There are many reasons leadership teams allow their priorities to be badly distorted. Things that matter most — team dynamics, key strategic priorities, and organization change and development efforts — are often crowded out by things that matter least — the crisis du jour or technical problems better solved by those closest to the action.
Like a gnarled root system, common causes of failure are intertwined with personal, team, and organizational behaviors and conditions. A major factor is how the organization’s culture ripples out from the management team leading it. The executive team models behavior patterns that set the tone and examples for the entire organization.
Executive team effectiveness and organizational factors are often rooted in these underlying causes:
- Speed Traps and Tyranny of the Urgent
- Partial and Piecemeal Programs
- Leadership Lip Service
- Not Building Change Capacity
- Teams Not Pulling Together
- Communication Breakdowns
- Failing to Follow Through
A Leadership Team Retreat is an excellent way to ensure everyone is pulling together and focused on a shared strategy to dramatically boost the success of development efforts. A well facilitated retreat will:
- Leverage team and organizational strengths
- Pull together major change efforts and development initiatives under an integrated implementation plan
- Develop a strong buy-in and agreement on leadership behaviors needed for leadership/organization development
- Help everyone better understand and lead the interconnected elements to building a high performing organization
- Integrate succession planning, talent development, and performance management with organizational strategy actively led by the leadership team
- Re-energize and refocus the leadership team so they can mobilize the organization
- Build broad and cascading change coalitions and robust infrastructure for strong and sustained follow through
I’ll give an overview of these and many other points in my complimentary March 9 Executive Team Building and Culture Development webinar (click for more details and registration).
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