Leadership Team Alignment

Frédéric Godart is Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France where he lectures on power and politics and network effects in organizations. His work has been featured in The Financial Times, The Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, and Forbes. He has previously worked at McKinsey & Company, where he was involved in multiple strategic studies for a wide range of clients from various industrial sectors. Jacques Neatby is Partner at MindLab and a North-America-based team expert. He has spent two decades advising the executive teams of leading multinationals in North America, Europe and Asia, including as a special advisor to the leadership teams of the world's largest construction materials company.

"Equal parts pragmatic and inspiring, this book bridges a gaping gap: What we think we know about leadership and what it really takes to have an effective leadership team. With actionable insights and spot-on commentary, it's an eye-opening account of what works, what doesn't and why 'best practices' just got strategically better."—Craig S. Smith, Group President, Marriott International Inc. "Leveraging decades of work on the ground with leaders from across the globe, Godart and Neatby fill their book with actionable insights to create a robust practitioner-oriented guide. Consistently emphasizing the real over the ideal, Leadership Team Alignment illustrates how members of high performing teams can effectively work together to successful pursue their organization's multiple objectives."—Julia Battilana, Professor of Business Administration and Social Innovation, Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School "Leadership teams are where things get done in most organizations, and they often don't work. Godart and Neatby's important new book helps leaders understand the inevitable conflicts and find solutions that actually increase trust and alignment."—Herminia Ibarra, The Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour. London Business School "In Leadership Team Alignment: From Conflict to Collaboration, Godart and Neatby paint a realistic picture of the uniqueness of top teams and the challenges that often result. Informed by hundreds of hours of observing and working with leadership teams, they address typical behaviors of CEOs and executives and the common pitfalls and traps they fall into, offering a suite of recommendations and practical action items along the way to achieving alignment. It fills an important gap in the business literature."—Michael Walsh, CEO, LexisNexis Legal & Professional "While companies face an increasingly challenging and changing environment, while the way the management is leading becomes more and more crucial to recruit and retain employees, this book offers you to analyze your leadership team in a very concrete an efficient way and suggests actionable remedies if necessary. From theory to practice, there is definitely no more room for misalignment."—Eric Forest, Partner, Deloitte France "C-suite executives will want to take a look."—Publishers Weekly

• 0. Introduction: Why This Book, Who It's For, and What's in It for You1. The Dual Role of LT Members2. Power Games at the Top3. Of Hubs, Spokes, and Silo Busting4. Who Really Sits on Your LT, and What Is Its Role?5. Getting Your LT's Size and Composition Right6. Assess Your LT and Fix It