One CEO’s Approach to Building Teamwork: Pairing Up to Break Down Silos

The simple exercise can build cohesion, but has the added benefit of helping team members develop an outward mindset.

Harnessing the true power of an executive team can be very challenging. The ability to get even most of the members heading in the same general direction often stretches the skills of the best managers. It is surprising that, even though executives may have worked together for years, they may know very little about each other.

Michael R. Canady

Even more surprising is how little is known about how the actions and inactions of each team member affect the daily work flow of the others. One solution to this problem involves developing an “outward mindset.” This approach has been described by the Arbinger Institute in a 2016 book, The Outward Mindset: Seeing Beyond Ourselves. The key is to use methods that allow individuals to see how their actions positively or negatively affect others.

I recently became CEO of our organization and inherited a talented team of executives. The team had been together for about a year. Many individuals had long histories with the organization, but a few had been in place only for that year. While I felt fortunate to have all of the team members, I believed we could benefit from some of the principles described in the book. While the approach I took was not specifically described, it did result from a consideration of the philosophy that was described. I have called it “pairing up.”

The process is simple. I asked the team at our weekly meeting if they would be willing to participate in an exercise to help us build the team and develop better relationships. Although there was a little apprehension, it was my first significant request (beyond asking them to do their jobs as well as possible while I sorted out my new role). I said I would like for them to perform an exercise in pairs. They agreed, but before I told them the specific request, I allowed them to determine if they preferred a random pairing or would like for me to pair them up. Again, there was more apprehension, but eventually they all agreed to allow me to make the first pairing. This decision was assisted by my pointing out that this was only the first pairing. They would eventually be paired with all the other executives.

I put the chief nursing officer with the chief medical officer. The chief of ambulatory operations got together with the chief of acute care ops, and so on. My goal was for the first pairing to find as many synergies as possible.

The charge was in two parts, and it would not require much time — no more than 30 minutes. The first part of the assignment was to determine one fact about the other individual or something about their work that they did not know before. The second item was for each to come to agreement on something that the other could do to make their daily work flow easier. The deliverable was to report their findings to the entire group about a month later during a weekly executive meeting.

The consensus was that it was worth the effort. An unrecognized benefit of the report in the weekly meeting was the exponential effect of everyone getting the benefit of each pair’s endeavor. Another important aspect was that I participated as well. My first discussion was with the chairman of our board of directors. I did point out after the first set of reports that it will get more and more difficult to find things that you didn’t know about the other as a result of the entire team hearing the reports, but I think that it will get easier to find areas that simple changes by one individual result in huge work flow improvements by the other.

Building and growing an effective executive team can, at times, be a daunting task. However, it is vital to an organization’s success that this occur. Relationship development is a critical factor in this process and is necessary, but not sufficient. This simple exercise builds team cohesion, but has the added benefit of helping team members develop an outward mindset. The group reports accelerate the process. Everyone on our team had fun and learned a little bit more about another person, how they could help that other person and maybe even a little something about themselves.

I hope it helps you build your team, too.

Michael R. Canady, MD, MBA, CPE, FACS, is chief executive officer of Holzer Health System, based in Ohio.