The 8 Components of an Extraordinary Leadership Team

Every leadership team throughout your organisation needs to be extraordinary.

Leadership today is a team game, not a solo pursuit. Leadership teams are critical to every organisation’s success – and they exist at all levels of an organisation.

Leadership teams set the strategy, are responsible for the delivery of the strategy, create the culture, set the tone and the example for how everyone in the organisation behaves. Dysfunctional leadership teams can bring an organisation to its knees. Extraordinary leadership teams enable organisations to thrive.

THE 8 COMPONENTS

THE FOUNDATIONS

1. Respect. The bed-rock of any successful team is respect. Without genuine respect for one another, no team can possibly succeed. Respect for their values, their expertise, their challenges, their viewpoints.
2. Shared Objectives. A clear strategy with clear outcomes that are shared by every single member of the team is the second pre-requisite for success.

THE PILLARS

3. Trust. A team where every member knows that their colleagues are coming from a good place, have their back and want them to succeed.
4. Commitment. Genuine commitment to the team and what it is seeking to achieve, that the Exec team is their ‘first team’. Cabinet Responsibility.

THE PILLARS

5. Constructive Disagreement. The ability to have ego-free, robust debates all conducted with respect. Team members unafraid to be proven wrong, because being wrong helps the team arrive at the right decision.
6. Active Listening. The ability to listen to understand not merely to reply. Team members listen closely and play back what they have heard to enhance understanding.

ACTION

7. Accountability. Each member is personally accountable: for delivery of the collective strategy, and for the behaviour of the team and every one of their colleagues.
8. Delivery of Results is the culmination of the other 7. It is why the team exists. There is no individual triumph without a collective triumph. Either the team wins or no-one does.

Author of
THE CHANGE CATALYST

2018 Business Book of the Year
Wiley 2017

Author of
THE POWER TO CHANGE

Embracing personal change
Kogan Page 2020

Author of
YOU: PART TWO

Thriving in the second half

Hachette 2021/2022

Author of
YOU: PART TWO

Thriving in the second half of your life
August 2021

Author of
THE CHANGE CATALYST

2018 Business Book of the Year
2018 Leadership Book of the Year

Author of
THE POWER TO CHANGE 

Embracing personal change
Finalist 2021 Business Book Awards