The Functional Rock Star Leader Myth

How it contributes to disconnected and ineffective leadership teams

How does a leadership team become disconnected?

It starts here.

When hiring new leaders, we focus on selecting them primarily for their functional expertise. We make sure the job description includes the right amount of years of experience in the discipline. We ask other industry experts for recommendations for who’s the best in the field. We comb over their LinkedIn profile and past experience looking for markers of functional expertise. When we bring them into the company they don’t quite measure up to what we were expecting.

Here’s an example. Tom was considered one of the best in the field. His expertise and point of view on his discipline was admired far and wide. The role had been empty for a while, so the company was desperate for a leader with strong expertise. Tom joined to great hopes. A few months in, his peers were less enthusiastic. He ignored emails and calendar invites from leaders he didn’t think were up to the job, even when it meant stalling company initiatives. At leadership team meetings, he spoke up frequently and passionately advocating for resources for his area, even though it meant other areas had far less than they needed. When others pushed back, they received sharp elbows from him. Leadership team meetings grew quieter and quieter while back channel chatter ratcheted up. He left the company in a cloud of bad feelings from the team, a backlog of key initiatives, and a leadership team that needed to come back together.

As Tom’s story illustrates — discipline experience isn’t sufficient for the task of organizational leadership. That functional knowledge doesn’t mean a thing if we can’t work across organizational lines, align large groups of people, or navigate complexity and uncertainty if we can’t work effectively with our peers on the leadership team.

The company that hired Tom ran straight into the functional rock star leader myth. Rather than solve a problem, hiring this “rock star” caused friction, destabilized the leadership team, and endangered company goals. The functional rock star myth believes that the way to company success is through having an excellent expert leading a discipline. It removes the organizational context in which these “experts” must function. It forgets that the first team of an organizational leader is that of the leadership team rather than the folks they guide in their area. It ignores the fact that lone-wolf organizational leaders are more harmful than helpful. In the process of prioritizing functional strength, we deprioritize the collaboration required to achieve goals that span the entire company.

Focusing on discipline expertise is how we end up with a disconnected leadership team of organizational leaders acting like functional leaders. It’s also, by the way, how orgs become siloed, and rigid and struggle to move forward effectively.

Not familiar with the functional vs organizational leadership terminology? Here’s the original post on my framework. And here are key skills needed for each of these types of leadership.

Functional leadership skills

• Strong operational and execution ability

• Manage a team to achieve goals related to an area of the business

• Regularly use frameworks and principles of a discipline in their work

• Knowledge of and ability to use discipline-specific tools

• Manage humans, tools, and processes in day-to-day activities of an area

Organizational leadership skills

• Able to get folks onboard without using positional authority

• Aligns a group around a common goal

• Understand how the system works and the impact of decisions across it

• Know how to manage organizational change

• Able to build strong partnerships across the organization

• Can translate vision and develop a strategy that meets company goals

As you can see, they’re quite different.

It’s not that you’ll never use functional skills as an org leader, it’s that you’ll use them less in favor of the ones listed above. As an org leader, your responsibility is first to the organization and second to the function you oversee.

Your leadership team doesn’t need a functional rock star leader. Your leadership team needs organizational leaders who understand how to work within a system to achieve a greater objective. Your leadership team needs organizational leaders who prioritize the good of the collective over their own achievements or that of their team. The success of the business starts and ends here.

A cohesive team of solid functional, but excellent organizational leaders will outperform a disconnected team of functional rock star leaders every day.

This might be surprising. Here’s why. As Tom’s story illustrates, those who think of their discipline knowledge and expertise as the primary skill needed will focus on that above all else. They might hoard resources. They won’t build relationships with peers making it difficult to work through organizational friction. They’ll be more likely to protect the team rather than work to resolve organizational dysfunction. They’ll lead through ego, prizing individual or area achievement over that of the leadership team.

It doesn’t matter if you hire the best product leader in the biz. If they can’t work with their peers as a cohesive unit all that ability to understand the market and select the right features that move customers to love and evangelize your product is for naught. You’ll have a great road map and a pile of ideas that won’t turn into anything real.

Your leadership team doesn’t need a functional rock star leader. Your leadership team needs organizational leaders who understand how to work within a system to achieve a greater objective.

When we prioritize an org leader’s functional skills we sow the seeds for a disconnected leadership team. Of course, there are plenty of other reasons these teams become dysfunctional. Today we’ll focus on negating where it starts — with the functional rock star leader myth.

The seeds of an effective leadership team

An effective leadership team starts by focusing on the leadership team as the key ingredient rather than the leaders of individual disciplines. It means letting go of the functional rock star myth and focusing on the mindset and skills of organizational leadership. Folks who understand their work as part of a greater system that requires partnership will more readily contribute to creating a cohesive leadership team. That’s the x-factor that will help you create and maintain the momentum of a sustainable entity.

So, if we need to hire or promote someone to lead a function, start by identifying a minimal list of functional expertise needed. We’ll probably want to take that list and chop it in half so we steer clear of the functional rock star leader myth. This will require thoughtful conversation. It might slow down the process but it’s worth it. Then spend time identifying the culture of the leadership team and what’s required to be successful in it. Think about the leaders on the team now and how they best collaborate. Think about what style might be most complimentary or effective with the current team.

Once we identify the minimum functional expertise needed and the context of the first team they’ll be working in, we’re ready to start interviewing.

Look for organizational skills like the ability to work in a system, build partnerships, and navigate complexity. Functional skills are often easier to spot the organizational ones. So here are a few things to look for:

• Ask about a time they co-led an initiative across areas. Look for how they approached the task. Was it collaborative, did they allow others to lead or did they insist on their way?

• Ask about a time they encountered friction with another area. Look for how they handled it. Did they ignore it, escalate it up the chain, or address it directly?

• Ask about their peer relationships across the company. How well are they connected with peers in other areas? What are those relationships like?

Thanks for reading!

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