As companies change their strategies at increasing speed, they are finding that they have to change their leadership teams.  We are increasingly working with leadership teams where some of the old team have left and new leaders have been promoted or recruited. The team has become a mix of people who are new to the company; some who have been recently promoted; and some people who have been in post for a comparatively long time. 

That creates a potentially unstable team of people, some of whom are senior, highly skilled in their domain, but have no experience of the company; others who know the company but do not have senior leadership experience; and some who both know the company and have the senior experience but may be struggling with the changes in culture of the that the new strategy is driving. 

This can be a very dangerous moment for a company because in order to deliver the new strategy the team needs to become a High Performing Leadership Team very quickly.  This does not happen overnight, and it does not happen without significant intervention.  There will always be a honeymoon period where everyone is on their best behaviour but when the pressure is on to deliver the honeymoon is soon over and the problems begin.

What has to be created is a culture where each member of the team is clear about their role in delivering the strategy and must trust the other members of the Team to be accountable for their own roles.  Team members need to know that they can rely on each other for support.  Trust solidifies over time, but distrust solidifies even faster.  Each team member must be clear from Day 1 what behaviours are acceptable and what the expectations of others are.

Creating such a culture is an effort at a time when the team is focused on the work to be done for the new strategy.  The only way that we have found of doing this it by interventions that are knitted into the business cycle.  All learning has to be done in the flow of work, interventions must be targeted, and team members need to be individually and collectively coached to be at their most effective.  Investing early in interventions accelerates success and creates the High Performing Team that businesses need.