When it comes to building a successful company in any industry, you will need to overcome a number of challenges.

Having a strong leadership team in place is one of the key ways to be confident of your company’s long-term success.

A leadership team needs to work together, meet regularly and agree where the business is going, make decisions about the best way to achieve their aims, and how to overcome the challenges they face.

What skills do you want in your team?

It is important you have a team which doesn’t have overlapping responsibilities, understands what their responsibilities are, and has the skills to deliver them.

These responsibilities divide into three major areas, which are:

• Sales and marketing – either two different roles, or one role with both responsibilities
• Operations – how you develop and deliver your product and/or service
• Finance, administration, internal IT and HR – depending on the size of your business, this can be one person in charge of all these roles or different leaders

For more information about roles and responsibilities use the EOS Accountability Chart.

However, building a team possessing these skills is only half the battle. They must also share your core values – which the EOS People Analyser will help you to determine.

Cohesive teams aligned with the same core values are more productive and better at making big business decisions. However an empowered team isn’t created overnight, and doesn’t happen by accident.

The two major mistakes I usually see CEOs and owners make is their teams are either too small or too big.

A leadership team which is too small

In the first case, there are too few people at the head of the organisation to lead and manage it effectively. Sometimes this is the result of the CEO, owner or founder not letting go, and trying to do all the roles themselves.

In this case, with too few people, another common mistake is to put an administrative person in a role that grows beyond their capabilities.

An example is when the booking keeping has always been done by an admin person, and the business has outgrown their expertise. It needs someone able to analyse profitability and build a relationship with financial institutions and/or banks for funding.

In this case, you must have a qualified professional with those skills and expertise.

A leadership teams which is too big

In this case, there are too many people given a leadership role.

Rule of thumb is leadership teams that are seven or larger can create unproductive team dynamics.

Sometimes this is due to loyalty. People feel they should be on the leadership team because they have been with the business since the beginning. Take an objective view of what the leadership position requires and who has the core values and management skills to match it.  

Secondly, it is because the roles and responsibilities have not been well defined, there is overlap and the business is not structured for growth.

For example, when businesses grow their revenue substantially and still are structured as a smaller business.

Thirdly, sometimes owners structure their business for the past or currently, but not for 6-12 months in the future. They don’t take into account how long it might take for them to find the right person or outsource skills.

A final challenge is you have someone who has been promoted into a leadership position who is not good at managing people and doesn’t enjoy it.

The structure of the business with roles and responsibilities should be reviewed every 90 days and again on an annual basis in order to make sure the business is structured for future growth.

If you take time to objectively look at the leaders at the top of your business and don’t let personalities, history, and egos influence it, then you are in a great position to build a winning leadership team.

However, if you feel like you either lack crucial team members, or your team isn’t in the right roles, it may be time to look at using the Accountability Chart tool.

The Entrepreneurial Operating System offers an effective method of assessing the leadership team your business needs and matching those qualities with the right person. If you would like support in building a successful leadership team, contact us for a complimentary meeting to introduce you to EOS. Call today on +44 (0)7795 667480.