How One Knows They Have the Right Leadership Team in Place

By Steven Pivnik, Founder & CEO — AIP Advisory

If you’ve seen “The Boys in the Boat,” the Hollywood movie about the University of Washington crew team, you’ve seen a great story on the power of teamwork. For the boys in the boat, establishing a collaborative and supportive team dynamic was central to achieving their dream of Olympic gold.

The same is true in the business world. If your leadership team is not rowing in the same direction — embracing the same values and supporting the same goals — your business will struggle. The following are some key components you should consider as you assess whether you have the right leadership team in place at your organization.

Alignment of vision and values

Alignment in the business world is the equivalent of rowing in the same direction and the key to moving toward goals in an efficient way. When leadership teams are aligned, projects benefit from the combined force of their efforts, empowering synergy that translates to a strategic advantage.

Aligning around vision and values goes beyond contributing to the success of specific projects. When leaders come together to embrace and support their company’s vision and values, they foster an environment in which employees are motivated and values are celebrated. Organizations that suffer from a lack of employee engagement often have leadership teams that aren’t aligned around vision and values.

Complementary skills and experience

To illustrate the importance of complementary skills and experience, let’s shift to a different sports illustration. A great baseball team needs players with complementary skills who can cover all positions and carry out all critical functions, but a team that consists of only pitchers won’t win a game, let alone make it to the playoffs.

The same is true for your organization’s leadership team. The right leadership team will bring together a mix of strategic thinking, financial acumen, technology know-how, operations management, marketing expertise, and people skills. If all the bases aren’t covered, your organization will have a hard time competing.

One warning I would provide in this area is to be careful about bringing in team members whose skills and experience are significantly more advanced than those of your current team members. You might think of this as overclubbing, to borrow an analogy from golf, which can cause deficiencies in other team members to become very obvious, requiring upskilling or upgrading in other leadership positions.

Employee engagement and culture

Hiring for cultural fit is typically considered to be essential for business success, especially when it comes to hiring for the leadership team. The leader’s primary responsibility will always be inspiring employees to show up, engage, and do great work. If they can’t connect with the culture, fulfilling that role will be difficult — if not impossible.

I know from experience that cultural fit is a critical component to be considered when building a solid leadership team. My business hired an executive team member who moved through the interview process with flying colors, but didn’t get along with most of the team after coming on board. The experience taught me that hiring someone who doesn’t fit the culture can be catastrophic.

If your organization is not thriving, it could be time to determine whether or not you have the right leadership team in place. The factors explored above provide a great starting point for determining if your team is rowing in the right direction and fully equipped to reach your goals.

– Steven Pivnik, Founder and CEO of AIP Advisory and author of the newly released business book “Built to Finish,” is a serial entrepreneur and a world-class competitor who has competed in over a dozen full-distance IRONMAN events, including the IRONMAN World Championship. In the business world, he built a tech company that was named to the Inc 5000 list of fastest-growing companies for seven years in a row.