The 5 Essential Qualities of a Highly Effective Leadership Team

If you’re lucky, you’ve had the experience of being part of a great team at least once or twice in your life and career. The characteristics of great leadership teams in business don’t differ all that much from the descriptors we see so often in sports. Great teams excel at communicating, are selfless, hard-working, strategic, and support each other through adversity. They also have committed leaders invested in the team’s success with a unique combination of vulnerability, humility, and strength of character.

That may seem like a tall order, but the good news is that a great deal of work and actionable research has been applied to what makes an effective team in business. In this article, we’ll share some of the latest research and best practice highlights, as well as our insights from supporting hundreds of top leadership teams across various industries.

We’ve learned that organizations can make huge progress toward achieving a high-performing team by building a smart and more strategic process. It’s exciting to see the process in action. Another important takeaway from our work is the critical role that professional communicators play in the process.

What is the Purpose of a Leadership Team?

The best leadership teams know how to set the tone from the top, clearly defining the big picture and what success looks like. The leadership team helps set the vision, mission, and goals, lays out the key challenges ahead and the path forward, and provides clear direction on the role of every employee in accomplishing the company’s goals.

The leadership team is just one spoke in the full wheel of all the teams functioning inside an organization. And high-performing teams are everything when it comes to a company’s success.

“Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare,” wrote Patrick Lencioni, a leading expert on high-performing teams and the author of “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.”

What Does an Effective Leadership Team Look Like?

An effective leadership team collaborates seamlessly to achieve shared goals, leveraging diverse strengths to drive strategic vision, make informed decisions, and inspire high organizational performance. They often have common traits, including clear communication, trust, accountability, alignment on objectives, and a focus on fostering a positive and productive organizational culture to drive business results.

1. The team has a compelling vision for success

One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is they fail to adequately define and build a compelling story that outlines their vision and strategy for success. It’s one thing to have a vision written and published on a website. It’s entirely another to have a culture where all the leaders share the same story about where the organization is headed and why.

When employees understand the challenges that the company faces and why the strategy helps the organization achieve its goals, employees better understand their role in the overall company story. When that’s in place, employees are much more inclined to be engaged and get on board.

It’s important to note that in today’s business environment, there’s a tremendous amount of change going on. The average employee goes through a multitude of transformations in a short period. With that in mind, it’s even more important for the leadership team to understand the degree of burnout and skepticism among their teams, recognize it, and still find ways to share the context behind why organizations must be ever more agile and responsive to succeed.

2. The team sets clear objectives and goals for achieving the vision

Leadership teams not only provide the big-picture company goals, they must also share detailed objectives for each function. Every employee needs to have a line-of-sight into how their daily work contributes to the company’s overall success.

I love the classic story of two bricklayers. You ask one what they’re working on and they say, “I’m building a wall.” You ask the other and they say, “I’m building a castle.” The executive leadership team (and all leaders) have an important role in helping employees connect the dots to see how their role plays a part in achieving the company’s vision.

One effective practice we’ve found is for leadership teams to set “contracts” for each other. Once the leadership team defines its goals for the full team, the team also needs to set goals for itself. How will they work together? What commitments will they make to each other, and how will they be accountable for acting on those commitments?

An example of a leadership team set of commitments:

• Ensure that we make every decision with the customer's best interests in mind.
• Prioritize collaboration. Support each other and have each other’s backs. Work together across functions and units.
• Be candid and open with each other. We’re not afraid to challenge each other and have open, honest dialogue about the challenges we face together.
• We role model vulnerability. When we need help or are frustrated by a problem, we share it and ask for help.
• We respect deadlines. When we commit our function to delivering a project, we do all we can to meet the deadline. When problems arise, we proactively share with the full leadership team why we need more time.

3. Each team leader models vulnerability and authenticity

I’ve written a lot about vulnerability and authenticity in leadership because I value it so much. In fact, authenticity was a key theme behind my book, “Heart First.”

At its core, I believe respectful authenticity is most important for leadership teams. This is about leaders being true to themselves and acting in ways that are consistent with their values, as well as being vulnerable and admitting their faults and struggles at times.

And in today’s era – when people are clearly searching for truth and meaning – respectful authenticity has never been more important.

In a nutshell, here are the top three components I use to define what’s meant by respectful authenticity in leadership. I believe these components not only make for great leadership but are also the keys to building a trusting and engaged team:

• Know yourself. Reflect on what’s most important to you, who you are today and what you value. Truly understanding this helps you better relate to others and focus on building more valuable relationships with your team.
• Be your best self. Walk the talk. Ensure that you are acting in ways that are in sync with your values instead of simply trying to please people or get something from others.
• Have quiet courage as you relate to others. Respectful authenticity is about the constant process of being truthful – first with yourself and then with others. This is about saying the things that need to be said but in a kind and respectful way.

The crucial piece I've learned about the quest for authentic leadership is that it’s an ongoing journey. As leaders, we are challenged all the time to put on masks rather than be who we really are. What I’ve learned is that the work of being real – with ourselves and as a leadership team – is not only more fulfilling, but a true game-changer in building a stronger team culture.

Lencioni, a leadership expert on teams, agrees. “Leaders must go first in vulnerability by taking a leap of faith with their subordinates,” he said recently in an interview with leadership podcaster Adam Mendler. “This inspires them (the team) to do likewise and transforms – yes, transforms – everything else on a team.”

4. The leadership team keeps the future in mind

Very often leadership teams get caught up in the crisis of the moment and fail to prepare and innovate for the future. This can be a real trap for leaders and they need to prepare themselves against this by continually reflecting beyond the day-to-day business operations and toward the future vision they’re working to achieve.

Business leaders Paul Leinwand and Mahadeva Matt Mani address this in their recent book, “Beyond Digital: How Great Leaders Transform Their Organizations and Shape the Future.”

In a recent piece for the Harvard Business Review, they wrote: “You and your colleagues will need to advance the company’s agenda – and that means spending energy and time on the big priorities for the future, not just responding to the demands of the organization today. What structures and mechanisms will help you lead the company to its new destination?”

5. Leaders foster a culture of open, constructive communication and feedback

The leadership team must prioritize communication with each other, ensuring that they set aside ample opportunities for dialogue, to ask questions, and to feel a shared ownership in the process of growth and change.

A critical element here is the ability of leaders to not shy away from conflict and disagreements. If team members don’t feel comfortable sharing a differing point of view, the team can’t truly evolve and improve. As in any healthy relationship, conflict has to be accepted as a natural part of the growth process.

To enable better and more honest communication, we’ve worked with clients on a process that has the leadership team setting team goals and then regularly measuring them for accountability. More details will be shared on this process below, but the point is to ensure that leaders are co-creating the strategy and then taking a regular and candid pulse on the team’s progress.

Leaders need to learn from each other’s mistakes, welcoming feedback on what could be improved or needs to be changed.

A Process for Evaluating Leadership Team Effectiveness

We work with leadership teams to evaluate their effectiveness over time against a core set of metrics. Teams gather to establish their goals and then we set up a procedure to individually evaluate how they feel the team is measuring up against their goals over time.

It’s a highly effective process for setting clear goals and making the leadership team accountable to each other. The typical metrics we measure, although they can differ widely based on individual team objectives and needs, cover topics such as trust, communication, and conflict resolution, among many others. Once we establish a baseline, progress is measured regularly with the hope that scores continually improve over time.

If your leadership team isn’t operating as effectively as it should on behalf of the business and you believe you’ll benefit from an approach we describe above, reach out. We’d be happy to learn about your challenges and goals and how we can leverage our experience on your behalf.

The Vital Role of Professional Communicators in Leadership Team Effectiveness

What’s critical in leadership teams is the voice of the professional communicator. Too often, communicators are quick to give the leadership team what they want. Leaders may ask for an initiative to be launched and communication written, and communicators simply deliver it – even when they know the initiative is not likely to land well with employees, or may cause a lot of questions and concern.

High-performing leadership teams need to empower communicators to take a strong leadership role in key moments. For example, sometimes additional employee feedback or input is critical when concerns surface. Given that technology allows for feedback to be gathered much more quickly than in the past, there’s really no excuse not to gain feedback through a quick survey or focus group, especially in moments of tension or conflict.

For example, our team worked with leaders at a major restaurant chain who were instilling transformational changes in the menu and through technology upgrades. The communication team had been pulsing franchisees and knew there were concerns about the changes.

Rather than simply rolling out the changes without processing the local restaurant owners’ feedback, the communications team asked for a pause in the rollout to gather vital information. Changes were then made that were more acceptable to franchisee owners. Critically, the owners also felt heard – leading to greater engagement and buy-in over the long term.

How The Grossman Group Can Help

Our experienced senior team has worked with hundreds of leadership teams to become more strategic, efficient, and effective. We help teams set clear goals, improve their communication skills, and develop a more candid and honest approach to furthering the team’s objectives.

The metrics we use and systems we’ve developed have helped teams work more seamlessly together while still innovating for future success. In many cases, our work has increased team engagement scores significantly, and leadership teams feel far more connected to each other.

Most importantly, the organization is better set up to deliver for the business, yielding significant improvement in performance.

To learn more about how we partner with leadership teams to drive performance, visit our Leadership Development Consulting page. Or, contact us if you’re ready to embark on a journey to improve your leadership team’s effectiveness.

The Bottom Line

As we’ve all seen time and again, the true measure of any successful organization is how well its team works together.

High-performing teams are everything in business and yet too many organizations still don’t spend the kind of quality time and attention that’s needed to develop them.

The tips and best practices we’ve discussed here go a long way toward getting your winning game plan in place.

In what ways might your leadership team – and organization – benefit from greater alignment and effectiveness at the top?

—David Grossman

Drawing from our decades of work helping our Fortune 500 clients successfully launch strategies, our eBook, How to Activate and Embed Your Strategy to Accelerate Results, provides a proven methodology to ensure your strategy takes hold and drives results. Click below to download today!