A great Leadership Team

I love my management team. 

So far, we are going really well.  There are a few minor issues (eg one member didn’t speak up enough, deliberately censoring himself, and another is a little jealous of someone else).  While these could grow to be bigger issues, we talk honestly about them as a team, and work incredibly well together.  This is a massive relief to me, because, as I was being recruited for this role in late 2006, the Company was busy restructuring the legal team I was to inherit, and putting new lawyers into management roles.  I could well have inherited a disaster – a dysfunctional management team full of people who didn’t have any management capability, let alone true leadership potential.  I inherited a team of 5 managers – one for each of the legal “specialisations”, who had between 1 and 5 staff.  Two were experienced managers – but one was a disaster, and violently disliked by her team (the Dispute Resolution team, of course!).  It was an easy decision to make her role redundant, and the collective sigh of relief as she left was almost audible.  The other 3 were brand new to management, and one had aspired to management for many years but, once he got there, it was apparent that he was spectacularly clueless about how to manage.  His saving grace was that he was a terrifically nice guy who was very honest about his naivety.

Naive guy ended up moving to Dubai (as you do) for a great career opportunity, and is still in regular contact with all of us.  The rest of the managers were a solid base – there were some issues, but none that could not be ironed out. 

I started by laying out my expectations: about leading and the importance of great behaviour.  About a vision, and building the team and ways of working that were going to make us great.  I told them all that my number 1 priority was getting my management team right.  If that was humming, the dream team would flow from it. 

We had our first retreat about 2 months after I arrived, which started building a wonderful base of emotional connection between the management team.  I knew that this was the beginning of this journey, and that we needed to be committed to each other in order to achieve it.  We went through an exercise where we focused on the difference between leadership and management, so we could explore exactly what it was about behaviour that would be so important, and what we needed to live up to.

Importantly, I told them about my 3-year vision; about what we could build together, and how the pieces they have been working on formed a wonderful picture of the future.  I introduced the Mont Fleur scenarios to them (see my recent post on Flamingos!) and they began to see what was possible; that this was a massive journey, but that we would get there, and build a wonderful team.  To the very great surprise, we all cried!  As some of us explored our different pasts at work, and some of them shared what it was like for them to have worked in the toxic environment that the team used to be, they realised how deeply they had felt what they had gone through, and what we wanted to build together.  It was immensely personal; it took a collection of individuals and launched our journey as a true team.

 We agreed there, in order to maintain and develop the connection that we needed, we would need to commit to meet regularly as a team.   So, we agreed that our meeting schedule would be as follows:

• a weekly meeting for 1.5 hours a time
• once a month, we would have a longer session where we would bond and get through some bigger issues – this lasts around 3 hours
• around once a quarter, we set aside a whole day to get together, usually at one of our homes.  This is instead of our weekly or monthly meeting. 
• And, once a year, we use for a retreat where we go away overnight for 2 full days and nights.

 I am always aware of the amount of time that this takes.  In many ways, it’s because I try to be collaborative and seek input from the team into our decisions, communications and initiatives.  I do this not because I am generous hearted.  Rather, I am experienced enough to know that, if I didn’t get their input, I would get so much wrong that we would never achieve our vision; that people in the team would silently resent me and go silent when I asked for feedback.

Plus, of course, I need to build them as leaders.  One day, I want one of them to take my job, and I haven’t completed my task if none of them is capable of doing just that.

In case our team wonders what it is we do, I always circulate our agenda in advance, and we give the team a report on what we did when we got back.  So, what do we do?

We often include the following:

• Measuring ourselves against our “Code”.  When we had our first retreat, we worked together to articulate and record how we wanted to be as a team.  We came up with a document that we called our “Code”, and it involved things like being “Brave” (being honest with each other; taking risks) and “Solidarity” (working together as a team; sticking by each other; covering for each other’s weaknesses).  We do this at least 4 times a year
• Reviewing our people’s performance – a session that takes around 2-3 hours, where we have to decide on half-yearly ratings for our people.  This is our opportunity to talk about how everyone is tracking, and to ensure that we have as many data points as possible when deciding the important issue of performance for the team.
• To go through succession planning for our team
• To have our “Flamingo Book Club”, where we review a book each month and discuss the leadership lessons from it
• We have also used the session to discuss remuneration, and ensure parity amongst our people on pay.
• Importantly, we use it as a chance to bond.  Recently, we have been giving each other feedback on strengths and weaknesses.  The first time we did this, I involved a wonderful facilitator that we know, who taught us about how to give and receive well-intentioned feedback.  The team were apprehensive at first, but ultimately found that it was a great exercise, and we agreed to schedule sessions like this regularly.
• Today, we had a great sessions where we went around the table and picked one of our own weaknesses to talk about, and to ask for help from the team in addressing, and also each person told everyone on the team one thing they loved about each of them.  Most of us got teary – it was a wonderful day, and we’ve laughingly referred to it as the “I love youse all” session.

Building a team takes time, and patience.  Great leadership, in particular, is a long process of proving yourself, again and again.  I often think that lawyers, in particular, are a tough audience – they are taught to see the holes.  If you aren’t genuine, they see it a mile off. 

I am loving seeing this group of inspired, caring, smart, funny people come together and truly be a team.  Even our new DR Manager fits into the team like a glove: no-one can believe that it’s been less than 3 months since she arrived. 

I feel very blessed.  This is a rare gift – and I hope my fellow team members realise it!  I know I do.  My old management team was similar; it was like losing family when we split apart after I left my old job. 

Today, at our full-day session, we challenged ourselves more than we have ever done before.  We realised the impact of our uncensored closeness on the team.  We knew we had blown it, and gave ourselves some tough love that we more than deserved.  I’ll tell you about that soon.