An exec team that is clear and aligned regarding company values and priorities needs a plan for going deeper with clarity. Exactly how to go about this is a nuanced question, and depends on whether the focus is at the Team Level vs. the Org Level. Listen in for specific advice regarding what to do if your leader hasn’t done the work, as well as a word of warning about the danger of a Matrixed Organization.

Hands down, small executive teams have a significant competitive advantage over big ones! Yet - so many leaders opt for larger teams for reasons that make sense, but don’t hold up under scrutiny. Small teams make faster, better decisions and can execute faster than big ones.

In this episode we unpack the base of our Five Dysfunctions pyramid - Trust. How to build it, how to lose it, the benefits of having it and the dangers of lacking it. We explore courage and risk; even when to know whether you can and should trust someone. We end with the charge that slowing down to build trust is the best way to accelerate performance.

In this episode Keith & James explore the meaning of POWER in leadership. Power to do good, to influence, to shape, to solve, to move. We explore an old theory of leadership from researchers French & Raven (1959), called the Five Bases of Power and the implication of their insights for leaders who want to build followership today.

When we change even one member of a team, it becomes a whole new team. Most leaders fail to recognize the impact of bringing a new member onto the executive team. As such, we may overlook the importance of building trust and re-establishing “rules of engagement” that guide our behaviors. And this failure will certainly lead to disappointing results. Email us for a simple “New Leader Assimilation Guide" as our way of saying thanks for listening!

Every team needs to periodically set aside big blocks of relatively unstructured time to talk frankly about the needs and opportunities of the business. In this episode we do a deep dive into the magic of an executive team offsite and what leaders can do to maximize it’s impact. We’ll address some common misses when planning an offsite -- and why some leaders might choose to avoid them altogether -- to their detriment.

James and Keith explore the essential discipline of focus! In reality, something right now is more important than anything else in your business or organization. Whether we identify it or not! Our task as leaders is to constantly ask, “What is most important, right now?" We explore the Thematic Goal + Defining Objectives approach used by Patrick Lencioni and Table Group Consultants to help our clients focus. Simple idea, but hard to do in practice.

James and Keith talk about the ten most unproductive behaviors that derail our best intentions in meetings. If your meetings are already super productive and you are making the best decisions quickly and with seamless and agile execution -- you could sabotage it all by adopting these 10 behaviors. 

Don’t let anything on this list ruin your team’s performance on the ultimate playing field for your business function: your meetings.