Are you grappling with underperforming team members? If you’re shouldering tasks that your team should be taking on, tolerating a leader who’s not delivering, or patiently waiting for team members to up their game, then let’s face it, you’re facing a genuine challenge. It’s a performance drain, a time-sucker and an obstacle on the road

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When I speak to CEOs and other top leaders, I’ll often hear one of the following comments:“My leadership team is new. We have a lot to accomplish together, but we’ve not yet come together as a cohesive unit.”“I’ve an established group of high-performing functional managers, but they are not a high-performing team of cross-functional business leaders.”And yet

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In previous articles we’ve looked at the example of Google and started to think about coaching the team, as a team, as a way to help the whole team reimagine success and collectively identify the patterns and roadblocks currently limiting its performance. The question then becomes: can I do this myself as the team leader, or should I

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Google’s secret weapon? When Google hired Eric Schmidt as CEO, investor John Doerr advised him to bring in Bill Campbell in as his coach. Eric was sceptical. He was an impressive top-performer. He’d been CEO of Novell and CTO of Sun, and he held a string of impressive academic credentials (BS, MS, PhD). Did he really need

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If you want to take your team from good to great, you need to rethink the assumptions and mental models that are keeping you stuck at good. When we find new and more powerful ways of thinking about teams, new avenues and opportunities become clearer. One of the mental models that has quite probably found its way into

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When you’re navigating complex, volatile and uncertain times, it’s incredibly valuable to step back as a leadership team and plan some bold moves. But when a physical leadership retreat may not be possible, is it really worth thinking about a virtual leadership offsite? Isn’t that just too painful? In this article we put forward some bold virtual leadership retreat

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In the current situation of 100% remote working and social distancing imposed by the COVID-19/Coronavirus crisis, it’s more important than ever to create a sense of engagement and ownership in your team. But these key principles are timeless and should be in every leader’s toolbox at every stage of the economic cycle. William is a

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Do you know this issue? You have very capable, strong performers on your leadership team, but team meetings and discussions are… unsatisfying! It’s so frustrating because you know the calibre of people in the room and you know the team could be accomplishing so much more together.Well, I’ve been working with a couple of really strong,

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Time and time again leaders watch as pivotal moments get forgotten and real opportunity to play at a new level fades away. Here’s how to stop that from happening.How most leaders cripple team developmentWe’ve all been there. You turn up to the annual team offsite meeting. You suddenly remember what happened at last year’s meeting. Or

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Overload and frustration. These were the two key themes emerging from our Organisational Leadership Survey. You might resonate with Valérie, a regional VP in an online advertising firm who I spoke to last week. Valérie has a team to manage but also has individual goals to achieve. She’s got a couple of star players she relies on extensively,

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What’s holding your specific team back?  What’s stopping you get the business results you want? It’s a crucial question. ​Until you can pinpoint the key limiting factor, it’s incredibly difficult to make major progress in your team’s productivity or effectiveness.  To use an analogy, there’s no point tuning up the engine if the car has a flat

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I was speaking with the CEO of a fast-growing technology firm a couple of weeks ago. We were discussing how to build on their success by taking internal engagement, communication and alignment to a new level. “I generally recommend starting with the senior leaders,” I explained. “Because leaders define culture, and people need to see their

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Here’s a shocking fact: The average team comes in at just 55% when we measure team health and performance across 5 dimensions. Like you, I’ve been in teams good and bad. At their best, the sense of cohesion and synergy is phenomenal. My last couple of teams at Cisco had exactly that dynamic – collegiate, results-focused,

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