Leadership & Team
Dynamics
Leadership & Team Dynamics
Where do I sit? Who do I report to?
Synergistic and mission-aligned teams are wonderful. It’s always very clear in an institution where the team has a clear and collaborative sense of mission; particularly in service-oriented organizations, such as schools, churches, and other nonprofits, the cohesive mission alignment inspires buy-in and investment from the greater stakeholder groups. Institutions that report high employee morale and consensus around mission & strategy invariably report senior leadership teams grounded in mutuality, respect and consistent support for one another.
Of course, there are challenges to this vision of the workplace. As a chief executive and board officer, I’ve heard repeatedly from auditors and labor attorneys that workplace dynamics will continue to worsen.
At whom I once worked with shared this insight – employee morale comes down to people knowing where one sits – and whom one reports to. In other words, the transparency around hierarchy and how decisions are made are vital to the health of team culture – and help ground institutional mission and strategic alignment.
In working with your team, I can provide ongoing team and 1:1 coaching and advise on designing human resources and compliance policies that support and nurture strong team culture, while also fostering a consistent sense of belonging and engagement. Team issues can really weigh down an organization, challenges with morale can impact other key aspects of institutional health; with careful and strategic attention to culture, your institution can really get to an extraordinary level of success.
I am a certified Critical Friends Coach (CF), and have coached and trained individual leaders and managers and teams on how to use CF to identify aspects of team culture that can be refined; and also how to foster a sense of community and belonging while ensuring accountability and advancement of mission. CF is highly effective, collaborative and inquiry based. It was first popularized by Ted Sizer, then Dean of the Education School at Harvard University, in his work to help foster a more engaged employee culture in schools. CF is used frequently today as an effective and collaborative method to refine team culture and successfully implement institutional goals.
In working with your team, we will also use Gallup’s Strengthfinders; Gallup’s excellent leader-personality framework identifies each member’s unique strengths that can contribute to creating synergy and mission & team alignment. I’ve worked with many, many teams using Strengthfinders and it’s really an exceptional way to identify and learn about the many disparate leadership and problem solving traits present on teams.
