the responsibilities; they continually develop new ideas. Not all your ideas will pan out, but failure is part of the innovation process. In order for a business to thrive and grow, change needs to take place and you are the one who should drive that change.

4. Coach

Leaders certainly have their moment in the spotlight, but effective managers also give their employees time and opportunities to shine. Part of being a team leader or company leader means you should help your employees grow and thrive in their roles. That means giving feedback both positive feedback when they’ve done something particularly well and constructive criticism when you notice a skill or task upon which they can improve, offering direction and celebrating success, even if it’s not your personal victory.

5. Delegator

This one goes hand-in-hand with coach. A leader can’t and shouldn’t do everything. If you’re good at your job, you’ll know your own limitations and recognize when somebody else could be doing a task or project better than you could. Furthermore, you’ll understand that others need to learn because it takes many people to run a successful organization, and you need to give them a chance to develop their own skills, even if you may have already mastered them.

6. Adaptor

Management is not without its hiccups and bumps along the road. All leadership positions require a fair degree of flexibility. If a plan isn’t panning out the way you wanted or expected it to, you need to be capable of recognizing that and changing course when it becomes necessary. No one likes admitting defeat, but part of being a leader means that you have to stop wasting time and resources on something that just isn’t going to pan out.

You also need to adapt to changing environments. Sometimes market trends force a company to adapt and change with the times. For instance, new technologies are changing the way industries across the board perform their work, and as a leader in your industry, you need to make sure your company keeps up with trends. You don’t want to be the one lagging behind.

7. Networker

Networking, networking, networking. It is a crucial aspect of any professional’s life, and none more so than a leader. Depending on your specific leadership position and function, you may be the face of your company; if that’s the case, or even you’re not at the very top, you need to constantly promote your company and its values. Networking isn’t just important for your company’s growth; it’s also essential for your personal growth.