GLT Characteristic #4
— Resilience—
“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder - Chief of Staff of the Prussian army before World War I.
The military cliché – ‘no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy’ – is a useful mantra for leadership teams to adopt. Today’s dynamic and fast paced business environment requires leadership teams to proactively plan but always be prepared to adapt and adjust course. No leadership team is perfect, and none are 100 percent aligned all of the time, but great leadership teams have confidence in their ability to get back in sync after inevitable periods of challenge and dysfunction.
Confidence in the team’s resilience is founded on a few important factors. First, team members of great leadership teams have a ‘greater good’ mindset and recognize that sometimes their functional responsibilities will have to take a back seat to what is best for the organization. Next, great leadership teams recognize that this greater good mind set can only happen if team members trusteach other’s competence and character and if psychological safety exists on the team. Another important factor that shores up a leadership team’s resilience is practice and commitment to a set of operating principles. To be resilient all team members have to be on the same page about their roles and how they integrate so that they can predict one another’s behavior and adapt to adversity. Finally, resilient leadership teams are laser focused on results. They adapt and improvise and don’t let trivial or relatively unimportant issues get in the way of refocusing and committing to be great.
These factors enable great leadership teams to have confidence in their ability to be successful. Despite setbacks they collectively and individually believe that they are capable to effectively get back on track.