Silo Breakers: How to Lead Across the Organization

Today’s business leaders are challenged to lead in multiple directions. They are called upon to lead in a complex world full of unknowns and fast-paced change, and organizations continue to place more and more onto them. Within fast-paced work environments, how can leaders find ways to take on more of these expectations and be successful? They cannot go it alone; leaders must be able to build relationships and work laterally across the organization. Gone are the days of working strictly in your functional area. Breaking through silos is a necessity for leadership teams to be successful. How do leaders ensure they are all tied to the mission of the organization? How do leaders approach lateral influence? How do they connect with other leaders and build support systems, so they all help each other carry the load and be successful?

In this executive course, we will discuss the importance of how you, as a leader, influence your peers and break down silos through the use of proactive coping, building coalitions, and connecting fellow leaders to a shared purpose, in the context of leading in multiple directions through complex situations. The first half of the course will focus on experiential case exercises, where participants will engage in an interactive discussion using real-world experiences that will lead to self-discovery on handling a variety of interpersonal conflicts and workplace demands across teams. The second half of the course will focus on identifying blind spots and strengths in your leadership approach when faced with the demands of leading across the organization.

Course Outline

Section One: Understanding How to Break Through Silos Between Functional Teams

1.1. Experiential Exercise — The Endowed Chair Case Participate in a decision-making scenario in which the group must come to a consensus under a time constraint. Communication will be challenging due to availability of information. Group members must work through these challenges to arrive at a shared recommendation.

1.2. Debrief — The Endowed Chair Case Discuss your team’s ability to communicate, with limited common information, in order to arrive at a shared group recommendation. Understand what dynamics emerged and how individuals adapted their communication to influence the team. Discuss strategies to improve your ability to exchange and absorb information from multiple people representing different perspectives.

1.3. Experiential Exercise — Puzzle Challenge Participate in a group activity in which teams must work within and between teams in order to complete the challenge. Teams will learn to embrace systems thinking and adapt to a changing work environment.

1.4. Debrief — Puzzle Challenge Discuss within and between team dynamics the impact of systems thinking on accomplishing goals. Understand how goals of the organizational team contribute to the overall success of the entire enterprise. Understand what dynamics emerged, how team decisions were made and how changes to the team environment impacted outcomes.

Section Two: Successful Strategies for Working Across Teams

2.1. Experiential Exercise Participate in a team-building activity in which the group must build a structure, but each individual has a secret “assignment” which makes the collaborative process challenging.

2.2. Debrief Discuss how diversity in the team impacted your team’s ability to work toward a common goal. Understand what dynamics emerged and how individuals adapted their communication to influence the team. Discuss how the team planned their approach to execute the exercise and elicit who was more influential and why. Discuss the approach to resolving conflict in the team.

2.3. Leadership Concepts — Influencing to the Left and Right Lead a discussion regarding concepts such as team diversity, team dynamics and shared leadership. Discuss strategies to improve your organizational view and build a collaborative network. Increase awareness to help participants shift perspective on how they influence and maximize relationships with other leaders across the organization.