Expert opinion: Aligned top team makes the leader’s vision a reality

Building a cohesive leadership team is the first critical step that an organization must take if it is to have the best chance at success.” These lines by Patrick Lencioni accurately put across that alignment within the top team is critical for an organization to win in the marketplace. 

True leaders can actually understand when the team is not really aligned or when team alignment begins to decline. If a leader has to achieve what he wants, he needs to have a fully aligned team and the team needs to understand the whys, what's and hows of their contribution to the overall organizational objectives. However, the vital questions that a leader can ask to assess how well the team is in alignment are — “Does the team understand the top priorities of the organization?”; “Do they have the right talent for the right job?”; “Do they collaborate and at the same time challenge each other?”; “Do they share a common commitment and accountability?”; “Are their behavior patterns understood?”  

Particularly during transformational exercises, resistance and reluctance to do away with old ways of working, ego battles, and personality clashes tend to crop up. A capable leader needs to continue with good work that happened in the past and discontinue the work that has not yielded results for the organization. A leader needs to adopt different styles of operations for different scenarios as neither autocratic nor democratic ways work in all circumstances. And the only way to improve this is to build transparency and have a continuous dialogue with the team. There will be cross-functional resistance but it is still important to bring everyone together on the same page to achieve success. 

For building a cohesive team, the elements of transparency, clarity and purpose are critical; and for maintaining cohesion within the leadership team, it is highly recommended that there is trust and accountability, members are constructive and accept the differences that exist. It is imperative to acknowledge that every individual is entitled to his own thought process. And thus, it becomes integral for the leader to clearly communicate goals, be transparent and build an organization where everyone can come together and work towards the common goal. If the leadership team understands the purpose and vision, they will clearly communicate it down the line and work towards in making the leader’s vision a reality. Transparency, clarity, direction and purpose automatically inspire and give way to optional alignment.

If business performance has to improve, cross-functional collaboration is a must. Strong leadership sets clear objectives and communicates explicitly the objectives that the team needs to achieve in a consistent manner. It is also important for the leader to pay attention to his intuition and rely on data points to make any judgments. Conflicting agendas do not arise when the leader has utmost clarity in what he wants. It just takes commitment and ownership from the key team members to implement the strategy. And this should be non-negotiable. Such messages have to be cascaded down the line in order to align everyone in the organization to the most important objectives. 

In any organization, the single most important thing to do is to breakdown silos by reorganizing structures that can facilitate a more collaborative way of working. Building a transparent outcome-based work culture where everyone can come together as partners or co-owners in taking decisions together, enables the organization to grow. And that’s the only way to grow. We should also let go of the past ways of working if we need to grow exponentially. I see this working tremendously well and in our case, Adrenalin has recorded double digit growth in the first 6 months with profitability. What we set out to achieve in one year has been achieved in 6 months, and our focus is to reduce it to 4 months 2 months and eventually to 1 month. When the intent and purpose is well defined, the team will align themselves to the larger goal of the organization. Inspiring leadership is important as the team needs to feel if the success is possible and the leader takes the role of setting the tone for the organization.