Hero Leaders or Hero Teams?
A collective development approach to tackling contemporary leadership challenges
Many of us were raised on the myth of the hero leader. Leaders made things happen, they solved problems, they inspired others to be better and so many other things were attributed to the leader. You only have to glance at the news to see the continuation of this myth - presidents, prime ministers, politicians, public sector leaders, principals are meant to fix things for everyone else. With this much responsibility for success or failure, chances are leaders are going to disappoint us; and they do!
In many ways we have given them an impossible task; as it is not easy to fix complex problems such as climate change, social inequalities, health systems, economic issues, national security and creating sustained business success in ever evolving markets. These and many other issues are beyond the capacity of one individual to solve. The solution lies in creating leadership teams where leadership responsibilities are decentralised and a greater collective capacity to solve problems is called into play.
Through the development of trust, interdependencies and collective responsibility, hero teams move beyond the concept of the hero leader to have a greater capacity for making progress on complex issues as they have greater opportunity to use and combine their talent and abilities. They engage in active and robust debate united by a clear sense of purpose to create better results than can be achieved through too much dependence on an individual leader.
Unfortunately the “hero leader” mentality can undermine the effectiveness of leadership teams as so many of us are conditioned to defer to the authority of the leader despite our best efforts as it is deep in our genetic wiring and experience.
How then do we move towards creating a hero team?
First, there has to be a genuine desire to move towards being a hero team, by both the leader and the members. For each there is a degree of risk based on the unfamiliarity of this approach. For the leader this can be particularly hard as they may feel like they are surrendering some of their power and authority and the opportunity to build their credibility through the assertion of their ideas and directives. It is surprising how fragile some CEO egos are!
Second, for team members the risks are often associated with the need for them to contribute outside their traditional area of expertise in areas they may not feel as comfortable or qualified to speak about - “I’m the head of marketing not finance!” This siloed attitude unfortunately is hard to break and the senior leader must coach and develop the team members to make a wider contribution. When this is done decisions become better, collective ownership is improved and individual team members develop their own capabilities and competencies.
Balancing ambition, ego and individual uncertainties can be very challenging. One CEO remarked to me recently that his current executive team is the best he has ever had, yet there are still deficiencies in their effectiveness from time to time due to the complex mix of personalities in the team.
So how do CEO’s overcome these challenges?
We find that a lot of teams are not clear on why they come together. Is it for coordination, consultation, decision making or something else? Are they just there to represent their silo or are they there to contribute to the overall success of the business? Once this is clarified then the orientating purpose of the team must be decided after analysing the needs of the many different stakeholders. The purpose needs to be “orientating” as it serves to provide direction and alignment of effort. Once this is done, the team must establish a comprehensive sense of how it will work together, its boundaries and charter of its interactions. Considerable effort is required to achieve these items. Most teams cannot achieve these things alone and this is when team coaching is needed. Our experience is that team coaching is essential. Simply stated, if highly successful sporting teams require coaching, why wouldn’t business teams? Team coaching helps teams to establish pathways to success and then align their behaviours and actions to those pathways. We find that as team coaches we are most valuable to teams as we are able to name “elephants in the room” that help the members to see barriers to their success. Our role is often split between affirming a team to give it confidence and challenging a team to help them refine and sharpen their effectiveness.
The journey from hero leaders to hero teams is often challenging, and many CEOs are not prepared to take it as they are comfortable in the idea that they will be able to overcome all challenges they face through the force of their own talents and abilities. More often than not as the world becomes more complex they will find this approach lacking. Our experience suggests that the CEOs who move towards the hero team approach are often rewarded by improved performance that delivers on strategy through a team of organisational rather than functional leaders. As a result there is more efficiencies, better retention and employee engagement and satisfaction. If you choose this approach then don’t forget to obtain the services of a team coach - you won’t be disappointed!
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