Leadership is rarely a one-man show, however much some people would like to think so. Wearing every hat in a business is neither practical nor sensible, and delegation is a powerful tool. This is why the senior leadership team exists: to delegate the responsibility for shaping key areas of an organisation, and shape its overall direction.
But what exactly is a senior leadership team? It might seem like a straightforward question, but it’s one with many different answers for different types of organisations. Read on to learn more about senior leadership teams: how they are organised, what they do, and how training at the top level drives decisions that strengthen your entire business.
What is a senior leadership team?
A senior leadership team (often abbreviated to SLT) is the group of people within an organisation who are responsible for setting its direction, making key decisions, and ensuring the business remains purposeful, stable, and ultimately successful as it grows.
These individuals may occupy C-suite positions such as Chief Technical Officer or Chief Content Officer, particularly in a larger organisation. However, they may also form part of the senior leadership team while also undertaking more hands-on roles.
A strong senior leadership team will be responsible for managing day-to-day operations, but it also has a more overarching purpose. Senior leaders not only work to formulate the company’s strategy, but also to ensure it is implemented effectively.
What does a senior leadership team do?
As much as every business wants to think of itself as a unique flower, unlike anyone else, the reality is that if you were to peek into any number of boardrooms or meeting rooms, much of what you see would look the same. That is, a messy reality of the SLT performing a balancing act between ‘vision’ and actionable, quantifiable steps that the employees can actually follow.
While the specific tasks will vary from business to business but the core responsibilities of the SLT will largely be the same:
- Future planning and future proofing:
While others focus on immediate work, or monthly schedules, the SLT will also be looking ahead 3-5 years to strategise growth and anticipate coming market changes.
- Budget guardians:
Every financial decision, big and small, passes through them to ensure that the business stays out of the red.
- Problem solving on a macro and micro level:
When times are rocky, the SLT absorbs it all and works through it, allowing everyone else to stay focused on the everyday work.
- Setting the tone
The SLT can set the tone for company culture, with actions and work ethic, as much as slogans and branding.
- Joining different teams/departments
Even across multiple sites, a major part of the SLT is to bring together work that spans multiple teams. This can either be as a go between or a uniting force.
It’s probably apparent by now that this level of problem solving can equate to heavy responsibility loads. To help your team work to the best of their ability, you could make use of our problem solving and decision making training to sharpen your team’s instincts.
Why senior leadership teams are so important
It is often said that a ship needs a captain, but what about the chief engineer, or the head of staff? The manager of the cleaning department, even? No person can be in every room for every decision, and to try and do so would mean that something eventually falls through the cracks. A strong senior leadership team is there to provide a stable platform to support the top, while filtering that sense of stability down to every single employee. When the business goes through a rocky period, staff can look to this core group, both as decision makers, but also as a line of contact. They can provide a sense of calm and direction, whatever the situation.
Of course, they are just as necessary when it is smooth sailing, too. They are there to run the system of checks and balances to ensure that nothing gets forgotten about. Even the very best CEO or manager can make the wrong decision based on impulse or emotion; the team are there to ensure that every move is scrutinised from multiple perspectives before being actioned, or mitigated against before any real damage is done. Sometimes this will simply be the power of collective experiences and expertise, compared to individual ideas.
What makes a good senior leadership team?
If it was as simple as getting a group of extremely smart people into a room and calling them a team, then a lot of failed businesses would still be here. In reality, the best teams are built on far more than just high IQs and qualifications. It also requires experience with working with others and a culture that allows the team to disagree and debate behind closed doors but always present a united front when a decision has been reached.
For a successful team, you need:
- The ability to be wrong
If people are worried about stepping on toes or making mistakes, then real conversations and idea development is simply not possible. Job security shouldn’t rely solely on 100% successful output.
- A unified public front
Regardless of motives or personal thoughts, once a decision has been made, the team needs to go with it fully.
- Friction that is functional
Without challenging other ideas, nothing new will be created. There needs to be an environment in which conflict can happen professionally and not personally in order to push boundaries and think innovatively.
- A diverse range of insights
No new ideas will come from a team of identi-kit minds. Equally, risks and opportunities can be found outside the usual perspectives, so gaining a full range of professionals is always a winning situation.
- Real accountability
The ability to own failures as much as the wins is a key part of a successful team. Everyone needs to own their results, both good and bad.
How to assemble a good senior leadership team
Even the best ideas about ideal SLTs fall flat if planning doesn’t go into creating them. Because really good senior leadership teams don’t happen by accident. Assembling a crack team is about more than hiring the latest golden boy or candidate who looks good on paper. It is perhaps one of the most important tasks a founder can undertake for their business.
When you are hiring for the team, look beyond their CV. Their skills matter, but so do how they fit in with the current team, from their insights (and gaps) to their collective personality.
For example, a team full of ‘big picture’ minds may be lacking someone who is obsessed with the little details. Balance is everything when it comes to creating an ideal leadership team, and is something that we cover in our Directors: Roles and Responsibilities course.
The role of training in senior leadership development
There are two reasons why training is vital for SLT. First of all is that you might miss out on your greatest potential hire if you only go for those with experience. If they have the insight and skills that you need, but are a bit green on experience: train them up! The second reason is for complacency. The world moves far too fast for any leader to stop learning altogether and assume that they know all there is to know.
Any executive who relies purely on management techniques that they learned 20 years ago (for a whole different generation of employees) is going to be a liability to a modern business. This is where training can help. It is not necessarily about replacing old techniques with new, or learning how to use new technology, but more about a refining of the ‘soft skills’ that keep the person human instead of purely corporate, or professional when the older style of leadership was more humour orientated.
It can also have a trickle effect on the whole organisation. When a leader gets better at conflict resolution, then the entire department becomes more relaxed, more efficient and then more productive. When a CFO learns how to communicate their strategy clearly and concisely, then the investors feel more confident. An investment in formal senior leadership development training may start at the top, but it can affect the business all the way down.
* * *
As a business grows, so does the way in which its management needs to run. A senior leadership team becomes a vital part of the day to day operations, regardless of the industry or sector. They provide a key connection between ephemeral ideas and concrete actions. They provide insights and advice, and they create a framework that everyone can be a part of, so that they can get on and do their best work.
The CEO may be the face of the brand, but it is the SLT who hold it all together. By investing in this core group of people by giving them the training that they need, the space to work best and the confidence in which to do it, then your business can’t help but flourish.
