Why Are Some Leadership Teams Designed to Fail?

Have you ever joined the team and felt something needs to be corrected? Everyone in the team is doing great on paper and in performance management assessment, and their peers deliver quickly. Still, when it comes to personal effectiveness - it needs help. They follow meeting cadences, maintain a board with up-to-date tasks, and have prioritisation techniques, but they don’t work. Goals are not achieved, critical calls are not made, and there is this feeling in the meeting that you are spending time for nothing.

Theory

David McClelland's theory of acquired needs states that people's different needs in achievement, affiliation, and power affect their actions in a managerial context. While McClelland's concept is fundamental, the problem is more significant than this.

Patrick Lensioni’s books are well known, including his flagship novel, “Five Dysfunctions of a Team.” In it, he explores vital factors that are usually missing in teams, and by fixing and emphasising their importance, the effectiveness of any team can be improved dramatically.

So why, having this theory laid for us for almost half a century already, are there still companies and teams out there that are getting in the same loop and sometimes look like you are on a family trip?

The Zoo

Leadership teams are often similar to the groups you can spot in your local zoo. There are sharks in the aquarium, a small contact zoo for kids, and a bunch of tour guides who come up with all their stories just to make the day out for the family a bit more fun.

Sharks are always out for prey. They seek ways to gain more power, achieve better individual performance, and ensure they get the most significant budget for their prominent ideas. There is nothing wrong with this; it can even be beneficial, but as soon as sharks start to eat each other, there is hardly any way to go out.

The little contact zoo kids play in on a day out is cute. Everyone is smiling and happy and never talks about problems. They don’t solve problems or make them visible, and there is no way they will start a conflict. We can imagine some situations when this is good for the company, but if you are reading this article, it is probably not the case for you.

Tour guides are excellent. They are loud. They share all the fantastic statistics, metrics, and dashboards and showcase their great work, but little impact exists. Most likely, most of the work has been done by their peers, and they will never admit it. Yes, the job is done, but only that bit that is the most visible. And if you work in tech - you know how painful the tech debt might be.

It is still a zoo, and it actually does the trick—everyone is smiley and happy and bonding as a family. But in the real world, they are not closed in the Zoo—they are a powerful squad that has to lead the business,d help the CEO achieve goals, and follow the strategy.

Why it happens?

If you have followed my articles for some time already, you know where this is all going. Many academic theories, practice examples, and, in some cases, even novels have been written about structuring and managing teams, but are we still ending up in situations where the teams are just impossible to work within?

We all start with fundamentals, and if the team follows the basic concepts of transparency, inspection, and adaptation, it is almost impossible to implement the bits that one can read in the book. It is complicated and tedious, and no one wants to do this - but it is necessary. While you can ask everyone on the team to read the book, if practices from the book are not followed and need to be revised, adapted, and tuned according to the specific team's needs, it will not work.

How do we ensure that all the well-known material we have read is being led by?

Of course, if the team leader is not going to enforce practices, there is not much that you can do. If you happen to be that person, there is only one way forward. It is a good idea to get everyone in the room and make a formal agreement that from now on, we are not only reading books but trying to implement actions derived from these books.

For good reason, most leaders, especially those at the top of an organisation, do not discuss problems in their leadership teams.

However, they should still pay attention to this matter within the team. Instead of working together to advance their company's interests, many teams procrastinate, engage in political infighting, get mired in unproductive debates, and allow themselves to be overtaken by complacency. As a result, the companies they're supposed to be leading suffer.

If you are in the team, that is the collaboration we have looked at - you can try to influence from your position. Start with outlining the problem, the potential way of resolution, and why you believe this will help you achieve better results. Of course, be aware that if all the motivation concepts we have discussed earlier are confirmed, your boss might not be happy about you taking the lead, so it is up to you whether you would like to announce it to everyone at once or check with them first.