Here’s how it affects the rest…
When mid-level leaders are promoted up to the senior level of leadership, on the senior leadership team, there’s often a rub.
That rub is this: these mid-level leaders don’t always know how to be good team members.
These mid-level leaders often lose sight of the fact when they move up that their DEPARTMENT ultimately is NOT their primary team, the ORGANIZATION is their team, and the other SENIOR LEADERS alongside them are now their NEW TEAM MEMBERS.
When senior leaders aren’t team players with each other, it creates a negative ripple effect throughout the organization, with their departments, with everyone working under them.
We often say: “A CRACK at the top of an organization creates a CRATER on the floor.”
Whatever unresolved issues there are on the senior leadership team, the effects are always dramatically multiplied when those issues trickle down to lower levels of the organization.
It can create some really serious issues and undermine business results.
When senior leaders DON’T see each other as a TEAM and as TEAM MATES, here’s what can happen throughout the organization:
– People compete for resources
– People feel their goals are in conflict with others, and little collaboration occurs
– Departments work in silos with there is much tension due to jocky-ing for territory
– People don’t understand the broader vision of the organization
– People constantly feel the need to prove themselves
– People in departments interact with other departments the way their senior leaders interact with each other (and this is OFTEN
not behaviors you’d want modeled)
– Communication breaks down, teamwork erodes and accountability turns into blaming and finger pointing
If the senior leadership team is siloed, the departments will be too, even more so.
This is why the Coach Approach to Leadership is not only for mid-level management teams.
It’s for SENIOR LEADERSHIP teams. Because when senior leadership operate as a true leadership dream team, and when senior leadership becomes a team of COACH LEADERS themselves, the rest of the organization benefits AND will follow.
To learn more about the COACH APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP for senior teams, click this link…
