In the world of business, silver bullets are rare. Most growth is incremental, the product of years of disciplined execution. But if there is one strategy that consistently delivers outsized results, it’s building a super leadership team.
A strong leadership team acts as a force multiplier. With the right people in the right seats, everything becomes easier — culture, accountability, strategy, execution. But the process of building that kind of team is often misunderstood or delayed, sometimes fatally.
There are four common leadership team building mistakes companies make that keep them from assembling a high-functioning leadership team.
1. Hiring too slowly, trying to time it out. Many leaders delay key hires, thinking they should “wait until the business is ready.” This is often driven by cash conservatism, but more often it’s a sign of indecision or fear. The irony? The right leaders make the business ready. Growth follows leadership, not the other way around.
2. Need for control. Founders who struggle to delegate often find themselves stuck, bottlenecked by their own bandwidth. Great leadership teams thrive on autonomy, accountability and trust. If you’re still the expert in every area, your company has already plateaued.
3. Putting up with employee misfits. Cultural and performance misfits kill momentum. Retaining these “culture killers” creates a drag on the whole team. Dead branches must be pruned, and weak branches need to be addressed.
4. “I need to get my house in order first.” Some owners wait to clean up parts of their business before making key leadership hires. But top talent will actually help fix these problems. Waiting for perfection before bringing in support just prolongs dysfunction.
Hire the best you can afford … and then some
Staff your leadership team with the best people you can afford — and then stretch. Hire A-plus players, those who can grow with you and people who are smarter and more capable than you in their areas of expertise. Your ego may bristle, but your business will thrive.
A-plus players in a $3 million business will cost more than you’re used to, but they will help you become a $10 million business faster and pay for themselves. The same goes when growing from $10 million to $20 million. They won’t just do their jobs — they’ll elevate them.
Prune and replant
Leadership team building isn’t just about adding. It’s about pruning and replanting. Evaluate your current team honestly.
⦁ Who’s aligned with the vision?
⦁ Who has plateaued?
⦁ Who needs coaching, and who needs replacing?
This step requires courage. But when you clear the underperformers, everyone will rally around you.
Develop a vision that stretches
To grow a great team, you need to cast a great vision. A powerful exercise that can help accomplish this goal is to build an organizational chart for a company twice your current size. What roles and departments would emerge? This forward-looking structure reveals leadership gaps and encourages bold actions.
From there, you can begin to backfill toward that future and hire or develop rising leaders to one day fill those seats.
The pros and cons of recruiting from within
Promoting from within can be a powerful motivator for your team and a great way to reward loyalty and cultural alignment. But there are risks.
On the plus side, internal candidates know the culture, customers and workflows. But they may not have the outside experience or management skills needed for the next level. Loyalty doesn’t always translate to leadership.
Remember there are few levers in business as powerful as a “super” leadership team. If you want to scale, create impact and build something that lasts, this is one silver bullet worth engaging. For help on this venture, reach out, and we can assess your leadership gap and next steps.
