Top 5 Skills of a Strong Team Leadership

 

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."

-John Quincy Adams

What is Team Leadership?

Team leadership plays a major part in a team’s success or failure. Leading a small operations team may not compare with the challenges of leading a large complex organisation. However it is worth viewing it in the context of leadership in general. Depending on the structure of an organization, team leaders may play a role in managing a certain group, subgroup or project. The way they perform their duties can have a substantial impact on the productivity and success of their team. Manager and leader are terms that don’t necessarily always go hand in hand. Although there’s no doubt the two are linked and often overlap, there are some important elements of leadership that the title of ‘manager’ just doesn’t cover.

From innovation to effective communication, a true leader is a step above the average manager, bringing an injection of motivation and insight into their role that not everyone has the ability to harness. On the other hand , a team leadership is someone who oversees the functionality of a work group by providing guidance and instruction. These individuals can have many roles, including:

• Manager or supervisor: Responsible for overseeing all activities within a team.
• Strategist: Responsible for deciding how to approach tasks and develop a plan to accomplish them.
• Communicator: Responsible for distributing information to team members and stakeholders.
• Organizer: Responsible for keeping track of and structuring various tasks, employees and documents.
• Goal setter: Responsible for determining the goals that members will work toward.

Communication

Becoming a strong leader means mastering the art of communication. To reach the level of manager, you’ll have no doubt demonstrated some level of talent for this; but to set yourself apart as a leader, you need to make sure truly impactful communication is at the heart of everything you do.

Strong team leadership requires not just regular, but shrewd communication. While transparency on developments within the company is valuable for team morale and development, a lot can be said for possessing astute judgement about what you share to keep morale buoyed and your team driven towards success.

Team leaders should closely monitor the extent of information sharing between the team. In addition, team members team should consider their goals and strategies. leaders When they do not attend the meetings of the team members, common information is lost. So leaders need to increase dialogue and should continue with this strategy. Given this additional information, the organization gets the chance to align vertically and horizontally with the rest of the team

Task‐Focused Behaviors

As mentioned earlier, research on teams reveals that successful team leaderships typically focus on two types of behavior: task‐focused and people‐focused.  Task‐focused behaviors include goal setting, work apportionment, process structuring, adapting to changes, standard setting, information seeking, and feedback.  Empirical studies routinely demonstrate that task‐focused behaviors directly relate to team effectiveness. Of all task‐focused leader behaviors, goal setting is arguably the most important and most effective.  Specific and ambitious goals lead to higher performance than goals that implore people simply to do their best.

Team leaders at the senior level must articulate goals that are consequential, challenging, and clear. Teams that routinely achieve excellence begin with clear objectives and expectations, receive timely and candid feedback, and garner recognition for goal accomplishment.  The “can‐do” American Army considers task accomplishment a sine qua non for effective team leadership. Additionally, to be most effective in complex environments, senior field grade officers must exercise task‐focused behavior with an emphasis on personal power as opposed to position power.

Develop team strengths and improve weaknesses

It is also the responsibility of the team leadership to identify the team’s strengths and weaknesses. By determining which team member excels at which task, you can delegate the required tasks to the appropriate person. It’s also helpful to determine areas of opportunity and the appropriate steps to improve on them. Otherwise, if the team leadership does not know the characteristics of the members, he cannot distribute useful tasks.

Team leader should be aware of not only his team but also his own shortcomings. In this way, every member like puzzel can complete the missing part of each other.

Team leaders should help develop interaction models between teams. Leaders should consciously analyze the process team and use it to get and share information that members receive specific tasks. It is very important to establish and monitor the task's completion speed and performance standards. An important component in team coordination is shared mental models. Team members consciously or unconsciously develop mental models from beliefs, thoughts and verbal explanations. These models then guide subsequent thoughts and actions. Well coordinated teams can use these experiences in a positive way. Consequently, coordination develops over time, but team leaders can shape certain elements.

Resolve Crisis

Team leaders are their actions in times of crisis. Managing the crisis is their biggest task. There are two elements that largely guide the workflow. The first is the crisis, the second is the solution. Because teams are made up of different personalities, work traits and motivations, conflict can sometimes occur.

The team leader is responsible for preventing conflict where possible and resolving it when it does arise. By setting ground rules and clearly assigning tasks, you can prevent many sources of conflict. If you notice conflict, it is best to resolve it before it escalates. Meeting with both team members can give you insight into the cause of the issue. Conferring with the members as a team can give everyone the opportunity to come up with a solution that works for both sides. If the problem is not in the team but at work, you should have a detailed meeting with your team and generate ideas. It is the team leader's responsibility to select and implement one of these ideas. (that is yours!)

The more you trust your team, the easier it is to decide. remember that; Ask yourself this question before creating a team "do I trust?". If your answer is yes, everything will be able to proceed in a controlled manner.

Innovate and Inspire

One of the key things that sets leaders apart from managers is the ability to innovate.

By bringing new ideas to processes and looking out for new ways to improve the way your team works, you lead by example and encourage others to find new ways to get tasks done. You’ll also inspire those around you to work harder and instil a practice of looking for constant improvement and development opportunities, the driving force of success.

Leadership may be very different from management, but it’s also something that can be learnt and developed over time. Your team will always give you experience. Accordingly, you can evaluate these experiences from different perspectives and present them back to them.

As a team leader, you need to command an impressive level of knowledge and, carry that off with confidence.

The two properties are linked - if you know your stuff when it comes to your industry, you'll feel confident in your performance and your expertise will influence your team. It goes without saying that any credible leader needs to be respected by his or her team; if that respect is missing, it can seriously hamper your chances of being a good team leadership.

Many words have been written on whether leadership is an inherent quality or a set of skills that can be learned. Numerous leadership development programs available have explored. As a result, if you consider the right conditions, you can definitely learn leadership skills. Through developing these skills we can also enhance less tangible leadership qualities such as personal awareness, presence, self-confidence.

Yes leadership is a skill. But this is never a negative thing. The ability is to adapt quickly to learning and practice. A person without leadership ability can learn and apply leadership. But the talented person adapts more slowly than the talented person.

To summarize,

when you have the privilege and responsibility of leading a company, having the right skillset is vital to success. Business owners and managers need to understand the difference between a leader and a boss and which skills distinguish the two.

It is difficult to organize all these responsibilities, your team and your work. You should plan your system very clean and present it publicly. Transparency within the team should be at the forefront and all risks should be taken into consideration. In order to avoid surprises, you should make your information clear to your team. You should be immediately informed and supported about the developments. It is impossible to do all this by yourself. In these cases, you can use software as - Corvisio -  that supports your work, and you can create your work and goals with your team. Make sure that the benefits of OKR software relaxes your business more than you guessed!