Here are 14 signs that your leadership team might not actually be a well-functioning team:
- Being merely a bundle of ‘reporting lines’ without shared work
- Top leader(s) chairs their meeting and speaks most
- Constant rabbit-holing and talking past each other
- Spend most of their time reviewing PowerPoints
- Members have many 1:1s with each other outside shared meeting time
- Their meeting is canceled when the top leader isn’t present
- Pleasing the leader, optics to get a promotion
- Top leader(s) have the ‘final say’ on all decisions
- Are involved in status update marathons
- Are in endless meetings that could have been async emails/chat/videos
- Maintains endless lists of ‘priorities’ that are mere ‘wishlists’
- A mindset of striving for perfection, planning & controlling
- Elephants in the room are left unaddressed
- Blaming your people for the lack of results
Now, contrast this with the best ones I’ve ever seen:
Deciding
1. Ask clarifying questions before reacting
2. Ask: ‘is it safe-to-try’ instead of ‘is it perfect’?
3. Use a different process for reversible and irreversible decisions
4. Clarity on which types of decisions need group consent and which don’t