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How Can Leaders Heal A Rift in Their Senior Management Team
How Can Leaders Heal A Rift in Their Senior Management Team
w can leade
ers heaal a rifft in their seenior
man
nagem
ment team?
t ?
Inner conflicts be
etween individual and ggroup succe
ess can
lead tto team dysfunction – a
and that prooblem is oftten
comp ounded by the distortiing effects oof unconscious
behavviours
The U
UK side of thhe Brexit proocess has a rguably beccome
even mmore tense e and nerve‐‐wracking thhan the UK’s
negottiations withh the EU, ass senior figuures in the
goverrnment conttinue to snipe at each oother over the
type oof deal that Britain sho
ould aim forr.
Days latter, the row
w escalated following HHammond’ss assertion tthat he wouuld not strettch
Treasurry funds in tthe direction of supporrting a ‘no‐d
deal’ scenarrio – a posittion that rankled
with thee hard‐Brexxit wing of MMay’s Cabinnet. Speakin
ng to the press, shadow w Cabinet O Office
ministeer Jon Trickeett said: “We had a Prim
me Minister who said n no deal is b etter than aa bad
deal, a cchancellor w
who now saaid he won’’t fund a no‐deal scenario, and a fo foreign secretary
who seeems perfecttly happily w with no deaal arrangemment.”
Leaderss are routinely faced w
with big deciisions that d
depend upo
on the collecctive talentts of the
top team. But wheen that teamm is fractureed, what can leaders do to heal suuch rifts and
d keep
the group’s primarry objective
es in sight?
In the vview of The Institute off Leadershipp &
Manageement head d of researcch, policy annd standardds
Kate Co ooper, healing rifts is a process to which the
entire ssenior team
m – not just tthe leader –– must
contribute. “Senior teams, by their very nnature, are
comprissed of indivviduals who have achieeved certain n
degreess of successs,” she says.. “But althoough they’vee
arrived in the senioor team witth that undeer their beltts,
individuual achievemments do no ot determinne
organisational succcess. That w will be deterrmined by tthe
success of the team. So it is vital for those people to conduct themselves in the senior team
in a fashion whereby they can draw energy and confidence from their own track records,
but at the same time bring in a huge commitment to the overall team, and a willingness for
it to succeed.”
Cooper explains: “In many ways, they have to put their own needs in a distant second place
to those of the team which, for some, may not be a particularly comfortable place. In his
writing on the five dysfunctions of teams, Patrick Lencioni discusses how a bond of trust
between the team members is absolutely vital for their overall effectiveness as a group.
Similarly, Professor Andrew Kakabadse notes that teams are, by and large, reluctant to
discuss extremely sensitive issues – even when that paralysis stands to cause enormous
damage to the organisation.”
She adds: “Each person who is brought into a senior team carries in their own particular
version of an inner conflict between their own needs and those of the organisation. The
psychologist Wilfrid Bion’s work in this area highlighted the distorting role of unconscious
processes in this dynamic. Bion concluded that people’s behaviour in a team situation often
manifests itself in ways that they are not necessarily aware of at the time. So for a senior
team that is dysfunctional, and in which there are low levels of trust, that unconscious
behaviour can be particularly ruinous.
“A team trying to operate under those conditions would benefit from an external
intervention that could help them play down the needs of the competing individuals, rebuild
trust – and reassert the paramount importance of the team’s success.”
Source : https://www.institutelm.com/resourceLibrary/how‐can‐leaders‐heal‐a‐rift‐in‐their‐senior‐
management‐
team.html?utm_source=Institute%20of%20Leadership%20Management&utm_medium=email&utm
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Accessed on 25th October 2017