Essay: Building a Strong Leadership Team in Banking

This essay delves into the process of creating effective leadership teams, particularly within the retail banking sector. It emphasizes the crucial role of leadership in achieving organizational goals and outlines various activities essential for building strong, collaborative teams. The essay highlights the importance of selecting members based on experience and talent, encouraging information sharing, and fostering a shared vision. It also explores the challenges leaders face, such as time constraints and conflicting opinions, and suggests strategies for mitigation, like online discussions and promoting respect. The essay concludes by underscoring the significance of a leader's ability to motivate team members, promote collaboration, and adapt to challenges, ultimately contributing to the overall success and efficiency of the banking firm. Furthermore, the essay emphasizes the importance of accountability, clarifying company values, and exerting control during stressful situations to build a strong and cohesive leadership team.

ESSAY

Abstract
In this essay, a brief discussion has been done regarding the creation of an effective
leadership team. The importance of leadership, especially in a retail banking firm is
elaborated in this task. Different activities that can be adopted while creating good
leadership teams are described in detail. In the end, potential challenges that can be
faced while creating a good leadership team are explained along with strategies to
mitigate them.
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Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................4
Importance of developing a leadership team...............................................................4
Creating a leadership team..........................................................................................4
Challenges of leadership team.....................................................................................8
Conclusion....................................................................................................................9
Reference list..............................................................................................................10
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Introduction
A leadership team is a team of administrators, who help the organization to achieve
goals. This team is responsible for developing strategies for ensuring organizational
goals. The structure of a leadership team is determined based on the needs of the
company. The role of a leadership team is to help organizations to build the ability to
meet market demands. This essay is focusing on the role of a leader to put together
a leadership team within an organization. For example, an area head of a retail bank
needs to understand business demands before putting together a strongly efficient
leadership team for achieving organizational goals.
Importance of developing a leadership team
The chief function of the leadership team in the retail banking sector is to bring
together all senior leaders who perform diverse functions for solving shared
problems. This, in turn, can ensure aligned action can help to take collective
responsibility for the performance of the organization. As stated by Hedman (2015),
leaders in an organization build leadership teams because when a leader is
surrounded by skilled people at leadership level then organizational growth can be
gained. Great teamwork leads to better productivity that leads to efficient and
successful business practices. An effective leadership team can help to achieve the
vision of a banking firm by improving day to day operations.
Creating a leadership team
The selection of members is the primary step of putting together a leadership
team. It is important for the members to trust each other and work collaboratively
(Conner, 2015). The performance of existing employees must be evaluated first to
identify potential members for the leadership team. In this stage, it is possible for a
leader to make a biased decision. For example, if an area head of a retail bank
needs to form a leadership team, he or she can prefer those people who are familiar
to them in the company. However, it is an incorrect process and a leader must select
the members of a leadership team based on the experience and talent of company
people.
Encouraging team members is the next step after selecting the team members. It
is important to motivate them to share information with each other. As a leadership
team is formed with talented leaders, it is possible for team members to judge each
other. On the other hand, Cangemi, Burch, and Miller (2015) have mentioned that a
leader can judge members of the leadership team based on their valued
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characteristics. As per this research paper, the currency of leadership can be
considered as judgment. For managing this kind of situation, members of the team
need to be asked for respecting each other. Believing in the ability of self and the
team can help leaders to maintain high standards. For example, a leader of a retail
bank needs to influence leadership team members to work collaboratively to deliver
the result within minimum time.
Sharing vision is imports action that needs to be performed while putting together a
leadership team. The vision of the company needs to be written and shared with
leadership team members. Understanding organizational vision helps to understand
the roles and responsibilities of leaders. As mentioned by Conner (2015), it is the
duty of the management to fulfill the basic needs of leaders to encourage them to
build a good relations ion with each other. For example, a leader of a retail bank
needs to communicate with the authority about the basic needs of the selected
members of the leadership team to gain their trust and support. The vision must be
reinforced again and again to motivate team members regularly. Frequent meetings
must be encouraged to allow leaders to discuss strategies to comply with the
company vision.
For putting together a leadership team, a leader needs to be relational. Hawkins
(2017) has mentioned that leaders need to learn with their colleagues. For example,
the area manager of a retail bank needs to communicate with team members while
learning new things. It is important to monitor changes in individuals. However, the
relation between leaders can be improved if they communicate with each other
during self-development.
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Figure 1: Creating a leadership team
(Source: influenced by Feldman, 2018)
A leader needs to ask team members of a leadership team for their suggestions
and opinions. Members of this kind of team may feel offended if they only get
comments. They must be encouraged to use their own knowledge and experience to
develop strategies for mitigating business goals. As stated by Feldman (2018),
monitoring and controlling of leadership team depends on the members. For
example, managers of a retail firm need to communicate with each other regarding
each others' performance. In the meetings after selection of team members, they
need to share their insights and opinions with each other. This practice can help a
leader to make a good leadership team. As mentioned by Hawkins (2017),
considering transformational leadership style can help a leader to encourage others
to be a part of a leadership team.
The involvement of the leadership team in quarterly strategic planning is
another essential step of leadership team building. This structure of planning may be
new to the team but regular communication can help other leaders to get
accustomed. As opined by Feldman (2018), building a leadership team is an iterative
process without any end. The quarterly strategic planning process can help to build a
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relationship of trust in the team. In this planning process, an agenda for the next
quarter can be fixed by aligning the organizational mission and goals. For example,
in the retail bank, the agenda of improving customer experience can be fixed. All the
leaders in a team will guide their respective teams to achieve the strategic goal in the
next quarter.
In another step, the leadership team's help needs to be enlisted to make the
banking firm accountable. As stated by Conner (2015), accountability towards
customers is the main duty of a banking organization. Different questions can be
asked to the leadership team members to measure the current state of operations
and help that each operational team is providing to the company.
Figure 2: Question examples
(Source: Influenced by Conner, 2015)
After conducting this analysis or current procedure, the services that are currently
offered can be enlisted. Thus, gaps in performance can be identified and future
strategic actions to mitigate those gaps can be taken. In addition, it is also essential
for the leader of the team to get included. This can help the leader of the leadership
team to gain trust from other members. The leadership of the leader can be
empowered and the leader can be held accountable for every action, decision, and
behavior. Members are a leadership team that often tests the leader to measure the
accountability towards the company's priorities and values. The only way to pass
this test is to accept own responsibility and work according to standard. In a retail
bank, the leader of a leadership team needs to follow the same rules as other
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leaders of the team do. This can help to increase collaboration in the team and trust
can increase.
Clarification of company values is another essential step, which needs to be
filtered properly. The leaders need to encourage the team to use the same way that
they use and regular monitoring is essential. The leader needs to monitor how other
leaders in the team use the company's values to make tough decisions and provide
inputs. For achieving this, the leader needs to increase personal learning abilities
and capabilities that can help to achieve trust from other members. As said by
Feldman (2018), relationship trust includes some principal factors, which include
capabilities, results, intent, and integrity.
Further, the leader can intentionally seize moments for taking action. This can
help the leader to exert control on the team and the behavior of the leadership team
can be controlled. During these moments, other leaders of the banking firm can be
invited to express their thoughts regarding change in firm's operation or goals.
Exerting control through seizing helps leaders in a team to watch, absorb everything
and pass to the rest of the company. During this activity in a retail banking firm, team
meetings can be arranged or workshops for leaders can be organized.
A leader needs to exert full control of a specialist in a banking firm when stress
is high. In a banking firm, huge pressure can cause stress of employees along with
leaders (Cangemi et al. 2015). Exerting control of a leader during this moment can
help to have a prominent impact on the leadership team. These are the golden
opportunity for a leader to gain trust from other members of the leadership team and
make a strong team. The best way to build a strong leadership team is to work
together and gain success. In a banking firm, it is essential to perform collaboratively
to provide seamless service to customers with fewer errors. Hence, integrated
performance can help to align operations with strategic goals.
Challenges of leadership team
There are many challenges that a leader in retail banking firms need to face while
creating an effective leadership team. Time constraints are a major challenge that
banking sector firms face because they have to manage lots of operations and
processes in a short span of time. Different targets of leadership team can get
resisted due to lack of time (Hawkins, 2017). Leaders in the team can get distracted
and frustration can occur while performing the activities in a leadership team. Thus, it
is essential to adopt strategies like conducting online classes and organizing
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discussions through social media channels. These strategies can help to save time
and provide flexibility to busy leaders of a leadership team.
Figure 3: Challenges of leadership team
(Source: Influenced by Hawkins, 2017)
While developing a leadership team, a leader can face difficulties due to a mismatch
of opinion. All skilled and talented leaders have been to be included in the
leadership team. Different insights of leaders may prevent collaborative work and
they may show disrespectful behavior. However, this challenge can be mitigated with
prolonged communication before working as a team. For example, an area manager
of a team needs to encourage selected members to respect each others' opinions.
Conclusion
From the entire discussion of this essay, it can be concluded that formation of a
leadership team is a difficult process. A leader needs to select appropriate members
for the leadership team based on their abilities. It is important to encourage team
members to share their insights, opinion, and suggestions before working together.
For example, a manager of retail banking needs to communicate with efficient
leaders to form a team to help the organization to achieve its goals. A leader must
motivate team members to focus on the organizational vision and work
collaboratively to meet common business objectives.
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Reference list
Cangemi, J., Burch, B., and Miller, D., 2015. Judging the executive leadership team-
a proposal. Organization Development Journal, 33(2), p.67.
Conner, T., 2015. Relationships and Authentic Collaboration: Perceptions of a
Building Leadership Team. Leadership and Research in Education, 2(1), pp.12-24.
Feldman, H.R., 2018. Identifying, building, and sustaining your leadership team.
Journal of Professional Nursing, 34(2), pp.87-91.
Hawkins, P., 2017. Leadership team coaching: Developing collective
transformational leadership. Kogan Page Publishers.
Hedman, E., 2015. Facilitating leadership team communication. Jyväskylä studies in
humanities, 266.
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