Organizations often celebrate a “team of leaders” — a collection of high-performing executives each driving success in their respective domains. But a true leadership team is more than the sum of its parts. It’s not just about collaboration; it’s about collective accountability. And that shift—from a team of leaders to a leadership team—requires a mindset grounded in two deceptively simple questions: What is my Main Team? What is my First Team?
In Influence and Impact, I introduced these concepts to clarify the two key groups every leader serves. Your Main Team is the group you lead day-to-day—the people whose performance, development, and success you directly manage. Your First Team, by contrast, is the team your manager leads—the peers with whom you align priorities, share resources, and ultimately contribute to your manager’s success.
Why does this distinction matter?
Most executives view their Main Team as their primary allegiance. But when each leader in the C-suite prioritizes their own team over the collective goals of the organization, collaboration erodes. Resource battles flare up. Strategic misalignment takes root.
The transition to a leadership team begins when leaders recognize their First Team obligations as equal in weight to their Main Team responsibilities. In Ruth Wageman’s model of Senior Leadership Teams and in the work of Scott Tannenbaum and Eduardo Salas (Teams That Work), the leadership team is defined not just by hierarchical roles but by the shared enterprise of leading the business together.
This dual accountability—owning your team’s success while advancing your manager’s strategy—can be complex, especially in matrixed or global structures. HR leaders, for example, are often part of both a functional HR First Team and a business unit First Team. Navigating that ambiguity requires clarity about who makes decisions affecting your goals and your future.
As illustrated in Influence and Impact, Darlene, an e-commerce leader, advanced by understanding what her First Team—her manager and skip-level CEO—needed. She didn’t just manage her Main Team’s operations; she translated her insights into metrics that aligned with the CEO’s growth strategy. She wasn’t just a strong individual leader; she was a key contributor to the leadership team.
HR and I/O professionals have a vital role in supporting this shift. By helping leaders recognize and navigate their First Team obligations, you can foster more integrated, aligned, and effective leadership teams—teams that think beyond their silos and act in concert toward shared success.