Finding Common Ground & Shared Passion

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Click here to view and download the Discussion Guide to utilize with your Group and/or Team over the next 12 months. The Guide and questions will be updated each month to reflect the TOTM concept.

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“Quite simply, cohesiveness at the executive level is the single greatest indicator of future success that any organization can achieve..” 

Patrick Lencioni, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive


As we arrive at the 11th of the 12 tenets of Developing a Leadership Mindset, Find Common Ground and Shared Passion, it is fitting we are approaching a season of gratitude. If we are to succeed as cohesive individuals, teams, leaders, and as a nation, an “attitude of gratitude” is essential as my late uncle Charlie “Tremendous” Jones liked to say. Leaders who are grateful recognize their mantle of leadership is a calling, a privilege, and a sacred trust.

The most effective leaders, by whose results I have been most impacted, are hands down the most grateful and most humble humans. Humility, I believe, is rooted in an attitude of gratitude and I have had the privilege of working with many extraordinary, humble leaders over the years but three rise to the top as I consider who most exemplifies a heart of gratitude and a spirit of humility; they are a Chief Financial Officer, a former Senator, and my Spiritual Mentor and Leader of more than 20 years.

If leaders truly care about the current and future success of their organization, they will humbly find common ground and shared passion. The highest form of leadership is developing the ability to focus on the greater good of the group and to focus on others. Healthy leaders humbly and dispassionately seek to understand their colleagues enroute to finding common ground and developing shared passion.   

Leadership teams that experience a lack of cohesion suffer from a lack of organizational health, as well as poor performance and productivity. Building and maintaining a cohesive leadership team is Discipline #1 in Patrick Lencioni’s The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, the book we are focusing on the final quarter of 2022. One of the critical ways to develop a cohesive leadership team is to connect around common ground and shared passion.

Cohesiveness does not equate to a lack of conflict, or disagreement, quite the contrary. Healthy teams engage in passionate debate, even heated exchange, on the way to finding common ground and shared passion. It is challenging to achieve leadership team cohesion if everyone on the team is not committed to finding common ground and shared passion.

It takes an extraordinary focus on others to find common ground and to create an environment where everyone cares about shared passion above self-interest. Common gaps we have found in achieving common ground and shared passion may occur when:

  • decision making and behavioral boundaries for each individual and the collective group have not been identified and clearly articulated

  • individual leadership philosophies and styles differ

  • leaders have differing levels of emotional needs

  • there are differing levels of self-awareness and self-management

  • values and beliefs differ

  • some individuals engage in possibilities thinking while others have a limited versus growth mindset

  • differing levels of resourcefulness, risk taking, and/or tolerance for ambiguity

  • pessimism versus optimism approach to interactions and the gap between both approaches and an inability to understand and value the approach of the other individual’s paradigm

As you consider how to build a cohesive leadership team it will require each leader to develop a deep understanding of themselves, and co-leaders must spend the requisite time getting to know their fellow leaders in transparent and authentic ways. 

Building trust and caring, the foundation of all relationships, will ultimately result in cohesiveness. We must care enough about achieving cohesiveness that we are willing to invest in achieving common ground rooted in transparency, authenticity, and emotional maturity.

Lencioni recommends spending time reviewing personal histories together. He states, “although it may sound like a ‘touchy-feely’ exercise, I have found that it is remarkably helpful for members of a leadership team to spend time talking about their backgrounds.”

  • Create a regular forum for transparent and authentic dialogue. Spend time in social settings and activities that form common bonds.

  • Invite each member of the leadership team to provide others with a copy of their resume or CV and walk them through their life, vocational, and education experiences as a platform for discovering shared passion.

  • Spend time with each member of your leadership team developing self-awareness by using helpful tools such as a DiSC Profile, Change Ready Profile, and CliftonStrengths tools. Learn to know, understand, and value each member of the leadership team. 

  • Compare and contrast styles, talents, and strengths recognizing we all do the same things for different reasons.

As long as we focus on shared passion and find common ground, differences can be diminished and those we lead will benefit. In every meeting, every communication interaction, every decision, every plan operating out of common ground and shared passion provides a framework for what we fondly refer to as H.H.A. (Healthy, Helpful, Appropriate) engagement.

When President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden arrived in Hurricane Ian devasted Florida, President Biden stated, “this is the United States of America and I emphasize, United States.”  Later he added “we’re all in this together.”

Governor Ron DeSantis responded by expressing gratitude and the President and Governor found common ground around their shared passion, stating, “We appreciate working together across various levels of government.” Regardless of political party, beliefs or affiliation, extraordinary leadership is unequivocally taking the high road.

If we want to build cohesive teams, it begins at the highest levels of responsibility in organizations. Each leader in the transaction must work to develop emotional intelligence, identify their own emotional needs, and engage from a place of emotional maturity if we are to find common ground and shared passion.

Patrick Lencioni reiterates in his epilogue, “In terms of the effectiveness of a particular team, my experience indicates that a group’s cohesiveness has far more impact on success than its collective level of experience or knowledge.” Create the common ground at the organizational level and develop a cohesive leadership team by sharing the passion for the individual and organizational health of others.

Leaders taking the high road, exhibiting humility and an attitude of gratitude, and striving for the common good are all around us. Make the conscious choice to be the one that finds common ground and shared passion, one who will be remembered for building cohesiveness and their extraordinary leadership effectiveness.

-LS 

Group Discussion
Guide

Click here to view and download the Discussion Guide to utilize with your Group and/or Team over the next 12 months. The Guide and questions will be updated each month.

Recommended Quarterly Reading

The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive
By Patrick Lencioni

2023
Managing From The Inside Out

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