5 Essential Elements for an Aligned High-Performing Top Team
Why align?
So why does it matter if your top team is aligned or not you may ask.
Well, your top team sets the tone for your business, it reflects your culture and the way things are done around here. It shows what is acceptable or not and it acts as a role model for the organisation.
So if you look around at your business today do you like what you see?
Is it working the way you’d like it to?
Are people doing a great job?
Is there a positive buzz about the place?
Are you achieving the results you want?
If you can say a definite yes to all the above then chances are your top team is aligned and leading a great business.
If not, then there’s work to be done to get you to where you want to be.
In this article, I’ll offer some suggestions to get you started. They are based on what I’ve found works well over my last 30 years of working with leaders and teams across a wide range of businesses and industries such as energy, hospitality and IT.
We’ll look at:
The power of multiple voices and how to appreciate each and every one. We can only create a bigger picture if we take the time to discover each person’s unique strengths and how they best fit together.
The element that keeps everyone together and motivated when times are tough: purpose. It involves some deep-dive questions and honest answers on why you exist as a company and what you are here to do.
How to engage people’s hearts and passions. What can we do as a top team to tap into what matters most in a way that will inspire excitement and ownership?
How working hand-in-hand with culture, strategy turns insight into action. It’s important to understand that this isn’t a linear process and that flexibility and reference to the other elements are needed at every stage.
How to preserve what you’ve built by making sure it’s resilient and sustainable. We’ve all become experts in expecting the unexpected recently, how can we turn this learning to our advantage?
Element one: the dynamics of diversity
A good place to start is by understanding what each person on your top team brings and how they can best work together. I like to call this Appreciating Differences.
As a top team, you’re likely to be made up of people from different functions and specialisms. You will have had different professional training and background experiences. You will have different preferences, such as your key areas of focus and how you think things should be done.
As a global team, you will have different nationalities, languages and cultural norms. And many other differences besides.
There are many ways we can explore these differences together. The main thing is to understand these differences in your team, appreciate what each person brings and find the best way to integrate and leverage these different strengths to maximise your returns.
One way to start, that translates across all countries and cultures is the whole brain framework by Ned Herrmann. It focuses on the cognitive diversity within your top team and provides many approaches to working with these, to optimise your strengths and achieve the best results, together.
You can use the diagram below as a starting point.
Where are your preferences regarding each of the boxes below, thinking about individuals in the first instance?
And then what does it mean for you as a team?
Are there areas you're particularly strong in?
And areas where there's a gap maybe?
Remember that all four areas need to be represented for top team performance.
It’s vital to have a top team that acts as a role model for the organisation. This is a leadership team that literally leads the way – they mean what they say and act accordingly, and in so doing, they build the trust required to bring others with them.
Strengthscope is another option I find very useful for leveraging strengths, differences and qualities within a team. It allows each person to feel seen and heard so that they can contribute from their best.
Element two: the power of purpose
As well as knowing your strengths and the way you can each contribute towards the success of the organisation, it’s also essential to have a clear idea of what you are working towards. I call this Leading on purpose.
Having a clear ‘why’, a purpose you really believe in, and one that you are all, as members of the top team, united on, is key to your success as a business.
If you are each going in different directions and fighting against each other on this, then you will waste lots of time, money and energy internally, rather than working together to achieve what you really want.
I've worked with a number of top teams where this has been an issue and resulted in major misunderstandings, upsets and missed opportunities.
There are many books and Ted Talks on the power of ‘why’ for a reason. Once we know why we are doing something, and support it we are more likely to get involved and contribute!
If we can see a bigger cause, a larger vision we believe in, we are more likely to work through the ups and downs along the way to support it, to make it happen.
And if we are all working together towards the same end, there’s a far greater chance of it happening.
So how can we get there as a top team?
Well, there are numerous processes and in-depth conversations that can be had around the topic of purpose, and here are a few suggestions to get you started.
Asking leaders ‘what is your purpose?’ can be a challenging question for those who haven’t thought about it too much before. ‘I don’t know’ is one response I often hear. Why not approach things in a slightly different way by asking some of the following questions instead?
What is your business here to do?
Who are you here to serve
What are you here to provide?
Then as a team:
What are you here to do?
Who are you leading?
What are you leading them to?
On a global scale:
What is the world calling for that you are well placed to meet?
And on a more local scale:
What is your corner of the world in need of in terms of your business, your sector, your customers, your community and your people?
As a leader, and as a team, knowing why you do what you do every day, will help give you the extra energy you need to keep going, stay on track, and avoid burnout.
Our purpose, like the North Star can guide us forward, no matter what comes our way.
Element three: making a place for passion
I think it’s important to define what we mean by passion in the first place as some business leaders may wonder whether the word has a place in business. I call this Igniting passion and Inspiring others.
For me, I’m referring to that inner drive and energy that motivates us, drives us, and keeps us going when times are tough.
And excites us when times are great!
It’s something you feel inside
Something you feel drawn to.
Something you feel excited to take part in.
Something you feel driven to contribute towards.
Something you feel you really want to be part of.
And it’ll be different things for different people.
Knowing what it is for you as a leader is key to start with, and then from this place, discover what it is for your people.
We often hear the idea of engaging people's hearts and minds, well this is how we engage people’s hearts. This is how we inspire others – by tapping into those inner feelings that really mean something to them.
When you tap into what is genuinely meaningful for someone, they will naturally want to follow you, because they really want to rather than feel they have to.
When you and your people are working in alignment with your values, with what you really believe in and love what you do, your energy is multiplied and success comes more easily.
And as Confucius said many years ago
“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
When you combine your natural talents and strengths with your passions and use these to meet the needs of others both inside and outside your organisation, you hit your sweet spot. You discover a purpose that you are uniquely placed to meet
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This is the foundation on which Top Performance for Top Teams rests.
Element four: elevating energy into action
Having built on the foundations of having a clear purpose, knowing your strengths and tapping into your passions, the next stage is to decide how you’re going to get there. I like to call this phase Generating strategy, and from there, Getting to action.
Having agreed on your purpose as a business and as a team, and then created a vision of what it will look like in practice, you then need to decide how you are going to get there: the strategy.
I find one of the most effective ways forward is to:
Identify the top three to five areas to focus on, to deliver the strategy.
Create action plans for one year.
And then every three months.
With more specific actions for the next few months.
All 4 phases are in fact overlapping and intertwined, and part of a larger whole. They inform each other and it’s a constant back and forth, with ongoing generative conversations bringing things together over time.
You may well have heard the famous Peter Drucker phrase, ‘strategy eats culture for breakfast,’. I prefer the updated version voiced by Max McKeown: ‘Strategy and culture should have breakfast together’.
It’s a both/and way of looking at things: both are needed to have real and lasting success as the diagram below describes.
[add diagram here]
One company I worked for had a great overall approach which they referred to as
‘Right Results, Right Way’.
It’s important to deliver the results you want, and it’s equally important to deliver them in a way that aligns with your culture – a way that fits with your values and demonstrates the behaviours you want to role model.
And if you can reward the desired behaviours as well as the desired results, you have a win-win.
This is how strategy and culture can work together to create a more sustainable and successful future.
Element five: sustainable success
So you have a clear purpose and you understand how every member of the top team can best contribute towards achieving it. I like to call this the Now what? The Navigating forward phase.
You’re energised and committed and have inspired others to come with you!
You have agreed on the strategy and clear plans to get there!
So now what? Is that it?
Clearly not!
As we know nothing stays the same for long, especially these days. Things are constantly shifting and so we need to too! Think:
How well are you navigating change?
What are the processes you have in place to monitor change?
What are the systems you need to ensure success?
What are the early warning signs you need to look out for?
When an emergency happens do you know how you’ll respond?
What are your plans b, c, and d?
Over the years we’ve learnt to expect the unexpected and even though we may not know exactly what’s coming next we can prepare to a certain extent. With a combination of guidelines and trusting people to do what they think best.
Building our resilience as leaders, teams and businesses to weather the storms and ride the waves to new opportunities.
How can we navigate change in a sustainable way?
Rather than running around and burning ourselves out, we can take a different course to enable top team performance.
This is the way to achieve impact without burnout!
Integrating all five elements
The true power of aligned top performance comes when you constantly cycle around the five elements and have each inform the others.
[add integration diagram]
Any one element is a great step forward and with all five elements working together, you generate a whole new level of performance and resilient success.
Are you ready to get started to ensure an amazingly successful 2023?
A few suggestions to get you started.
If you’d like to know how aligned your team are currently, take the quiz here.
Check out how I work with teams on my website.
Or if this has sparked some ideas and you’d rather talk them over, please book a complimentary call with Terri.