Senior Management Team Effectiveness Matters Now More Than Ever
In today’s rapidly evolving and increasingly complex world, the effectiveness and alignment of a senior management team is more critical than ever. An aligned team can better identify and address strategic opportunities and threats, enabling swift, decisive actions that drive organisational success.
Research has also revealed that a senior management team’s alignment directly impacts employee productivity and job satisfaction.1 As organisational interdependencies grow, misalignment within senior teams creates frustrations that ripple through the hierarchy. Conversely, when leaders collaborate to improve interdivisional processes and resolve conflicts, their positive influence resonates throughout the organisation.
However, studies also show that many senior management teams struggle to collaborate effectively, with three in four cross-functional teams underperforming on key metrics.2 Harmony and team cohesion do not come automatically, especially to senior management teams that have their own unique challenges. Building a cohesive and high-performing senior management team requires addressing these challenges and fostering a culture of collaboration, trust, and continuous development.
Unique Challenges Facing Senior Management Teams
1. The value of the team’s collective work is often unclear. Senior leaders often excel in their functional roles, but lack clarity on the collective purpose of the leadership team and the value that they can add by working as a team. This results in a focus on functional objectives rather than the company-wide agenda, hindering collaboration and strategic alignment.
2. Competing goals and priorities. Individual goals, accountabilities and decision rights often conflict with team goals and reward systems often inadvertently encourage competition over collaboration.
3. Unclear and ineffective team processes. Senior management teams often lack well-defined and agreed-upon processes for collaboration, communication, and decision-making, which leads to mistrust and inefficiencies.
4. The challenge of high performers. Senior management teams are often comprised of achievement-driven, high performers who are unaccustomed to sharing authority, risk, and decision rights. These strong, dynamic, successful individuals, often with big personalities, who are used to leading may sometimes struggle to collaborate effectively. Building cohesion and ensuring productive collaboration among such high achievers requires deliberate effort and a tailored approach.
4. Absence of key skills. Standards of behaviour essential for building trust and fostering productive relationships within the team have not been defined, agreed and adopted by team members. Also, crucial skills for effective collaboration at that level, like conflict resolution, the provision of feedback, and negotiation may be less developed.
5. Neglect of team development. Senior management teams rarely prioritise their own development, leading to stagnation and missed opportunities for growth.
So, what differentiates effective, high-performing senior management teams?
Characteristics of High-Performing Senior Management Teams
1. High levels of trust and psychological safety. Effective teams create an environment where members feel safe expressing opinions, admitting mistakes, and taking risks without fear of negative consequences. Research, including Google’s “Project Aristotle”, a global study of 180 teams, highlights psychological safety as the most critical factor of team performance.3 McKinsey’s findings further show that teams with high trust are significantly more efficient and results-oriented.4
2. Collaborative mindset and effective conflict management. Senior management teams deal with critical, difficult issues where the stakes are high. Naturally conflicts arise. Discussions will often be heated and can be emotional in tone, with strongly opposing views expressed. High-performing teams navigate these conflicts constructively. They work through differences of opinion without damaging relationships. They seek to understand each other’s views, to leverage diverse viewpoints and to do what is best for the organisation as a whole.
3. Open communication and empathy. In high-performing senior management teams, members feel they can talk openly about difficult issues. This enables them to address difficult issues promptly and constructively, instead of avoiding such issues, which would allow them to fester and make them more harmful. Members also focus on seeking out diverse perspectives, encouraging innovative thinking, demonstrating empathy and fostering a mutual understanding.
4. Constructive feedback culture. Most teams in our experience struggle with feedback. Nevertheless effective, high-performing senior management teams are more practiced and more comfortable in providing and receiving constructive feedback, both to each other, as well as to the team as an entity. This is a crucial differentiating factor as it promotes continuous improvement.
5. Commitment to the team’s continuous improvement. Members of effective senior management teams will invest time and effort in building relationships with their peers and enhancing team cohesion. Furthermore, these teams regularly evaluate their effectiveness, identify areas for growth, and take ownership of their development.
So, what can senior management teams focus on to help them be more effective?
Steps to Enhance Senior Management Team Effectiveness
1. Define a clear vision, goals, and team purpose. Ensure alignment on the organisation’s direction and a shared vision, as well as a common understanding of the unique value the senior management team brings as a collective. As organisations grow larger, more complex, and adopt matrix structures, clearly defining not only the organisation’s vision but also the purpose and added value of the senior management team becomes even more critical.
2. Clarify roles and accountabilities. Ensure clarity on individual contributions to the team, avoiding overlaps and minimising role-related conflicts. Senior management teams frequently face shifting priorities or organisational changes driven by evolving business needs, which can introduce ambiguity and confusion regarding accountabilities. Furthermore, decisions at this level often require collaborative input and it may be unclear who has the final say. Issues can easily therefore become contentious and can escalate into conflicts if roles and decision-making authority are unclear. This challenge is compounded by the power dynamics within senior management teams, where individuals with significant experience may resist perceived threats to their authority or role.
3. Establish effective team processes that aid the work of the team. Clarify team processes, adopting structured approaches to the sharing of information, to team meetings, decision-making, and the monitoring and following up of actions. Manage meetings and time allocation and clearly define whether agenda items are for information-sharing, consultation, or decision-making. Working with management teams, we have often observed misunderstandings and frustrations arising from unclear expectations in discussions; such as whether a topic is for information-sharing after a decision, requires consultation before a decision, or involves collaborative decision-making.
4. Agree on team behaviours. Team members need to develop and commit to a set of agreed-upon behaviours that foster trust and collaboration and will help the team be more effective. Once these have been agreed, members need to hold each other accountable for adhering to these standards. For example, in one senior management team we worked with, members agreed to stop interrupting or talking over one another during discussions. Once they committed to this change, they developed a habit of good-naturedly calling out such behaviour and holding each other accountable to the team norms.
5. Invest in the team’s ongoing development. Regularly assess the team’s strengths and areas for improvement. This will build a greater team awareness and will help the team to focus on improving elements that will make a difference. Develop a sense of ownership among team members for driving their collective growth and effectiveness.
Effective, high-performing senior management teams do not happen by chance.
They require intentional and targeted efforts to build trust, encourage open communication, and foster a culture of continuous development. They require from the members self-management, open communication, perspective taking, trust building and constructive feedback. By taking concrete steps to enhance their effectiveness, senior management teams can adapt to evolving business environments, capitalise on new opportunities, and overcome challenges effectively.
Team-building activities alone are not sufficient; true effectiveness comes from addressing the core behaviours and processes that drive performance. At Pave the Way, we specialise in working with senior management teams, helping them achieve:
- A high level of motivation and commitment to collaboration.
- Effective strategies for tackling collective challenges.
- Full leverage of each member’s unique strengths.
Our tailored approach ensures measurable results, unlocking your team’s full potential and empowering them to lead with agility, innovation, and lasting impact. Let us pave the way to a stronger, more effective leadership team together.
1 Raes, A., Bruch, H., & De Jong, S. B., “How top management team behavioural integration can impact employee work outcomes: Theory development and first empirical tests.”, Human Relations, 2012.
2 Behnam Tabrizi, “75% of cross-functional teams are dysfunctional,” Harvard Business Review, June 23, 2015.
3 Google, “Project Aristotle,” 2012-2015.
4 McKinsey, “Go, teams: When teams get healthier, the whole organization benefits.”, McKinsey Quarterly, October 2024.
