Management team work

Leadership

A leading management team and successful management team working enables a company to be more successful - whether it is to achieve faster and more effective strategy implementation, profitable growth, or to achieve both engaged and satisfied people and customers.

Each company, management team and situation is unique and individual, but in developing our response to management team work, we usually receive two sets of requests from the CEO and the management team:

Getting the basics of management team work right
As a management team, we are at a high level, but we want to build a top team.

We have helped and are happy to help in both situations. Let's address both needs next. If you have already identified your situation and need, please contact us!

A group of managers or a management team?

Developing management team work often starts with the basics. In our audits of management team work, we have come across the most common bottlenecks in management team work, which are:

The participants are unclear about the common goal of the management team's work.
In the meetings of the Management Team, operational and strategic issues are mixed.
Management team members are team leaders, not a management team - their own goals take precedence over the overall win.
The discussion is more about what has happened than what is going to happen, or one extreme is overemphasised.
Participants are poorly prepared or have little or no preparation for the meetings of the steering group.
The management team meetings just don't seem to work - the composition and agenda of the management team is a matter of concern.
There is little sparring, cooperation and discussion among the management team (especially between meetings).
Decision-making, monitoring and implementation in the management team is weak or too one-sided (lack of debate, constructive conflict resolution, transparency and accountability).

The development of management team work usually starts with solving the bottlenecks mentioned above and establishing common rules of the game for management team work. Typically, after such coaching, our clients have a senior management team, rather than a group of managers.

From a management team to a top team?

For many of our clients, systematic development of their management team has already led to a senior management team, but the management team wants to grow into a top team. In most cases, this growth journey requires tuning up the management team both as a team and as individuals. One excellent framework for understanding a top team is to look at Stephen R. Covey's model, presented in his book ”Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”.

Capacity to act as a top team means that each leader is able to function in a demanding environment, both in terms of professional skills and physical and mental well-being, both as a person and as a professional, as part of a management team. Executive coaching - more commonly known as individual coaching - is an excellent tool for ensuring this.
Proactivity and vision relate to, among other things, goal setting, both as individuals and as a management team. How we as a leadership team actively lead our organisation towards future success that seems impossible for our people, and how we get people excited about a common goal - these are questions that a top team deals with individually and collectively. Often this means a coaching leadership approach in everyday life.
Prioritisation and implementation require each leader to have self-management and time-management skills, as well as an understanding of how to prioritise the common goals of leadership teamwork into their own weekly tasks and how to coach people to do the most important everyday things.
The WIN-WIN-WIN debate every member of the leadership team understands that growing into a top team requires a triple win where 1) the needs of your people, 2) the goals of your customers, and 3) the goals of the organization and your own performance are met together. If only two of the three are successful, then you are not a top team, but at best a successful management team.
Ability to understand and be understood is important. Developing a management team into a top team requires that we > me. The same in Finnish means high level listening and communication skills. In this area, the development of leadership teamwork is specifically focused on interaction - alone and, above all, together.
Synergy: Eventually, as the management team grows into a top team, the cooperation and synergy achieved will show that the management team is more than the sum of its parts. Ambitious and inspiring goals are achieved and people still have fun together. Instead of being a Great Place To Work®, we are a Great Performing Place To Work.

Challenges? We're here to help!

It always pays to develop management team work. Whether it's getting the basics right, or growing into a top team, we have the experience and hard customer results to back it up. In many cases, success with our clients is based on the YYY agreement, which means strengthening the management team: