Getting the Most from Management Teams

For CEOs and their team members who don't see eye to eye on the team's effectiveness, an outside coach might be just the ticket

By William J. Holstein

Chief executives have an overly optimistic view of how their senior management teams are performing, says Fred Adair, a Boston-based partner at Heidrick & Struggles (HSII), the executive search firm. Adair was co-author of a recent study of 124 CEOs and more than 570 other top executives that revealed a sharp gap in how CEOs rate the effectiveness of their teams and how the teams themselves rate their performance. He argues that many of these CEOs and their teams need outside coaching services such as those provided by his firm. Here are edited excerpts from a conversation:

Does your study suggest that CEOs are out of touch with their own management teams?

The way I would frame it is that there is a significant gap between what CEOs perceive is going on and what the teams perceive is going on. Many CEOs feel as if they are in great touch with their teams, but it's the teams who are doing the filtering. They don't feel totally comfortable, for whatever reasons, in sharing their point of view about how things are going. Some CEOs have a style that discourages debate. Equally, there may be inhibitions on the part of team members because of their own career ambitions or their concerns about the impression they would make on others. They're not completely forthright.

How did you conclude that there is a gap in perception between CEOs and their teams?

We asked people a range of questions about the purpose and function of top management teams and how effective their top management team is. We discovered that CEOs had a far rosier view of team performance than other members of the team. Generally, CEOs and other members of the team felt the same things were important: building a common culture, formulating strategy, solving problems, and leading change. But the CEOs as a group tended to think their teams were much more effective than non-CEOs did.

How does a CEO avoid this trap of having the information that reaches him or her be filtered by a management team?

There are a number of things thoughtful CEOs do. They recognize, as they look around the table at all the members of the team, that there is a lot more going on in those heads than is getting out on the table. Then they ask: "How do I get the best that each person has to offer so that 1 plus 1 equals 3?" After all, why get together if you can't make something happen as a group that you can't accomplish as individuals?

What practices do CEOs use to bring out the best interaction?

Two things we found in the research: The biggest contributor to overall effectiveness is the team process—how it works together, its decision-making patterns, how it manages conflict, how effective the team is in responding to changes in their environment. Thoughtful CEOs are realizing these are the key levers in working with the team directly and often getting the help of facilitators who aren't on the team.

You mean consultants?

Sometimes external consultants, sometimes internal consultants. Somebody who is not on the team is a great aid in making the team perform better because they have no stake in the content of any of the discussions. It's the same way you think of a coach for an athletic team.

If a CEO and team need a coach, isn't that a sign of dysfunction?

No. If you're a CEO, you weren't promoted to that position because first and foremost you're an effective coach. You've been promoted because you've gotten business results. You understand the external market. You've been aggressive in introducing new products or expanding into new geographies. There are many ways to be successful in a job without having created a high-performance team, especially if people have only two- or three-year tenures. Even the best teams, the teams in the National Basketball Assn. playoffs, need somebody who is not out there on the court, who knows when to call a timeout, reset the plays, make key substitutions, speed up the game or slow it down.