Building an Effective Executive Leadership Team

Executive leadership teams, the groups of senior level executives –typically led by the CEO—that drive an organization, have a substantial effect on the company's culture, work environment, strategic direction, and productivity. A well- or poorly-run team can literally mean success or failure in any sized company, because of its impact on an organization's ability to innovate, respond to market challenges, communicate with investors, foster employee loyalty, and manage productivity.

Given these high stakes, how can an organization's leader maximize the effectiveness of its executive leadership team? In our experience, these teams operate using different work styles, usually based on the preferences of the CEO. The two most common styles are:

Leader-centric. In this model, the CEO uses team meetings to share information, consult with other executives on important issues, and coordinate execution of decisions that the CEO has made. The CEO's style is a forceful one: the team's members maintain loyalty within that style, fully expecting that the CEO will make most of the key decisions. Jack Welch, in his book Winning, describes a leader-centric style this way: "By nature, some people are consensus builders. Some people long to be loved by everyone. Those behaviors can really get you in the soup if you are a leader….You are not a leader to win a popularity contest – you are a leader to lead."

Versatile. In the second model, the CEO aspires to build a more collaborative executive team. While these CEOs still hold the keys, they regularly seek to differentiate between decisions that are best made collaboratively, via team discussion and consensus, and those made by the CEO after consultation and input. In Tough Choices, Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard, describes this style of team leadership: "Collaboration requires more consultation and agreement among peers. It requires acceptance of accountability while sharing resources. It means trusting others to do their job while knowing that others must trust you to do the same."

The model a CEO chooses can be influenced by a number of factors, but the biggest influencer is the CEO's own beliefs about leadership, and their own perceived—or real—strengths and weaknesses as a leader. CEOs who prefer the leader-centric style are often less comfortable with the personal relationship-building part of their job. They are less skilled with the role of coaching and facilitating, one that is generally required to build a highly interdependent leadership team. Their executive team meetings tend to be more formal and reserved, because they are less comfortable with open discussion, debating different viewpoints, and using varying team decision-making styles based on the requirements of the issue at hand.  

The Advantages and Challenges of Versatile Teams

Both research and real-world experience indicate that versatile, collaborative leadership teams position their companies for the best opportunities to succeed. The process of building such a team helps prepare senior executives for success in their positions, supports healthy discussion on vital issues, and sets a tone throughout the company that engages and values people. This extra effort has provided a recipe for productivity and innovation at many companies.

But to build a healthy versatile team, leaders must both believe that the model can succeed and have the skills to build one. It's no small task.

A versatile team requires an investment of time and effort to build and nurture it, because success involves generating both the trust and the agreement among peers that Fiorina describes. Strong relationships between the CEO and each individual team member – and between the team members themselves – can greatly contribute to its effectiveness. Here's where self-understanding and versatility on the part of the CEO will be particularly helpful, because there will be times when a direct, leader-centric approach is appropriate (such as in the early stages of the team's development), and others when the collaborative style will yield more productive outcomes.

Avoiding Pitfalls

Make no mistake: in advocating the versatile team leadership model, we are not suggesting that CEOs abdicate their decision-making responsibilities. As Welch writes, successful collaborative CEOs do not believe that all decisions should be made by consensus. They are fully aware of decisions that need to be made alone, made in consultation with certain other individual executives, or delegated to others.

Successful leaders DO take the time to consider how decisions should best be made, and have the conviction to act on those decisions. By doing so, they avoid some pitfalls of ineffective collaborative processes, such as:

•Subtly manipulating the process to gain desired outcomes,

•Pretending to involve team members in decisions that are already made, or

•Slowing down the organization by seeking consensus on decisions that should have been made by an individual.

The good news is that a mindful, sustained executive investment in building a collaborative team yields great dividends, as team members bring their best work to the table with them, feeling valued as creative contributors. Clarity of roles is also vital, and keeps the team on course and focused. Participating in a well-functioning team is exciting, invigorating and highly productive, setting the stage for excellence throughout the organization and powerful impact on that ever-important bottom line.

5 Types of Directors Who Don't Deliver

By Jack and Suzy Welch

If you've ever sat on a board, chances are you've had to endure an ineffective or otherwise dysfunctional peer at one point or another.

Not to slam boards; on the whole, they add real value. But boards frequently tolerate troublesome performance from one or two of their own. It's simply too time-consuming or impolitic to eradicate them. And that is why too many boards, in both the public and private sectors, don't make the contribution they should.

To be clear, we're not talking about board behavior that is criminal. With a few famous exceptions, boards will remove anyone who breaks the law. No, we're referring to boardroom behaviors that are perfectly legal but perfectly destructive as well. There are at least five types of dysfunctional board members that "serve" at many companies by our count:

THE DO-NOTHING.

Some of these seat-warmers are too busy with their own companies, other directorships, or their personal lives to care about your board. Some don't have enough skin in the game to work up a real interest. Others lie low for job security. At $25,000 to $100,000 a pop, corporate directors get paid good money. In the private sector, prestige is often the reward. So Do-Nothings rarely challenge or probe. Nor do they venture into the field to make sure what they hear in the boardroom about values and strategy matches what employees feel.

THE WHITE FLAG.

Do-Nothings are awful but not nearly as dangerous as type two in our taxonomy. These individuals live in fear of being personally tainted by any kind of controversy, such as a class action or activist protest. They lack a key characteristic of any good board member—courage. With every public or private challenge, they pollute the boardroom by hyperventilating for a settlement, even if it means selling out on principle just to get out of the crosshairs. Sure, a board must settle on occasion, but never before seeing the organization through a discovery of the facts. Such a process creates a culture of trust between management and the board, and it is only in such an environment that risks can and will be taken.

THE CABALIST.

The third type of bad board member is the director who sits quietly in meetings, often going along with the prevailing side, before taking up his cause behind the scenes and building constituencies to achieve another agenda, his own. In many cases, good board members shut down such practitioners of palace intrigue. But sometimes a board's cabal is its own executive committee, and the result is a controlling, secretive board-within-a-board that turns other directors into second-class citizens. Such a dynamic decommissions the majority of the board's brains—and what a waste that is—but it also undermines the board's relationship with management. Executives can't tell if a director is speaking for himself, the board, or the cabal.

THE MEDDLER.

Good directors focus on big-picture issues such as succession and strategy. By contrast, our fourth "offender" likes to butt into management. Instead of meeting with high-potential talent and discussing industry dynamics, meddlers get all mucked up in operational details. They seem oblivious to the fact that board members are there for their wisdom, sound counsel, and judgment, not the day-to-day running of the business.

THE PONTIFICATOR.

And finally, there is the self-important bloviator who cannot get enough of his own voice, especially when it is opining on "matters of state," such as world events, social trends, the company's history, or his own area of expertise. Like Meddlers, Pontificators distract boards from the business before them and enervate their colleagues in the process.

As a board member, it is easier to let a couple of Do-Nothings hang on till retirement or tolerate a few cowering White Flags as other directors handle each crisis. Or to try to isolate or work around Cabalists and ignore Meddlers and Pontificators. But imagine how much better it would be if nominating committees, usually just focused on vetting potential members, dealt with the hard cases right in front of them. After all, nothing can keep a board on its best behavior but itself.


Jack Welch is Founder and Distinguished Professor at the Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University. Through its executive education and Welch Way management training programs, the Jack Welch Management Institute provides students and organizations with the proven methodologies, immediately actionable practices, and respected credentials needed to win in the most demanding global business environments.

Suzy Welch is a best-selling author, popular television commentator, and noted business journalist. Her New York Times bestselling book, 10-10-10: A Life Transforming Idea, presents a powerful decision-making strategy for success at work and in parenting, love and friendship. Together with her husband Jack Welch, Suzy is also co-author of the #1 international bestseller Winning, and its companion volume, Winning: The Answers. Since 2005, they have written business columns for several publications, including Business Week magazine, Thomson Reuters digital platforms, Fortune magazine, and the New York Times syndicate.