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Rule 7: Add only new information to the discussion. Don’t flog a dead horse
“Everything would be better if only we had more salespeople.” Omari was like a broken record. Every ten minutes he would go off on why having more salespeople was important. “Everything would be better if only we had more salespeople.” Then ten minutes later, “Everything would be better if…” Finally, someone spoke up and said, “Does everybody understand that Omari feels ‘everything would be better if only we had more salespeople’? We don’t need to bring that up again.” This rule doesn’t prevent the team from bringing up an issue they have discussed in the past. It just says they don’t need to use up air time repeating it over and over again.
Rule 8: Permit only one discussion at a time
It should go without saying that you can’t listen while you’re talking. No, you can’t listen actively when you’re having a private conversation with the person sitting next to you. You aren’t fully engaged when you’re reading and responding to the emails on your smart phone.
Rule 9: Silence implies understanding and agreement
It’s three months after the strategic planning meeting, and the CEO wants to know why Chuck hasn’t implemented his action steps. “Well, I never agreed with that decision,” Chuck protests. The CEO says in exasperation, “But you were in the meeting and a member of the team. Why didn’t you speak up then?” Chuck shrugs his shoulders.
Life is too short to allow this to happen. Make it clear to everyone on the executive team that they must speak up on a timely basis or forever hold their peace.
Yolanda also hasn’t implemented as planned. When asked why she agreed to something she didn’t believe in, her answer was instructive. “I didn’t understand what you guys were talking about, so I just went with the crowd.” The CEO asks, “Then why didn’t you ask for an explanation?” Yolanda replies: “Well, I was hesitant to waste everybody’s time asking what cash flow was. I thought everyone assumed I would understand since I was on the team.”
The fact is, business is complicated and few people can understand every aspect of it. A healthy executive team appreciates this and has no problem pausing to allow one member to provide a short tutorial from their area of expertise.
Rule 10: Finish with consensus and commit to action
At the end of every discussion ask, “What’s next?” Create, document, and then follow up on an action step that includes who’s accountable for the action and when that action step has to be completed.
Enforcing the rules
Enforcing these rules is crucial and can usually be best performed by the outside facilitator. (When I facilitate meetings I empower everyone to be a referee by actually giving everyone a physical yellow “foul flag” they can toss at the offender. It’s a good way to enforce rules because anyone can flag an inappropriate comment in a light-hearted, yet effective, way.)
Let’s explore how these rules, and the overall process, support essential team relationships and healthy executive team chemistry.
The importance of intimacy
The strongest teams develop a sense of, to use a somewhat provocative word, intimacy. Intimacy is established when you make yourself vulnerable and share something that would be potentially embarrassing if shared with others. A healthy executive team can be open about personal goals, weaknesses, and objectives. They know that their team members will never use that information to hurt them, but will keep it private. They will use those intimate details to better support each other. We periodically ask each executive to share where they want to be in five years. On the healthiest teams, each executive will openly share their personal goals. On dysfunctional teams, they tend to provide empty answers, such as “I want to be doing a good job doing what’s best for the company.”
The importance of trust
The chemistry of a healthy executive team requires that team members trust each other. Trust is built on the three C’s: character, competence, and caring. There is nothing a team can’t accomplish when they can trust each member to have:
Bill, the CEO we met at the start of this chapter, focused on building Friction PR’s executive leadership team and it paid handsome dividends. He replaced several executives with strategic thinkers. He held everyone accountable for behaviors that were consistent with the meeting rules and roles. They were able to leverage their new client to change the status quo and put the company on a clear path to turning their vision into reality.
A healthy executive team requires a mix of counterbalancing advocates.
The invisible chemistry
There is one additional characteristic of a healthy executive leadership team, diversity of passions.
Gary was at it again. “We need to order the additional press now or we will be unable to meet our commitment to customers later this year.” The team members nodded their heads. Gary was always pushing to increase capacity at Specialty Printing, the company where he worked. The CFO turned his attention to the Sales VP: “Our VP of Manufacturing wants us to invest another $1.5 million dollars, is the pipeline strong enough to warrant that?” After reviewing the current and expected business, the decision was made this time to place the order. This was a fortunate choice, as the company would otherwise have been crushed by the surge of new business that arrived later that year.
Gary proved to be a reliable steward, making sure that the company remained able to deliver on its customer commitments. He also developed a very capable second in command, Ben, who took over when Gary retired. Production continued to run smoothly under Ben’s leadership, except for one major thing. Ben decided to skip the frustration of constantly having to push for new capacity. He’d just wait until he was asked before proposing any new investments. Finally, about a year after Gary had retired, the company lost two major customers because it suddenly found itself unable to meet their delivery requirements. The team hadn’t recognized that when Gary retired, they lost an essential element of their successful chemistry – a passionate advocate for capacity.
A healthy executive team requires a mix of counterbalancing advocates. There must be an advocate constantly pushing for more aggressive growth balanced by an advocate for control and profitability. There should be an advocate pushing to explore new products and technology balanced by another pushing to fully exploit the current ones. Take stock of how the mix of passions changes whenever the membership of your executive team changes. Make sure that the company’s decisions don’t become too conservative or risky because a counterbalancing voice has been lost.
The next chapter
