Situation

Teamalytics was engaged by the organization’s COO to analyze a business line leadership team and provide insights on potential causes of underperformance related to their operating plan and key strategic initiatives. Several contextual factors were considered: the team had been formed six months prior by merging two preexisting teams; the team was to implement a new go-to-market strategy to pursue organic growth; and the fit of the team’s recently selected leader, who had been brought in from another regional team and had been successful leading other growth-focused initiatives, was in question.

First Phase Solution

After meeting with the COO and additional key stakeholders, the first step of our engagement was to have each member of the team complete our proprietary 360 assessment. This step only required roughly 15 minutes from each executive to finalize the self-description and add basic information on 5-6 key colleagues to facilitate the 360 portion of the assessment.

The next step was to discuss overall insights from the team as a whole with the COO. We presented our Team Snapshot to give a quick view of the behavioral constraints of the team. One immediate cause for concern was that over 70% of the team was at risk of being too low on their Need for Variety and Change or comfort in developing and executing change initiatives. This would prove to be a challenge as this team was tasked with developing and implementing a new go-to-market strategy. We then presented our Team 360 Report, displaying each team member’s self and 360 scores for each of the 13 behavioral scales we measured in a side-by-side comparative analysis.

Our report revealed many of the behaviors that enabled the new leader to be successful in previous roles: highly relational, building deep connections with stakeholders quickly, collaborative, inclusive, intentional about empowering teams, confident, and possessing strong people skills. In addition, he had been with the company for decades, having strong client relationships and deep knowledge of the business. However, the analysis also revealed several behavioral traits and blind spots that were highly impacting his ability to successfully lead this new team. These constraints were less obvious to the COO and other executives.

The strengths that had served this leader so well in previous roles were actually hurdles when placed with a highly strong-willed, opinionated, stubborn, and change-resistant team. His friendly and deferential nature was not successful with a team of hard chargers looking for decisiveness, critical thought, and feedback toward the solution.

The COO and executives ultimately placed the new leader in a different role in the organization and engaged us for our insights in the selection process for the replacement. The selected replacement was an internal candidate with a behavioral profile that was much more conducive to success in this role with this team.

Second Phase Solution

When the replacement leader joined the team, we accelerated the onboarding process by discussing the team data and working with her on her own data to develop an action plan to capitalize on her strengths and mitigate any behavioral risks as she began leading this team. We later supported her through a full team engagement in which we worked with each leader to develop action plans to address their own behavioral constraints. Over the next year, we met with the team quarterly to provide individual coaching to team members and brief team accountability sessions. We met monthly with the replacement leader to discuss the team’s progress and provide insights and recommendations as she sharpened and synergized with her team members.

Results

This team came together quickly, leaning into the coaching and behavioral action plans and becoming one of the highest-performing regions 18 months later. The replacement leader was promoted two years later to COO of the firm’s U.S. operations.