Interdependence: How executive teams scale impact

We’ve been talking about executive team dynamics on our recent podcast series, and a repeated topic is the tendency for top teams to be siloed; an assembled group of functional experts, not yet demonstrating the strong cross-collaboration and enterprise-wide thinking needed to respond to the dynamic and changing nature of business today.

We see the foundations of effective, true collaboration and high performing executive teams based on strong psychological safety that underpins interdependent ways of working. Importantly, these two factors must be intentionally designed and enabled as they are proven not to be the common way of working in top teams.

Psychological safety is the foundation for collective performance

Research from Amy Edmondson and many others has shown that psychological safety is the critical factor in team success. However, perhaps surprisingly, Executive teams are often the places with the least psychological safety. In fact, 62% of senior leadership teams show significant variability in psychological safety within the same team. (1)

When a team has variability in psychological safety for its members, some feel safe to speak up whereas others don’t. This means the collective team is not a psychologically safe environment. Where this is the case, the data shows these teams are among the least effective, with their performance being held back.

So, let’s look at psychological safety in more detail and how it underpins a specific principle of high performing executive teams, namely ‘Interdependence’. Key markers of psychological safety include, people:

• Feeling confident they won’t be embarrassed by the group.
• Willing to share their views and perspectives, ask questions and challenge others, they’re willing to learn together and not have all the answers.

These are elements of leading well together with effective, informed decision-making. What’s interesting is that when we do work with executive teams, the group often assume they’re aligned and that “we’re fine as a team”, until we look more closely. For instance, we regularly see unspoken anxiety, politics and siloed priorities quietly undermining psychological safety, performance and wellbeing.

We dive into this more on our podcast on executive team dynamics (Series 3 Episode 5). However, if you believe psychological safety is low or variable, we recommend as a team, make time to talk about the personal, seek to understand each other’s experiences and perspectives. It helps to have facilitated discussions on taboo or challenging conversations, with coaches who are confident in creating psychological safety.

Interdependence scales impact and innovation

The goal of an executive team is to guide the collective success of an organisation with shared measures of profit, growth and innovation. As an individual leader this is where individual success is tied directly to enterprise -wide (not function or business unit) success.

Earlier in their journey, the leaders around the room are likely to have been targeted more on their department, their function and team. For executive teams to achieve high performance, this needs to shift. And the shift is to a primarily ‘interdependent’ approach to working together. This creates the necessary grounds for true collaboration, and collective innovation.

The signs that interdependence is not established:

• Too much independence creates silos.
• Too much dependence creates gridlock.

What interdependence looks and feels like is dynamic, creative teams who together are greater than the sum of their parts.

Mary Parker Follett, referred to by Peter Drucker as his ‘guru’ and “the woman who invented management” first defined interdependence. She identifies three key elements to interdependence in action that are as radical and truthful now as they were when she wrote them 100 years ago.

1. Expect to need others

Have the intention to make differences and diversity fruitful, in order to make something together.

2. Expect to be needed

Bring your whole self to the team. Ask and answer hard questions to the best of your ability and pursue them wherever they may lead in an atmosphere of trust.

3. Expect to be changed

Whilst bringing your truth and expertise to a team, you also have a reciprocal obligation to allow that truth to be affected by others. You should expect the team to influence you so that you are not quite the same person as when you joined the team.

Imagine now a high-performing executive team working with these three principles of interdependence that creates trust and effectiveness.

In our work with executive teams, the shift to interdependence looks like this:

• Conflict as information. Surface tensions early; treat dissent as data for better decisions. enable conflict to create closeness.
• Systemic team coaching. Coach the team in the work (not offsite only): real decisions, trade offs, and feedback loops. See and understand the tides of change that reach and influence the executive and vice versa the ripples they put out into the organisation.
• Performance agreements. With purpose, meaning and real human relationships between team members developed, teams agree together how they work together; their unique team signature at their best is upheld beyond individual personalities.

And none of this is possible, without the foundations of psychological safety. If you are tackling a thorny executive team challenge, get in touch for a confidential conversation.

References:

1. Center for Creative Leadership, Research Insights: Psychologically Safe for Some but Not All?