Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 49

TEAMS OF LEADERS

High Performing
Leader Teams

(Top View)

Teams of Leaders (ToL)
Information
Management

Knowledge
Knowledge
Management
Management

Figure 1
Teams of Leaders (top view)

power” required for successful stability and civil
support operations.8 Vastly broader JIIM applications such as support to civilian law enforcement
seem certain to follow.

Building the “Seat of the ToL
Stool”

All of the essential goodness evident in sharing data and information developing knowledge
and eventually actionable understanding to solve
problems should make collaboration the evident
cure-all for improved decision making. It isn’t.
Sharing often is resisted, particularly across walls
of stovepipes in bureaucratic organizations governed by those competing for power, position,
and resources—no win-win collaboration, rather
zero-sum contests of will.9 Win-win can come only
after senior leader intervention to encourage informal collaboration across borders accompanied by
institutionalization of ToL organizational practices.
Sharing supporting ToL requires some measure
of skills, knowledge, and attitudes to be possessed
and shared by all of the members of any leader team
if the leader team is to be effective. Building this
sharing isn’t rocket science. First, we need to work
MILITARY REVIEW

• November-December 2013

together to develop shared purpose within the team.
What exactly are we becoming a team to do? As
you define the problem together, shared competence
develops. You begin to think through the problem
being addressed together by understanding each
other’s competencies. With that, trust develops.
To the degree that these shared SKA of purpose,
trust, and competence expand, leader team performance improves. As improvement occurs, shared
confidence develops. When SKA are fully shared
among all members of the team, particularly across
borders, escalating high performance occurs that
sells itself. A high performing leader team—the
leadership leg of ToL—has been generated, often
stimulated through short rapid-thinking LTX.
( Success breeds “champions” who, co-opted,
then spread “their” ToL practices across borders.
Seem simple? It is, just as a comparable AAR
thinking process has been applied to generating
“hard power.”
The rate of further ToL proliferation is influenced
by the over-arching collaboration environment that
is present in the organizational stovepipe of the
“champion.” This is the seat of the stool, embedding ToL practices in the routine of organizations.
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