Leadership support of action teams

Last month’s newsletter featured an article about employee action teams and how they can serve as your organization’s in-house experts at making change. Click here to read last month's article. As we noted, there are many other benefits to establishing teams at your business, driving engagement, skill building, and a sense of ownership among them.

But once an action team is in place, how do you know what’s happening? Is their project relevant? Are they making progress?

In order to answer those questions – and many others – every team should have a guide, what we call a management sponsor from the ranks of senior leadership.

The most successful way to identify that management sponsor is to turn over the selection process to the actual action team. We recommend that the team be given responsibility to select a senior leader—beyond the HR ranks—who believes in the team’s mission and who has deep organizational knowledge of the policies, procedures, politics and past of the organization.

It is the job of the management sponsor to:

• Be a liaison between the leadership team and the action team
• Coach the team on how to maneuver through organizational channels and changes without getting derailed in their work efforts
• “Check in” with the team periodically to discuss their plans and progress
• Guide the team on the best way to navigate through complicated organizational issues
• Identify resources that the team may not be aware of that will strengthen their work effort
• Keep fellow senior leaders informed on team projects and progress
• Support the team recommendations and help to “pave the runway” for introducing changes and improvements to the workforce at large

You can see that the management sponsor has many important responsibilities and is a key player in ensuring the success of a team effort. At the same time, there are many benefits to serving as a management sponsor – both for the individual and the business.

• Be a better leader. A good leader coaches and guides. Being a management sponsor provides an opportunity to do both with a group of people representing the entire business in addressing important business issues.
• Credibility builder. Working with a group of people from across the business provides an opportunity for the management sponsor to build credibility with the team – and with the rest of the folks on the front line.
• Barrier breaker. Meeting frequently with front-line members of the action team will help break the “rug row” or the “us vs. them” barrier that may exist in your organization. Working with the team over time, titles fade and rank disappears and the common enemy that emerges is the issue that the group is addressing. That new perception can spread, and suddenly people are saying, “You know, I was wrong about (insert your next management sponsor’s name here). That VP is a down to earth after all.”
• Real business knowledge. Your management sponsor may have the finest pedigree from the best business schools and experience at the premier companies in the land.  However, working with a group of front-line employees is guaranteed to provide that individual with an education on how the organization really works and what the real issues are.
• Shared business knowledge. The knowledge street goes both ways here. By sharing their experience and business knowledge with the action team, the management sponsor schools the team on the business realities of the organization and provides a tutorial on how business works.
• A sense of accomplishment and pride.  Self explanatory…high fives!

Look at the Tool of the Month feature for a useful tool that a management sponsor can use to help ensure an effective team.