Page 96 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

86 HBR Leader’s Handbook

had told him this numerous times in the past year, but he hadn’t taken it
seriously. After some tough discussion, the business leader accepted the
rationale for his departure and saw it as a wake-up call. He went on to be-
come the CEO of another company where he paid a great deal of attention
to more effectively balancing his top-down, results-producing style with
the growth and well-being of his team. In retrospect, he later said that this
experience, despite the pain, was one of the best learning moments of his
career.
Building, fine-tuning, and maintaining your leadership team is a con-
tinuous challenge. Strategies change. Customer needs evolve. Markets
shift and new technologies emerge. And often people—at all levels of the
organization—cannot adapt to the changes in their environment. Adjust-
ing for this starts with the people who report to you.

Build your team and coordinate an organization of teams
Once you have the right people on your staff, you still have to put them to-
gether to form a team. Building a high-performing leadership team doesn’t
usually happen by itself, however. You can’t just put a collection of talented
people in a room, lock the door, and wait for a cohesive group to emerge. As
a leader, you have to actively help your direct reports come together.
This is vital because your people are likely to have greater impact by
working together and because teamwork is a critical part of the social
contract. Most research shows that people’s satisfaction at work is deter-
mined not only by what they do, but also by whom they do it with—both
their immediate supervisor and their coworkers, whether they belong to
lower-level teams or more senior leadership teams. So having productive,
supportive, and collaborative relationships between your direct reports is
a key factor in ensuring that your people are motivated, engaged, and com-
mitted to your vision and strategy. Building this kind of teamwork also
multiplies your impact. For example, the shift to a digital mindset at the
Ford Foundation ultimately was not driven by Walker alone, but by his
senior leaders as well.
Coalescing strong and capable individuals into a high-performance
team takes work. As a leader, you must do so deliberately. Based on