I have been working with leadership teams for a while and have used this workshop to help them align around and articulate their purpose. This exercise allows them to identify opportunities to improve, focus their efforts and better communicate what they do with the rest of the organisation. This post shares the workshop format and a Miroboard that can be downloaded.
Often, leadership teams are groups of people hired to head up specific areas of an organisation; they are experts in their fields and are well-placed to lead the group of people in that area.
However, there can be a conflict between prioritising their teams and people in that area and prioritising their membership of the leadership team, which can cause misalignment and conflict in the leadership team and throughout the organisation.
Patrick Lencioni describes this pattern best, along with its impact on the organisation, in this <3min video about the first team principle. (Watch this video, it’s a really helpful description and only very short).
To help bring Leadership teams closer together, I often run the Leadership Team Purpose workshop. This workshop gives the leadership team the space to articulate what they are there to achieve together through the lens of the organisation’s needs and then review if and how they are meeting those needs.
About the workshop
This one-hour workshop is to help leadership teams describe their purpose through the lens of enabling the organisation by considering the needs of people who engage with or are affected by them.
It invites people in the leadership team to think about the decisions, direction, interactions, inspiration and support that others need from them.
They might consider staff members, different parts of the organisation, collaborators and external stakeholders. It then creates the space for the team to consider how they can better meet those needs, together.
When should you use this?
You should use this when starting a new leadership team, resetting a team, or reviewing whether you are meeting the organisation’s needs.
Who should be involved?
Invite everyone on your leadership team. Depending on how psychologically safe the team feels, it may also help to invite some trusted people who regularly interact with it.
I’d suggest doing it face-to-face if you can, even if you are using a Miro board, as these conversations are crucial for building connections between team members.
The Workshop Agenda
- Name your team and the members.
- [Using the 1-2-(4)-all liberating structures format] Everyone writes user needs cards on their own. Those cards have the structure as a <user type.> I need <what they need> from the leadership team.
- People pair up and merge their cards to create a unified list
- As a whole group, everyone shares their cards to create a new unified list
- Affinity sort and theme the cards
- Taking those themes, everyone votes on whether they think those things happen, don’t happen, or sometimes happen; this will show you opportunities.
- Prioritise and agree on the next steps
What happens next
You have options now. You could:
- Create a prioritised list of areas to address, either together now or after you have iterated the list.
- Highlight any you don’t know how to do and think about who can help
- review your decision-making forums against the list.
- Use the list to review your team’s membership. Do you have the right people in place to meet those needs?
- Share it with people across your organisation, especially your users
You can see more details of the workshop in this downloadable Miro board on the Miroverse.
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