A leadership team doesn’t become high performing by putting your best people in a room once a week. It needs the right conditions in place first: who’s on the team, what it’s for, and how it works. Get those right and good teamwork becomes much more likely. Leave them unclear and even talented leaders will act like a group of individuals.
The framework I use most with leadership teams is the 6 Team Conditions, from the research of J. Richard Hackman and Ruth Wageman at Harvard. Their book Senior Leadership Teams (2008, with Debra Nunes and James Burruss) looked at senior leadership teams around the world and found that the conditions around a team mattered far more than the leader’s personal style.
Why use the 6 Team Conditions?
| Framework | Strength | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Patrick Lencioni) | Easy to grasp, strong on trust and conflict | Starting the conversation about team behaviour |
| Systemic Team Coaching (Peter Hawkins) | Looks at the team in its wider system | Teams working with a professional team coach |
| 6 Team Conditions (Hackman and Wageman) | Clear structure that team leaders can apply themselves | Leadership teams that want a practical checklist |
All three are useful. I prefer the 6 Team Conditions for growing businesses because it gives a team leader a clear structure to put in place, without needing a professional team coach for every step.
The three essential conditions
1. A real team
A real team is:
- Bounded: everyone knows who is on the team and who isn’t.
- Interdependent: members work together to create value, not just report on their own areas.
- Stable: membership doesn’t change every few months.
Signs this is missing: people aren’t sure who’s on the leadership team, or the meeting is a round of individual updates.
2. A compelling direction
The team’s purpose is:
- clear
- challenging
- consequential
It sets out the end goal, not the method. The team decides how to get there.
Signs this is missing: leaders can’t describe in one sentence what the team exists to achieve together.
3. The right people
The team has the right mix of skills, perspectives and experience for its purpose, and the team skills to work well together.
Signs this is missing: the team is made up of whoever runs each department, regardless of fit. More on this in why having the right people matters more than having the best people.
The three enabling conditions
4. Sound structure
- The team is small, ideally under 10.
- It works on tasks that genuinely need the whole team.
- It has clear norms of conduct that members hold each other to.
Signs this is missing: the team has grown too big to make decisions, or nobody calls out behaviour that breaks the team’s agreements.
5. A supportive context
- The team leader can influence upwards and outwards to remove roadblocks and get resources.
- The business rewards team results, not just individual ones.
- The team gets the information, education and resources it needs.
Signs this is missing: bonuses are tied only to individual department results.
6. Team coaching
The team has access to coaching. This can come from an external team coach, the team leader, or a team member who takes on the role.
Signs this is missing: nobody steps back to look at how the team works, only at what it’s working on.
How to check your leadership team
Rate your team from 1 to 5 on each of the six conditions, and ask each leader to do the same on their own. Then compare the scores together. The gaps between people’s scores are often more useful than the scores themselves.
For a more detailed benchmark, I run a diagnostic that measures your team against the 6 Team Conditions. See our Leadership System Diagnostic.
Frequently asked questions
What are the 6 Team Conditions?
Real team, compelling direction, right people, sound structure, supportive context and team coaching. The first three are essential and the last three are enabling.
Who created the 6 Team Conditions?
The framework comes from the research of J. Richard Hackman and Ruth Wageman, set out in Senior Leadership Teams (2008).
How is this different from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team?
Lencioni’s model focuses on team behaviours such as trust, conflict and accountability. The 6 Team Conditions focuses on the setup around the team, which tends to drive those behaviours.
How big should a leadership team be?
The research favours small teams, ideally fewer than 10 people. Larger teams struggle to make decisions together.
What is executive team coaching?
It’s coaching for a leadership team as a whole, rather than for individual leaders. The coach works with the team on how it operates together, often using a framework like the 6 Team Conditions.
Want a leadership team that runs the business with you, not around you?
I work with owners and their leadership teams through leadership team coaching services and leadership team offsites. Book a leadership team diagnostic chat with Charlie.