Creating Effective Leadership Teams

Introduction

Attracting and retaining energetic volunteer members of an ERG leadership team can be a challenge. Members are often time poor at work and in their private lives.

As an ERG establishes itself and becomes effective leaders must ensure that they are able to call upon a pool of members to support leadership functions.

The NSW Department of Communities and Justice’s Disability Employee Network [DCJ DEN] created a Guidance and Action Team [GAT] in September 2018. The GAT was a group of 15 members who volunteered to get involved. Two years later three specialist Deputy Chair roles were created [business, projects, communications]. These innovations laid the foundation for the DEN’s ongoing success.

A broad foundation of support can be critical for success.

The benefits of a strong support team

  • When the need arises, there is the ability to quickly replace any leadership team member with a person familiar with the ERG’s operations.
  • The ability to ensure any project can be supported by one or more people as the need arises.
  • Creates a talent pool from which new ERG chairs/coordinators can be selected. This ensures that new leaders know what they are getting themselves into, and that they are well-grounded in the ERG’s operations. The support team is also best positioned to ensure that new leaders are selected on known capability.
  • The creation of a community with diverse experiences and perspectives. Depending on the size and complexity of the organisation this diversity may also be critical representation from business areas.
  • The support team can work more effectively with engaged champions and executive sponsor/s.

Co-roles

An ERG can follow the DCJ DEN model and create several deputy chairs on the understanding that any may sub for the chair when necessary. Other ERGs prefer a co-chair model. This has advantages and disadvantages that an ERG should think through. 

Beyond co-chairs co-roles can be useful anytime a function or task has been identified – whether short-term or long-term. In any co-role each person should be closely matched to the other in competence and commitment. Monitoring to ensure this balance is working is critical.

An alternative to a co-role approach is to set up a small team with an identified co-ordinator. 

There are several options that are effective only if there is a pool of people who know the ERG’s culture, operations, and challenges.

Benefits from volunteering

ERG members who volunteer to join the leadership team will have to donate personal time. That time can and should be seen as a professional development opportunity as well as a willingness to participate in the ERG as a professional entity in its own right.

Some argue that volunteers should not be subject to obligations and standards that require them to be accountable to the ERG leadership. But no volunteer organisation can function without a requirement that all members – volunteer or otherwise – conform to standards of conduct and are held accountable.

The DCJ DEN was developed on a business unit model with a commitment to strict professionalism. This ensured GAT members understood the standards required of them. It was also the primary reason for the DEN’s subsequent success and high standing.

ERGs can and should negotiate with their organisation to ensure that their professionalism is recognised and that members of the leadership team are acknowledged as engaging in professional activity – and this is recognised in their CVs and when they are competing for roles in the organisation. This may also be backed up with a communications strategy that reinforces the professionalism of the ERG on a regular basis. Repetition of such a message is necessary to ensure that it received, understood and valued across the organisation.

It is reasonable that an ERG leadership participant seeks recognition for their professionalism as a volunteer in the complex and demanding roles required of the ERG leadership team.

How to establish a leadership team

ERGs are often set up under a traditional management committee model which does not convey contemporary values. 

The DCJ DEN GAT was established as a collaborative model of peers rather than a management committee. It is a more complex leadership approach which requires a more sophisticated chair/co-ordinator. Whoever is in that role will set a tone that will shape how the leadership team is established and operates. It isn’t necessarily the best option in all cases.

There are some critical steps in creating a leadership team comprising members who know in advance what they are getting into in advance – in terms of time, effort and expectations. These are:

  1. Contact ERG members asking for expressions of interest from all who wish to participate in a larger ERG leadership team.
  2. Invite all to a discussion [via Teams or Zoom if face-to-face is not practical] about what to expect and what will be required. Invite those still interested to submit a final expression of interest with a brief statement of their capabilities [an EOI form may be created].
  3. Decide on who will be in the leadership team. The original DCJ DEN had 15 members, including the chair and deputy chair. This the upper limit of a manageable group.
  4. Decision-making is not membership voting. Existing leaders can decide who is on an advisory body. Elections by ERG members are over-rated simply because members are not well-positioned to make choices about who is best suited. The DCJ DEN invited EOIs from members keen to be more involved – and that keenness was the critical factor. How the leadership subsequently performed was rightly subject to membership scrutiny.
  5. Run relationship building events. These are important to ensure all team members can mesh as an effective team. The DCJ DEN GAT met in person quarterly for 6 hours and then shared a restaurant meal. This was the day before the quarterly DEN meeting. The GAT also was funded for a 2-day planning workshop, which was an intense experience. In between these meetings there was a high volume of emails on particular themes, and a lot of phone calls. These were pre-Teams days – before 2020 and COVID. Depending on the organisation and geographic distribution of members get-togethers can be tailored to meet needs.
  6. Avoid purely transactional interactions as the dominant mode of relating – among leadership team members and champions and executive sponsors. Champions and executive sponsors are most effective when they are confident about the focus and culture of the ERG. Their open support for the ERG is a risk to their reputation and standing. They must, therefore, get to know and like the ERG’s leadership team and be able to establish a relationship which enables confident and empathic frank conversations.

Conclusion

Building an ERG’s leadership team is fundamental to its success. So much depends upon the organisation’s size and culture. DCJ, for example, is a complex public sector entity with over 20,000 staff. It has a mix of challenging front line and more routine back-office roles. This requires a variety of perspectives which can inform how the DEN is best able to focus its energy.

Some ERGS may have less of a focus on problem solving and may be more focused on celebration. It is important that ERGs understand their primary function and do not attempt to replicate the style and structure of ERGs with a different focus.

But the principles of success are shared across all ERGs. They are scaled to size, complexity, function and focus. ERG leaders must understand their own organisations to a deep degree – so they can establish empathic and insightful relations which staff and executive leaders.

Time pressures are real, and this creates a risk that interactions are reduced to functional transactional concerns. That’s not how leadership works. We see leaders engaging in transactional interactions with subordinates, but we miss the relationship building among leadership peers. 

ERG leaders are not necessarily drawn from the manager and executive ranks, so their understanding of how to build and sustain effective leadership teams is often lacking. I hope this exploration of thinking about building effective leadership teams may help strengthen your ERG and make it more effective.

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