Embedding Collective Responsibility - Making Sure You Stay In It Together
At the end of last month I shared with you part 1 of this blog, titled ‘Rethinking Collective Responsibility’. This is part 2, and it focuses on how you can embed it.
Collective responsibility is the first of three key principles I focus on when coaching leadership teams. It is both the cornerstone and the most common missing link. Most teams stop short of their true potential, and the starting point is individual roles taking priority over the collective.
Once established though it requires ongoing work. This is not just about a single difficult conversation, but establishing a culture which evolves over time.
How does that work in practice?
Here’s three aspects to consider.
1. Unified Public Front
As one senior leader I worked with for years put it at one particularly fiery leadership team meeting ‘we have to operate out there so that members of staff cannot even slip one sheet of A4 between us. We know they will try if they think it’s worth their while. We need to get to the point where they don’t even bother.’
The fact that conversation had to happen at all tells you something. Objects much larger than the width of a sheet of A4 had been getting between us. It needed to be brought back to the table.
All staff need to feel confident that all senior leaders are on the same page, not least because it saves so much time. It would not surprise them to hear if there were disagreements behind closed doors, but that is for them to speculate about. Staff gossipers need as few reasons to gossip as possible.
But what does in ‘public’ really mean?
The truth is that this is a broad set of circumstances, and leadership teams are all the better for defining them.
Collective responsibility and the unified public front must be seen in
All physical spaces where senior leaders may be in the same place as colleagues who are not part of the team - offices, corridors, reception, the car park and any communal area.
Social events - Christmas party, Friday night drinks and coffee shop lunch.
Whatsapp groups and any other form of social media.
Emails and any messaging across teams/slack and equivalents.
Transport to and from work.
All virtual meetings and phone calls.
In short, it is everywhere and a unified front is a binary concept. It is either present or it is not.
There is no hinting to others about an issue, no watering down, no unexplained snide remark, nothing. If you want confidants then they need to be out of the workplace. Cliques are for playgrounds, not offices.
The time saved by not having to engage with rumour or challenge misconceptions can be highly significant.
2. Your Responsibilities Are Not Off-Limit
When I speak to a leader about a potential leadership team coaching programme there’s one question which is key for whether I take it on or not.
‘Do you consider yourself to be part of the team?’
If the answer is no, thereby revealing I would be brought in to ‘sort out the team’ and report back to the leader, then I don’t take it on.
The leader may have a distinctive role, but they are still part of the team.
Their collective responsibility with every member of the team, including the most junior and recently appointed, really matters. Those new senior leaders need to know that their boss has their back in every conversation, and that any dialogue they have with other members of staff could be had with them.
Some leaders do not get this right. Other members of the team have to cover for them around the building, patch up issues and offer reassurances they are not confident will hold. Senior leaders need to amplify reasons to trust the boss, and not have to create them from scratch.
This is about more than the united front, it is also about a leader’s responsibilities and how they deliver them.
I remember working with a boss who had been in post for around six months and he arrived at a key meeting with non-executive directors completely unprepared. He did not seem to have forgotten about the meeting, but decided it was too late to prepare properly so simply did not. We were not told in advance.
The other senior leaders looked around the table at each other, ready to talk about our agenda items and actions, in disbelief. The boss had, clearly and publicly, let the side down. It only seemed to dawn on him that it was not just him he had let down when the meeting was well underway.
The way in which every senior leader does their job reflects on all of their colleagues, and the boss is no exception.
3. Share The Bigger Picture
Transparency helps to generate collective responsibility.
Every senior leader needs to make explicit efforts to be transparent. The wider context and bigger picture may be obvious to you, but not to others.
Leaders need to make the connections and explain their perspective, and not just give an account of the final decision. Two leaders can have the same information and develop a very different narrative of how it came to be, or what should be done with it.
Taking time in meetings to explain your thinking, and for others to do the same, is rarely wasted. It provides an opportunity for that logic to be tested and challenged as necessary.
Dare I say it, this also reinforces the expectation that decisions should have been thought through in the first place. There is always an impact on the team if they have not, and if colleagues have to pick up the pieces.
It is also a chance for information which may have been missed, or underrated, to be reinforced along with its significance. One leader’s version of the bigger picture rarely looks the same as someone else’s.
Alignment is a fine art, and requires endless practice. It is perfectly possible for senior leaders to assume they are aligned, and then conversations with various middle managers tell them they are anything but.
Responsibility for both understanding and sharing the big picture, and their version of it, rests with every member of the team.
Remember that
Collective responsibility is hard won and easily lost. Just when you think it is so embedded that there can never be another problem is when you need to check.
Senior teams with a strong sense of collective responsibility are very attractive to join. Ambitious candidates want to make a difference and have an impact, and not spend their precious time dealing with office politics.
How can I help you?
1. One to one coaching programmes for senior leaders who are swamped by their jobs so they can thrive in life. Click here to discover where you are on your journey from Frantic to Fulfilled? Just 5 minutes of your time and you will receive a full personalised report with guidance on your next steps.
2. Team coaching programmes - working IN a team is not the same as working AS a team and yet they are often treated as if they are the same. I help teams move from the former to the latter, and generate huge shifts in productivity and outcomes.
3. Talks, workshops and seminars - including topics relevant to the two areas above plus explaining Gen Z to Gen X and dealing with the intergenerational workplace. Speaker showreel here.
