Navigating leadership teams

The chapter explores issues around what makes senior leadership teams (for example, boards and top management teams) effective by considering how team composition and team processes affect performance in a global context. The tension under investigation pertains to uniformity and diversity, which has implications for the dynamics and performance of boards and TMTs. As upper echelons increasingly need to strategize for the global stage rather than solely for their domestic arena, new factors arise that affect the strategic decision-making process (e.g., multiple headquarters, multicultural TMTs, conflicting strategic demands). This chapter combines concerns of senior leadership teams with new forms of organizing in global organizations. To manage diversity in senior leadership teams, this chapter delves into managing team boundaries, group faultlines, and transactive memory systems to manage the tension concerning diversity.