Top Team Health Check: Checklist for leadership team performance
How can you diagnose the current status of your leadership team and its ability to work together effectively? The following checklist of questions can give a quick indication of your team’s health. Take the test to find out if you have a high-performing team.
Alignment with culture and strategy
- Does the team have the right skills to implement the strategy?
- Is the organizational culture conducive to team performance including rewards?
- Does the team have sufficient understanding of global business issues and global clients?
- Is there agreement on strategy?
- Is the strategy specific enough?
- Is there a shared understanding on how to do business and implement the strategy?
Team effectiveness and dynamics
Emotional
- How driven, motivated and energetic is the team?
- What is the predominant mood in the team?
- What is the level of anxiety, hostility and tension?
Thinking
- International literacy: is the team able to outline different cultural perspectives?
- Is it open to different ways of thinking?
- Does it have strong knowledge of the business cultures it is operating in?
- Does it have the ability to move away from an ethnocentric stance?
- Is the team able to think on its feet and adapt to new situations?
- Does it show flexibility and the ability to deal with ambiguity?
Social Behaviour
- How good is the team at sharing information and knowledge?
- Is there sufficient joint problem-solving and development of group intelligence?
- What is the extent of internal and external networking?
- Is there sufficient trust and respect?
- Is there a scapegoating or blame culture?
- How much empathy do the leader and the team show?
- How many team members try to push their own agenda rather than working towards a common goal?
- Are there any domineering team members?
- How does the leader balance the need to show authority whilst instilling a consultative style and team spirit?
If your responses to these questions are primarily negative or uncertain, it may be time to step back and organise a team retreat focusing on how you can effectively work together in future. This may be particularly pressing if you have any of the following business imperatives:
Business Imperatives
- Is the team newly formed and does it need to speed up performance?
- Is the team threatened by external competition?
- Is there a change of strategy or business goals?
- Is there a need for turnaround?
- Have business targets increased significantly?
- Is the business engaging in much greater internationalization?
Checklist from ‘The Power of Global Teams’
