Align, Inspire, and Move People to ActA Formula for Accelerating Team Performance

helping leaders shape the world

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you understand that cultivating and demonstrating your own executive presence is critical to inspiring commitment from your teams and lifting the performance of everyone on them. Amplifying qualities of presence when it’s easy to do provides you with the muscle-memory to reference when it’s tough to do. Consistency is the silver bullet because a gap in perceived qualities of leadership such as confidence, composure and authenticity can deflate your followers, scramble communications, diminish trust, and slow or downright inhibit productivity.

For senior leadership teams, (which we characterize as a group consisting of a CEO’s direct reports or the direct reports of a division or business unit head), the stakes are even higher. After all, every leadership team member wears two hats: one advocating for their own division, function or business unit, and a second representing the decisions that serve the organization at large. And of course, this is often where conflict can arise as the interests of these two hats don’t always neatly align.

At some point in the course of working towards a critical enterprise-level business imperative, the sum of the parts does not always equal the whole, and the onus falls on team leadership to anticipate that “dueling loyalties” moments will arise. Rather than waiting for the inevitable to happen (and attempting only then to manage or muster the needed behaviors), a better strategy would be to proactively identify, practice, and build critical teamwork habits and skills before conflict arises. In addition, the team must work to change the perception within the organization that they operate as a “congress,” with each leader representing their own business unit, and amplify their collective contribution and approach to the enterprise.

If you’ve been working on this and you’re experiencing only marginal gain, then you already know that it’s challenging to become a cohesive, collaborative unit (team). The skills of working together do not come naturally. Imagine the plight of several outdoor enthusiasts who decide they want to climb Mount McKinley.

They have a burning desire to get to the top, but first, they need to learn how to do it by working together. Otherwise they won’t reach the top, or even survive the climb. This is what you’re witnessing when you aim to align a group of successful, competitive performers towards common critical goals. They must develop the muscle memory needed to flex.

Our Bates approach to accelerating team performance can achieve this, but in ways that differ from other systems that promise to develop leadership teams. Each piece of our “trail map” is tied to business results in the context of your unique organization, integrating your milestones, objectives and metrics. We target and then measure all “the right stuff” for keeping SLT members on track and accountable.

As a leader,

Addressing the SLT’s collective executive presence offers an insurance policy for the team’s ability to align, unify, and execute, spurring it to deeper levels of effectiveness and success.

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Why Executive Presence is a Breakthrough for Leadership Teams

Ask people what they mean by executive presence and you’ll likely hear “Well, I know it when I see it.” Even while insisting that strong executive presence can make the difference between a leader’s success and failure, people consistently struggle with how to put it into words, let alone deeply and accurately measure it.

After extensive research combined with practical, applied experience with executives across thousands of corporations and cultures, we have broken the code and redefined executive presence to be: The qualities of a leader that engage, inspire, align and move people to act.

Research now proves that executive presence can be both measured and developed for individual leaders and teams – and this is where the breakthrough happens. Instead of working on a single component of team success as many approaches do (such as “trust” or “communication” or “strategic thinking”), we now understand that SLT effectiveness is tied to a more complex constellation of capabilities and behaviors that when present, culminate in consistent high performance. This “multidimensional” cocktail of sorts incorporates qualities of character, substance and style as experienced by the very team-members they need to get to succeed with.

Whether aware of this or not, leaders are continually communicating who they are and what they value whenever they speak or act. In the process, they expose the quality of their insight, judgment, and decision-making to constant evaluation by others. The hope of course is that the integrity and wisdom in a leader’s words and deeds will be evident, especially during a team or organization’s critical moments.

Executive presence therefore is about more than mere style (such as presentation skills or appearance) but displays instead impactful, positive, enduring and predictable patterns of thought, attitude and conduct that emerge at critical junctures - exactly when they are needed.

But how can collective executive presence on leadership teams be measured? And following measurement, how can an SLT know how to run with the results of such measurement in a way that puts both its individual and collective executive presence to work effectively so it contributes powerfully to organizational performance?

By arranging character, substance and style into a framework that includes the detail-level facets revealed in our research, we have a practical model that provides a foundation for measurement. Using this model (The Bates ExPI™) we have been able to successfully measure both individual and team executive presence in a manner that zeroes in on both strong and weak points. When strengths are leveraged and weak points developed, benefits accrue to both individual senior leaders and senior leadership teams as a whole. To understand more fully, review our Bates Model of Executive Presence below:

“SLT effectiveness is tied to a more complex constellation of capabilities and behaviors that

when present, culminate in consistent high performance.”

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The Bates Model of Executive Presence

To fire on all cylinders, particularly when working to achieve a challenging set of objectives, an SLT must bring these qualities to a level of conscious behavior, cultivating both the intent and the discipline to sublimate long-standing default “ways of being” in a team environment, and bring forward a consistent display of executive presence.

Dim

ensi

ons Character

Qualities that are fundamental to the leader as a person, to his/her identity, and give us reason to trust him/her.

SubstanceCultivated qualities of mature leadership that inspire commit-ment, inform action, and lead to above-and-beyond effort.

StyleOvert, skill-based patterns of communicative leadership that build motivation and that shape and sustain performance.

Face

ts o

f Beh

avio

r

AuthenticityThe quality of being real, genuine, transparent, and sincere in one’s relations and inter- actions with others.

Practical WisdomHighly honed qualities of insight and judgment that get to the heart of issues and produce prudent decisions.

AppearanceLooks and acts like an able executive, adapts dress and demeanor to the situation, and handles social situations with tact.

IntegrityActing with fidelity to one’s values and beliefs, living up to high standards of morality, veracity, and promise keeping.

ConfidenceSelf-assured in decision- making and action; ready to accept the risk and responsibility for taking timely action.

IntentionalityClarifies direction and keeps actions aligned and on track, all with- out stifling dissent or neglecting needs to adjust course.

ConcernDemonstrating interest in others, encouraging adaptive development, and promoting a healthy sustainable culture.

ComposureSteady in a crisis, able to calm and focus oth-ers, and to bring objectivity and perspec-tive to critical decisions.

InclusivenessActively involves others, welcomes diverse points of view, encourages ownership in mission, and em- powers initiative.

RestraintA calm disposition, characterized by rea- sonableness, and by avoidance of emotional extremes or impulsive-ness.

ResonanceConnecting with others; attentive, attuned, and responsive to feelings, motivations, and thoughts; deepens alignment.

InteractivityPromotes an interper-sonal style of dialog and timely exchange of information and questions to coordinate action.

HumilityAwareness of one’s strengths and weak-nesses, an openness to others, and a belief that all persons have worth.

VisionGenerates an inspiring, enterprise-wide picture of what could be; recognizes emerging trends, and engages all in strategy.

AssertivenessSpeaks up, values constructive conflict, and raises issues directly without shut- ting others down.

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Connecting to Critical Foundations of Leadership Team Effectiveness

Our research has also determined that three “foundations of effectiveness” can spell the difference, i.e., three interdependent functional capabilities that SLTs must cultivate and employ to assert successful executive leadership. They are:

1. Strategic Direction and Alignment

When a senior leadership team clearly understands who it is, what business it is in, who its customers are, and what its customers value, they can accelerate the speed of organizational success - but only when they collectively articulate their direction. It’s not enough for the SLT to be “on the same page”. Often, the kind of communicative leadership required to focus and inspire others falls short. Developing intentionality, interactivity, and vision will clarify the strategic direction and alignment crucial to translate critical moves to those that must execute.

2. Relational Dynamics

There’s a “secret sauce” that impacts executive teams, affecting either the ease and “fluency” with which they collaborate, or creating unnecessary stalemates and friction. Some teams feel a constant “disruption in the force”, stalling what needs to accelerate. Efforts at coordination and collaboration across personalities, agendas, perspectives, cultures and time zones are significantly influenced by “relational dynamics”, or more simply, how we communicate and interact. Sometimes categorized as “the soft stuff”, such dynamics can make or break team success and escalate to the top of house quickly. Resonance, composure, restraint, and humility all play a critical role in the speed of successful decision making, collaboration and movement toward closure on critical milestones. If these qualities are marginalized, team success will continue to be an exercise in frustration.

3. Executional Excellence

To achieve effective long-term, iterative team performance it’s mandatory that each leader “show up with their game face” continuously. Resilience, stamina, and even “self-care” to prevent burnout matter to consistent team performance. Here’s where the more overt, active side of communicative leadership comes into play, requiring ongoing energy, a predictable cadence and quality of communication and a readiness to assert leadership to inspire and align the organization. Executional excellence is realized when the SLT understands, supports and models the long-term behaviors witnessed by the rest of the business in a way that’s inspires others to “show up” to succeed.

Proper assessment and development of an SLT must include attention to all three of these foundations of effectiveness. The team’s composition, individual differences and group-as-whole characteristics must all be addressed and maximized.

“It’s not enough for the SLT to be ‘on the same page.’ Often, the kind of communicative leadership required to focus and inspire others falls short.”

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Conclusion

In our experience, executive teams invest significant time, attention and budget to the structures and processes that promise efficiencies and focus on critical strategies. These are important actions for teams to take, however most experienced leaders recognize that both structure and dynamic play a role.

Even so, the majority of executive teams wait for the pain-points that derail focus and effort to surface before taking the team offsite to discuss how to address team behaviors to course-correct. Conflicts due to the “dueling interests” of team members create misalignment or distrust. Catalysts such as engagement scores, organizational health metrics, or culture surveys surface the second and third order effects of senior team behaviors, and only then do teams wonder what they could’ve done differently. And at what cost?

The Bates research into executive presence for senior teams offers a pre-emptive strategy for integrating successful team behaviors with business and organizational strategies for improving overall performance.

Beginning with assessment data and salient team themes that can be obtained via our ExPI tool, the process of instilling positive executive presence and influence in senior leadership teams can be accelerated without the usual guesswork and frustration. Accurate data-driven feedback, not fuzzy definitions, enables an SLT to focus and intensify its work, and yield useful, actionable results quickly while promoting the confidence and resolve of the senior leaders on the team to stay the course and work together despite different interests. Progress of this sort drives the team smoothly toward the final stage of its reason for being: a high-

performing collaboration producing embedded gains and optimal results.

Bates ExPI™ for Leadership Teams

Our Bates Executive Presence Assessment (ExPI™) represents a major breakthrough in the evaluation of executive presence and influence. The “trail map” we develop for senior leadership teams is informed by stakeholder interviews, surveys, and a variety of other data collection methods that appraise the presenting situation. With all this data in hand, we generate a business-relevant interpretation of its meaning for the senior executive leadership team. Our initial interpretation is thus framed as a “stimulus” and starting point for the joint interpretation of assessment data with the executive team.

After the initial assessment and the joint interpretation session, we are ready to formulate and recommend the “trail map” itself which identifies:

1. Key Milestones that represent significant, time-based measures of progress against critical business imperatives;

2. Developmental Actions that will enable individuals and the group as a whole to realize these milestones.

We then begin, in our “base camp,” i.e., kick-off group session, to define standards of effectiveness (business results and leading indicators) and principles of appropriateness (what makes our conduct good, right, and proper).

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NOTE: Research studies referenced in this paper are available upon request.