Here is an excerpt from an article written by Marianna Zangrillo, Thomas Keil, and Benedetto Vigna for the MIT Sloan Management Review. To read the complete article, check out others, sign up for email alerts, and obtain subscription information, please click here.Illustration Credit: Anuj Shrestha Marianna Zangrillo, Thomas Keil, and
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CEOs can foster a more effective leadership team by understanding when to tap senior executives’ competitive instincts and when to encourage collaboration.
Examples abound of leadership teams where executives were unable to put their egos aside when necessary. Before Satya Nadella took the helm at Microsoft, the company was infamous for infighting; Nadella himself described the previous leadership as “groups of warring gangs.”1 General Electric executives used top management meetings to spin positive stories about their achievements for years, rather than working together on emerging problems.2 Results at both companies suffered as their leaders pursued primacy.
The stakes are high, as is the cost of failure from missed opportunities and poor decisions. CEOs need teams that can strike the right balance between competition and collaboration as appropriate for their business and the challenges it faces. In this article, we’ll look at the approaches that CEOs have taken in a variety of contexts and offer a four-step framework for building effective top leadership teams.
The Paradox That Undermines Performance
Few executives reach the C-suite without competing against internal rivals. Meanwhile, their ambition enables them to drive their areas of responsibility forward as they rise to the top.
Paradoxically, a single-minded focus on competition that serves aspiring leaders so well often gets in the way once they reach the top team. As executive team members, leaders have responsibility for the whole corporation, not only their specific area.
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References
1. S. Nadella, G. Shaw, and J. T. Nichols, “Hit Refresh” updated edition (New York: Harper Business, 2019).
2. T. Gryta and T. Mann, “Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric” (Boston: Mariner Books, 2020).