Fellowship Team – what is it, and how can it help me?

What is a Fellowship Team?

A Fellowship Team is made up of a few exceptional executives at the top of the business who:-

• Operate as a very tight-knit high performance team, working together for the success of the business
• Are willing and able to regularly stand in for each other at events calling for a leadership presence, without compromising the quality of leadership delivered
• At all times, are very clear about what their shared vision and mission are.
• Have a good grasp of the current opportunities and constraints in their business context
• Have each worked to recognize, own and deploy to the advantage of the business, their personal and professional strengths. 
• Have come to know these qualities in each other and are committed to functioning as a tight, professionally self-sufficient group. This provides consistent high performance across all areas of the Fellowship Team’s business.
• Precisely know their own limitations, each working shrewdly to support each other in a complementary fashion.
• Work continuously to keep each other abreast of developments in the condition of the business.
• Are willing and able to present passionately their agreed leadership message and style to their staffs and their stakeholders.
• Achieve extraordinary work-life integrity by espousing these behaviours,

How does a Fellowship Team contribute to business goals?

• By bringing clear and consistent leadership to all the areas of the business through having a few well-briefed, able executives, delivering outstanding business performance over time
• Keeping a strong base of relationships at the top of the business by being openly committed to each others' success
• By enabling easy and frequent updating of action-plans and strategy. They do this by focusing persistently on keeping each other informed of developments,
• By identifying and solving problems more rapidly. They do this by having a frank, efficient and relaxed way of working.
• By setting and achieving more exciting goals. They do this through superior alignment to purpose.
• By making better decisions. They do this by being able to listen actively to each other.

• Delivers leadership impact accepted by colleagues and competitors alike to be excellent in its visioning, communication and execution.
• Consistently strengthens and grows the business, inspiring clearer, stronger commitment to the mission in a critical mass of managers.
• Has a much closer alignment of personal values than most leadership teams
• Is very clear on what moves them, individually and as a team.
• Has close alignment on its understanding of how it wants to conduct the business.
• Is fully frank and open with its members as disagreements arise, and is able to speak plainly as needed.
• Makes better decisions: The team sees more of the options available, has new perspectives, thinks through the impact of their decisions, and develops and sustains commitment to the decisions they make.
• Achieves more sustainable results in less time: Team Fellowship adds momentum and enables smarter, more effective actions to be taken with greater clarity: The Fellowship Team sees clearly where they are, what the business needs and what they want from their life and work, enabling them to align to their values.
  

How does a Fellowship Team drive personal and professional growth

For each member, being in a fellowship team brings:-

• Increased effectiveness in implementing personal and business function plans
• Integrity of work and personal life: This empowers them to sustain excellent performance at work without damaging their personal circumstances.
• Greater achievement: Fellowship behaviours provide support and encouragement to colleagues when they need it most. This can prevent the self-sabotage that often holds people back from their best actions when they are left alone with ambiguity.
• Increased self-confidence: Being in a Fellowship Team allows members to extend their strong personal foundation out into the business through healthier relationships. They can then gain better and more appropriate alignment from managers and staffs and so accomplish more.

How is a Fellowship Team developed?

There are five things Fellowship Teams do exceptionally well. These are:- 

• Trusting and being trustworthy
• Collaborating with each other
• Evidencing sustained commitment to their collective work
• Holding themselves and each other accountable for their undertakings
• Delivering business results 

 Lencioni * has shown us how these exist in a holarchy, the earlier behaviours making the later ones possible:-

Stronger relationships: By working in a team to get to know themselves better, teams  improve their relationships with each other and with others.  Through developing their interpersonal skills, Fellowship Team members are enabled to base their relationships on shared values. Shared values: Working from a base of shared values, teams see more of the options available, have new perspectives, think through the impact of their decisions, and develop and sustain commitment to the decisions they make.

• Servant Leadership: the CEO works to bring out the best in each of his team members, stretching them while being there for them as supporter and facilitator. The CEO obliges his Fellowship Team members to take leadership positions and roles beyond the remit of existing and formal responsibilities. A more powerful wiser, collective leadership pattern then emerges.

• Team Energy:  Taking the Team Diagnostic Assessment breaks down the factors sustaining the Team's energy levels. Recognizing and grappling with these factors enables teams to raise the energy they bring to their individual and collective work.
  

* Lencioni, Patrick Overcoming the five dysfunctions of a team: a field guide for leaders, managers and facilitators, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005

TCL Jan 2010