Marie Stopforth

I often use sports teams to explain why not all teams need to work together in the same way. Think about the difference between a rugby team, a relay team and a gymnastics team. In rugby, the players are highly interdependent. What each player does constantly affects what the others need to do. A relay team works differently. Each runner completes their own leg, but the handovers must be coordinated. In gymnastics, people perform separately and their scores are added together to produce the...

Leadership teams exist because no one leader has all the knowledge and perspective needed to lead a complex organisation. Their value comes from bringing those different perspectives together to understand issues, make judgements and agree how the organisation will respond. But this only works when the team is clear about what it needs to do collectively, rather than leaving each leader to work it out themselves and coming up with different expectations. Why do organisations have leadership...