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The Do Loop – Who’ll Make the First Move – ELT or SLT?

The Bailey Group | December 3, 2013 | Blog | Leadership Team Development | 2 minute read

bigstock-Smiling-business-people-brains-45845005This time of year* presents a great opportunity to get the ELT and the SLT out of the do loop.  Do Loop? Yes, that age-old issue between the Executive Leadership Team and next level of leadership often called the SLT (Senior Leadership Team). The ELT, finding the SLT as too tactical, lacking in foresight and ownership, holds back delegating impactful work and decision making authority.

The SLT experiences the ELT as a tight group which holds all the cards and information. From their perspective, the ELT crafts a vision offsite, throws it over the fence and instructs them to create goals. Or the ELT writes a broad, rather mysterious strategy and asks the SLT to cascade it to their teams. Or, The Annual Sales Number appears, upon which the SLT is to execute.

The SLT, absent from the vision, strategy or sales number creation sessions, is busting with frustration. Some dutifully set to the task of execution while others dig in their heels until they get greater insight, bringing out their worst.

So a vicious cycle spins – the ELT hasn’t seen the competence or behaviors that spur them to involve, trust or delegate to the SLT and the SLT doesn’t get the chance to prove themselves.

How do you break this cycle? Remember “this is the time of year”*? Many firms are currently crafting or editing strategies and goals for 2014, opportune for a new practice.

Picture — a high involvement strategy creation session with ELT and SLT member’s side-by-side creating a critical strategy. Together they evaluate the importance of new data, size up the market, brainstorm new solutions and wrestle at least one good strategy to the ground. Consider the new ideas, the debate and dialogue and the new perspectives that result from varied proximities to the problem. In addition to a grander solution, a fantastic opportunity emerges for ELT members to experience the thinking of SLT members. These venues either validate the ELT’s earlier assessment or reveal wonderful surprises regarding the capability and intelligence of SLT members, clearly ready for greater things. And in the moment, real work gets done and the cycle is broken.

The Bailey Group helps ELT’s forge lasting relationships with their SLT and increases the readiness of high potential leaders through experiential learning.