Business Buzz By Michael H. Shenkman Guest Columnist

www.nmbusinessweekly .com November 6-12, 2000 Volume 7, No. 20

The Dangerous Fallacy of “Leadership Teams”

By Michael H. Shenkman

"And just because a CEO has employees doesn't mean that they are followers." ­ Michael H. Shenkman President, Keystone International, Inc., Strategic Development Group

Recently, a prospective client requested that we help them meld top executives into a leadership team. “The business is stuck,” he explained. “We can’t get product out the door because important decisions are causing intense friction or are not being made. If the top executives were only a team, we could solve our problems and move on.”

I hear about leadership teams often, and for a long time, I believed in them. After all, the idea conjures up images of collegiality and generosity at the top. What’s wrong with that? But in the course of 20 years of consulting, I have seen well-meaning partnerships come unraveled and companies put on the block as a result.

These experiences have changed my mind. Now, when I hear about leadership teams, I ask, “Just what will having a ‘team’ at the top accomplish? Is everyone supposed to like each other? Are they supposed to agree on everything? Are they supposed to jump at the opportunity to give up scarce resources to each other? Is conflict supposed to go away?”

I recently heard an expression about marriage that sums up why I am now so skeptical about leadership teams. A marriage is successful, the expression goes, when a spouse not only loves the other, but also strives to become the person the other loves. Most affairs end tragically, according to this logic, because a married person cannot become two people: one loved by the spouse and another loved by the paramour.

In a business, people cannot fulfill the expectations of more than one person either. With a team at the top, employees end up picking which executive to follow, and only follow that person. The company divides into “camps,” each led by its own team member. Within the so-called team itself, collegiality becomes strained, hypocritical; hot political issues are avoided. If the strife breaks to the surface, the fissures undermine all decision-making.

Companies with this kind of problem certainly need our help. Our prescription, however, is to help establish constructive relationships between leaders who convince their direct reports and other employees to be followers.

An executive who wants to create a leadership team is often reluctant to name him or herself the leader and call others followers. The reluctance is especially high when CEOs deal with high-priced talent recruited for top executive positions. This reluctance, we find, often stems from misunderstanding what it means to follow. As one client pointed out, “No one tells their kids to go out there and be good followers.”

But that protest, while catchy, conceals a dangerous fallacy. We do tell our children, in many ways, to be good followers. We tell our children to obey their parents and teachers, to be good citizens, and to give service to others. As adults, we become followers because we want change to happen and we believe that a leader we choose can help us accomplish it. We want to accomplish something meaningful, with our own effort; we want to feel a part of something larger than ourselves. We want to have a definite goal in sight, and we want to see real progress made towards it. We want to get involved in shaping decisions and take responsibility for outcomes that can be celebrated, or improved upon.

And just because a CEO has employees doesn’t mean they are followers. A leader has to work hard to convert employees into followers. Furthermore, followers aren’t pushovers. They keep the leader in touch with what is happening on the ground, in real time, by delivering the news—good and bad—that needs to be heard. They keep the leader in touch with the humanity and the high aspirations that made them willing to be followers in the first place. The most effective followers “manage up,” even when the news is bad and the advice they give is to get back on track or else.

Business executives are actually both leaders and followers. The CEO, for example, in some ways, is the one who has the most following to do. That may seem paradoxical, but the top leader is accountable to shareholders, a board, employees and to customers. So while other executives have one boss, CEOs have to toe the line and be effective followers for several constituencies.

The answer to my client’s problem is not to forge a leadership team. The answer is to forge a company-wide team in which people know when they lead and when they follow. A recognized leader starts the ball rolling toward success, and the acknowledged and appreciated followers push it over the top.

Michael Shenkman, Ph.D., is founder and president of the Arch of Leadership (www.archofleadership.com), a leader mentoring company. This article was adapted from his new book, The Arch and The Path, the Life of Leading Greatly (Sandia Heights Media, 2005).