Michael Lissack
professional services firm Deloitte forms leadership teams, it uses “Strength Cartography” exercises that visualize how different leaders’ capabilities combine, highlighting both collective strengths and poten- tial gaps. Complementary pairing. Teams deliberately combine members with complementary strengths rather than similar profiles. When tech- nology company Adobe assigns executive sponsors to major initiatives, it explicitly pairs leaders with different capability profiles—visionaries with operators, technologists with market experts—creating more complete leadership. Gap acknowledgment. Teams openly recognize capability limita- tions rather than pretending to universal competence. When healthcare company Cleveland Clinic’s leadership team faces challenges outside its expertise, it explicitly acknowledges these limitations and engages ap- propriate external perspectives, modeling humble confidence rather than defensive omniscience. These approaches create what organizational theorist Ruth Wageman called “team composition alignment”—matching collective capabilities to purpose rather than assembling collections of individually impressive but potentially redundant talents.
Constructive tension management
Leadership teams that master complexity maintain productive ten- sions that generate energy rather than destructive conflicts that deplete it. These tensions create the creative friction necessary for innovation while preserving the cohesion essential for execution. Consumer goods company Unilever illustrates this approach through its “Creative Friction” methodology. Rather than eliminating tensions between different perspectives—global and local, short-term and long- term, growth and sustainability—Unilever’s leadership team deliberately maintains these tensions while providing frameworks for navigating them constructively. This approach creates what former CEO Paul Polman
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