Why first team commitments don’t stick
When you think about your 'first team', who comes to mind?
Is it the team you lead, your function, and your direct reports? Or is it the team you're a member of?
The most common response from coaching clients is the team that they lead. The problem with that, according to Patrick Lencioni in his work on Organisational Health, is that when the leadership team comes together, conversations are focused on lobbying and jockeying for power rather than making decisions in the best interest of the organisation. And it leaves functional teams arguing with each other over priorities.
What if you want to change your first team?
Often, leadership creates a retreat or an offsite to catalyse the transition to a true first team.
Imagine it’s the morning of your retreat. You’re ready and willing to commit to the process, even though you’re not entirely sure what it will entail. Throughout the day, you observe your colleagues engaging with each other. You're energised by the group's positivity and anticipate new levels of collaboration as a result of the connections you've made during your time together.
The next day, you head back to the office, only to find that little has changed. Jim from Marketing is still demanding that his budget is sacred, while Lucy from Product Development has conveniently forgotten the Finance system initiative you all ‘agreed’ was the highest priority. The old siloed behaviours are still present. Your 'new first team' can’t find time to talk about the things that only yesterday were supposed to be your top priorities. You're disappointed and disillusioned after the high of the retreat.
As an executive team coach, I've seen this pattern repeat countless times: the 'next morning reality check' that follows yesterday's empty commitment.
🚫 So, what's getting in the way? 🚫
Making the move to a first team has some inherent natural barriers, including:
Time - as leaders, we tend to spend more time with our direct reports than with our peers. If we're already drowning in one-on-ones and other meetings, how can we find time to elevate our enterprise thinking?
Priority - our priorities are often already oversubscribed. We can't get the prioritisation processes right within our function; how are we supposed to do it across the entire organisation?
Imposter Syndrome - the idea that we don't know enough or aren't capable of contributing beyond our domain. Discussing supply chain optimisation when our expertise is in finance can feel uncomfortable, even fraudulent.
Territorial Respect - related to imposter syndrome, the sense that our peers know what they're doing, and we should respect their patches. Simon is an expert; it doesn't make sense for me to start meddling in his stuff, any more than I want him in mine.
The thing is, our job as leaders is to think beyond our function. To consider what is best for employees, customers, and shareholders.
❓Do you spend more time thinking about your functional challenges or strategic, enterprise-wide issues?❓
While we may recognise the value in the shift to a new first team, adapting our behaviour to align with it is more challenging, especially if we don't perceive the same intent from our peers.
🏆 The Success Framework 🏆
After facilitating dozens of these transitions, I've learned that successful first teams follow the discipline of six requirements:
Establish a clear definition - what does 'first team' actually mean to you and your peers? Getting clear on what it is (and isn't) is the first step. Output: a written social contract or behaviour charter.
Ask for commitment - Solicit agreement from all team members, with a confidence level. Invite black hat thinking to anticipate likely problem areas and conflicts of interest. Output: Group confidence assessment of readiness and willingness to become the first team
Demystify the role of your leader - ensure everyone understands how your leader intends to lead you as a first team. Output: First team leader action plan
Design whole-of-business mechanisms - Ensure that your meeting agenda, roles, prioritisation and decision-making processes support a whole-of-business approach. Output: meeting cadence, roles and agendas redefined to encourage first team thinking.
Agree on accountability mechanisms - Create explicit standards and permissions to enable team members to hold each other accountable. Output: sample scripts to frame conversations.
Measure expected behaviours - Create space for conversations designed to assess how well the team is adhering to the agreed social contract. Output: Team self-assessment.
Once these are in place, different conversations will likely emerge in your team meetings. Try tracking how they evolve and see if you can match the evolution with important priorities and milestones in the teams that you lead. It's likely, in time, that cross-functional collaboration, negotiation and prioritisation will become easier.
You may experience 'one step forward, two steps back' for a while. That's natural. The key is to call it out as soon as you see it and work together to get back on track.
Now let's reimagine that team offsite with the 6 requirements in place. Do you still feel disappointed and disillusioned the day after? Perhaps you will. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day. But at least now you'll have the agreements in place and the tools to manage them when things start to look different. It's worth a try, isn't it?
Don't let your next offsite become another expensive exercise in good intentions. Before your next team meeting, try this: Ask each member to identify one decision they made this week that prioritised the whole business over their function. The conversation that follows will tell you everything you need to know about your first team's effectiveness.
Struggling with your first team transition? I coach leadership teams to build the frameworks and habits that make first team commitments stick. Let's schedule a conversation about what's getting in your way!