There are three main approaches when it comes to addressing dysfunctional leadership teams:
1) Avoid the issue and appeal to the greater good : “Let’s go off-site for a strengths-based team building meeting!”
2) Address the issue head-on : “We’re broken and we need an intervention – we don’t leave this room until we’re fixed!”
3) Divide and conquer : “I’ll just have a quiet chat with … try to get them to do things differently…”
The challenge, I think, is that each of these approaches places dysfunction at the center of focus
[understandably – let’s face it, for many leadership teams the pain of dysfunction is very much the day-to-day reality]
Here’s the thing though… When we put an impact (or symptom) center-stage, we subtly disempower change.
Think of it this way, if someone is overweight, spends all their time thinking of themself as overweight and, worst of all, only hears from weight-loss professionals how overweight they are… How likely are they to lose weight?
And so it goes with dysfunctional leadership teams – broken is the norm, and broken doesn’t know how to fix.
[not to mention that their are leaders within the team, and their factions beyond, who gain status, focus, resources, and influence thanks to the very dysfunction that prevails]
So, I’d like to offer a 4th approach, which is to handle the dysfunction by simply NOT handling it.
Well, not directly anyway…
I recently checked in with a client to follow-up on a Talent Planning session I’d facilitated – this had been both strategic and tactical work, looking into the future to identify likely retirement scenarios and then building specific plans to address both opportunities and risks at the individual role level.
In other words, nothing out of the ordinary for anyone regularly involved in Talent Management.
It was a fun session – hard work but highly productive.
So, my follow-up with my client was simply to assess whether the plans were gaining traction, and naturally to identify where I may be able to help in implementation – I’d previously designed and deployed a leadership 360 development tool for one part of the organization, and there’d been mention of using a similar approach elsewhere.
What I wasn’t expecting to hear (almost immediately) was this:
“Vince, we’re having conversations and discussions like we’ve never had before. The change is amazing…”
Had I known there was dysfunction in the team? Sure, it had come up in my experience working with my client, and even in the meeting. And, of course I have the battle scars of facilitating such teams (or more positively, a strong toolbox) to draw upon.
In scoping we’d talked about potential flash-points and how we couldn’t afford to let them derail the meeting. But never once did we approach this as a “let’s fix the team” intervention.
What we did was “getting business done” and, in the process, we just happened to defuse landmines and establish new norms that just work for this group of leaders.
But we didn’t flip-chart values…
We didn’t revisit roles and responsibilities…
We didn’t even bring the words Mission, Vision and Purpose into the room…
We didn’t establish a new set of leadership competencies…
We didn’t use pseudo-psychology to assess preferred working personality styles…
We didn’t etc, etc, etc…
We just got work done.
In other words, I helped my clients do the work of leadership the way it needs to be done to achieve productive outcomes.
Now, there are many in my profession who would balk at such an approach; leadership interventions – both individual and team – are quite the lucrative offering, after all. And, in some cases, they are absolutely the appropriate response to the situation.
What I am suggesting is that, in the rush to “fix things”, you don’t lose sight of the opportunities that are right in front of you EVERY DAY.
And, especially if you’re an HR leader, I encourage you to build in-the-moment facilitation skills in your practitioners – and set the expectation that they use them whenever they can.
So, here’s my question – how many times have you tried to fix a leadership team directly? And how successful has that been for the long-term?