The Challenge: Why it matters

The skills and capabilites that drive functional excellence at a manager level are necessary but insufficient to become a great Executive team. In transitioning from functional management to a seat at the leadership table, your remit shifts from managing functional performance to working with your leadership team colleagues to achieve overarching organisational goals and build a sustainable pipeline of success for the business.

Achieving this requires leadership teams to operate in distinctly different ways to functional teams. Great leadership teams:

• Are clear on the handful of accountabilities that require them to work interdependently and for which they are collectively responsible and devote almost all their time to addressing these

• Leave their functional hat at the door, thinking laterally, not vertically ensuring all functions align to drive their collective accountabilities

• Create an environment where its safe to be vulnerable, admit when they’ve screwed up and say sorry when they’re out of line

• Leverage this psychological safety to lean-in to the tough conversations that drive accountability and success

• Engage in rigorous dialogue inside the Exec meeting and demonstrate cabinet solidarity outside it

• Have a cadence of meetings and governance structures that differenciate how strategic priorities and operational delivery are managed

• Treat building organisational capability, managing performance, beaviour and creating an aligned culture as a shared responsibility, not something ‘HR’ does