Effective Executive Teams

Over a hundred PCTs, ten SHAs and twelve Ambulance Trusts have or will very soon have new executive teams in place. Can these quickly become high performing, effective teams? Let’s hope so. The NHS needs to get back to focusing on maintaining and improving services. The new ‘top teams’ will have a better chance of being effective if the folks doing the hiring have paid attention to 3 things.

1. Technical Competence – Does this candidate have the skills and experience that mean they can perform their personal (functional ) responsibilities competently?

2. Group Compatibility - Will this person ‘fit well’ with the rest of the team? Does she hold similar attitudes, beliefs and values to other team members and will she readily accept the formal leader as legitimate? – Lots of research shows that as group tasks become more complex member compatibility becomes relatively more important

3. Role Diversity – Will this person play a useful role in helping the team make decisions and get work done? – Too often teams of competent, compatible people suffer from excessive ‘groupthink’ where they collectively hold a blinkered view of what’s going on ‘out there’ and consequently exercise poor collective judgement about what’s needed. The most effective teams avoid ‘groupthink’ by ensuring that members play particular roles within the team. Belbin’s eight team roles are a useful guide. Quite often, in my opinion, NHS 'top teams' have members playing too few roles.

But it’s not easy is it? We need our new executive teams to be comprised of competent, compatible members, but we also need them to avoid the blight of ‘groupthink’. In my experience the first 2 are usually taken directly into account in selection processes whilst the third needs urgent attention soon after the team starts working.

I wonder how well we’ve done?

Steve

www.stevepashley.co.uk