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Wednesday, Febraury 3, 2010

The Business Case for Building Leadership Teams

By Leslie Bonner, Senior Consultant, Dewey & Kaye

While we cannot promise you an immediate financial return on your investment in team and leadership development, we can point to proven benefits that result from a well–executed team development plan:

Teams provide the foundation for organizational effectiveness. Teams possess more talent and experience, diversity of resources and greater operating flexibility than individual performers. Research in the last decade has proven the superiority of group decision–making over that of even the brightest individual within an organization.

A direct correlation exists between harmony and productivity. Harmony in a team creates good feelings that act like lubrication for the brain — mental efficiency goes up, memory is sharpened, and people can understand directions and make better decisions. Focus on the task and goal at hand is also clearly sharpened. A team's effectiveness and productivity depends on how well it works together. (Productive behaviors of global business teams, Hofner Saphiere)

Feeling good about working for an organization accounts for 20 to 30 percent of business performance, according to Daniel Goleman in Primal Leadership (2002). The link between organizational climate and business performance has been reaffirmed by new research spanning a range of industries. For every 1 percent improvement in the service climate, there's a 2 percent increase in revenue. Workers who feel upbeat will go the extra mile to please both internal and external customers, improving the bottom line.

Sustainable competitive advantage. An environment rich in trust creates an engine for innovation and a capacity for change. Trust–based teams have a knack for holding opposite conditions and points of view simultaneously. They may, for example, have tightly structured, disciplined processes, and still be able to react quickly to changing market needs or internal situations such as mergers or alliances.

Other potential outcomes of effective leadership team development:

• Development of potential successors for the CEO role
• Clearer roles and expectations for senior leaders which can be cascaded to other levels of the organization
• Senior leaders who have a holistic organization–wide perspective
• More effective use of meetings
• Shared understanding of individual and team strengths
• Improved ability to deal with conflict
• Development of competency and skill model for senior leaders

 

Written by: Leslie Bonner, a Senior Consultant at Dewey & Kaye, a McCrory and McDowell Company. Leslie can be reached at lbonner@deweykaye.com or 412.434.1335

 

Dewey & Kaye