1) Is it your own team, where you are the responsible manager?
2) Or is it the leadership team you are a member of, which your manager is responsible for?
The answer is 2)! Your primary team is the highest possible leadership team you are part of.
Your employees would probably answer differently, because they see you as their representative in the leadership team – for example, when budgets, headcount, projects and objectives are being negotiated. Then you return to your team after a leadership meeting and share what you negotiated in the leadership group.
But… you are jointly responsible for the strategy, which contains the company’s overall ambitions and therefore, by definition, cross-functional strategic priorities that are collectively owned by the leadership team. Each leader has a set of functional teams at their disposal to deliver on the shared objectives.
That is why you should regard your highest leadership team as your primary team, and your own functional team as your secondary team.
🧠 The way you view the teams you are part of is decisive for your behaviour in those teams. If you enter the leadership team and see your fellow leaders as your secondary team, it can result in unhealthy competition, unsafe conflicts, hidden agendas and sub-optimising dynamics.
By contrast, if you see your leadership team as your primary team, then you share knowledge, reach goals, solve challenges and make decisions together. 🤝
P.S. 😨 Only 9% of leaders say they trust other functions in strategy execution (Sull 2015) – which does not suggest a primary-team mindset in leadership groups.
Try taking this discussion in both your primary and secondary team – how do the others rank them? And is it always black and white?