High Performing Executive Teams

High performance teams offer a wide range of benefits for an organization, including these:

• Increased productivity: They work effectively toward their goals. They complete their tasks faster and more accurately.
• Improved results: Executive leadership teams that perform at a high level typically produce high-quality work, which can lead to higher customer satisfaction, deliver stronger sales results and build a stronger organizational reputation.
• Better problem-solving: Skilled executive leadership teams are better able to solve complex problems because they can mine their members’ diverse perspectives and skill sets to come up with creative solutions.
• Increased employee engagement: When employees are part of a high performance team, they’re usually more motivated. Higher engagement can lead to increased job satisfaction and reduced turnover.
• Greater accountability: High performance teams hold themselves accountable for their results. They set clear goals and track their progress toward achieving them.
• Better communication: Effective top teams share information effectively and work collaboratively toward a common goal.
• Greater agility: Strong executive leadership teams pivot rapidly in response to change. They’re able to flex as circumstances shift and take advantage of new opportunities as they arise.

What an executive leadership team requires for success today differs markedly from what was needed before. In the past, executive teams were successful if each business unit met its performance targets. But today, success is defined based on much more.

Top teams need an enterprise mindset. In other words, they must address internal and external realities, viewing their role as one of shared responsibility for an interconnected ecosystem. They must understand the landscape where the business operates and what risks it faces. And they must look for partners to help them navigate change.

CEOs today must inspire their teams and the public. They can’t do that alone. Their executive leadership team must support them and view their role less as siloed leaders but as leaders of a holistic enterprise. They must lead with purpose and courage, lead horizontally and vertically and welcome diverse perspectives.

The CEO must also recognize that leadership is a team sport and share aspects of their role, such as interfacing with the board, with other executive team members. The command-and-control approach of the past won’t work. Power should be distributed among a collaborative, empowered group of leaders.

The executive team must also align on its purpose, values and culture. When there’s a meeting of the minds among executives, it enables the top team and ensures their independent decisions are compatible. It also makes it easier for the top team to implement organizational effectiveness strategies and achieve financial targets. This alignment also frees the CEO to focus on the organization’s broader impact and success.

Finally, the most effective executive teams consist of top talent. This talent must reflect the diversity of the organization’s employees, customers and investors. And the team must also have a diverse range of expertise, particularly in emerging fields such as diversity, sustainability and cybersecurity. The more diverse the team members are, the more they can minimize groupthink, optimize their collective intelligence and execute their strategies.

We’ve identified six factors that lead to high performance top teams.

• A clear, compelling purpose for the top team: A high performance top team has a purpose that each executive understands and that is challenging, but not impossible, to achieve. The purpose must have an impact on the organization and the lives and work of others. The team should be able to accomplish the purpose only by working interdependently. The CEO should clearly communicate the top team’s purpose.
• The right people: Small teams are more effective than larger teams, particularly when it comes to decision-making. A top team doesn’t have to include a representative from every part of the organization or every person who reports to the CEO. The ideal size is nine or fewer people. The right people to make up those nine are those who are willing to put things on the table that affect the entire business. They must be capable of taking an enterprise perspective, hearing others’ concerns and standing by the team’s decisions. They must be able to engage in healthy debate without resorting to personal attacks. A collaborative, congenial spirit is key.
• Disciplined processes: Clear procedures that establish protocols for how team members should work together and make decisions improve a team’s ability to deliver on its purpose. CEOs themselves must adhere to a disciplined process. For example, they should retain control of setting meeting agendas and ensure everyone on the top team has the materials they need to discuss agenda topics well in advance. CEOs should also ensure that there are no conflicts in executive compensation among the leadership team.
• Norms for productive relationships: Setting productive norms is the second-biggest differentiator for top team performance in our research. The CEO should outline how team members should behave and engage with others when working one-on-one and as a group, both in and out of meetings.
• Continuous development: Top teams don’t just happen; they’re made with deliberate effort. They take time to evolve and mature as team members learn how to work together effectively. Unless you invest in the continual development of the top team, it’s likely that your team won’t grow or progress. Note that individual coaching isn’t a best practice here; a team has to be coached as a singular entity and in real time. The most effective coaching focuses on team dynamics and interaction.
• Team leadership: With all of the things on a CEO’s plate, there’s little time to prepare for interactions with the top team. CEOs must devote the same level of preparation they do to external calls to their internal meetings.

Motivating a top team to reach its potential and achieve its goals can be challenging. High performance management starts with these foundational steps:

• Set clear expectations and goals: The goals that an organization sets for its top team must align with the organization’s overall strategic objectives. All of the goals should be measurable and specific. The top team should measure its progress toward goals and revisit and update them regularly.
• Provide regular feedback: Feedback must be a normal part of the work cycle. For an executive leadership team, feedback should address both individual and team performance. All feedback should be actionable, constructive and timely.
• Focus on leadership development: The top team should have opportunities for continuous development. It’s best if you can target learning opportunities to the gaps in the executive’s experience.
• Measure performance: The organization should establish key performance metrics that measure the team’s performance.
• Foster collaboration: Executive teams must maintain open lines of communication. The more opportunities this team has to collaborate, such as meetings and brainstorming sessions as well as informal chat sessions and social events, the better its communication — and results — will be.  
• Encourage innovation: The organization should empower executives to take risks and try new ideas. Measured risk-taking can drive growth and build a competitive advantage for the organization.
• Recognize and reward high performance team members: To incentivize continued growth and high performance, the leadership team should receive recognition and rewards, such as bonuses and promotions.