As a team leader, you are the one who needs to set an example for other team members. People look up to you, and expect you to come up with solutions, and do things the right way. This requires a high amount of creativity. Building credibility as a leader can be quite challenging, so this article aims to give you some useful advice that should point you in the right direction.
Team engagement makes or breaks team accomplishments. In fact, team engagement plays a huge role in meeting deadlines and reaching set goals.. Even though it is crucial to team success, engagement is challenging. To emphasize the importance of team engagement, we offer this concise guide. Included are some practical takeaways that you can apply at the heart of your team.
Team collaboration goes big when your team goes small. Team size in itself affects productivity and team synergy. Smaller teams have higher engagement, less overhead, better flow, and improved decision making. Best of all, it is more cost-effective to reach goals with smaller teams.
Yet, many times organizations go with “bigger is better. This often comes at the cost of effectiveness and produces sub-par results. So much so that it may be better to simply create two smaller teams than using a large one.
New York Times Bestselling author Sheryl Sandberg defines leadership in the most creative and truthful way. “Leadership”, says Sandberg, “is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.”
According to Sandberg, a great leader becomes such an inspiration for others that the teachings they spread will continue to have a lasting impact, even after they’re gone. Guiding employees in a way that transcends job duties and rigid responsibilities stands at the core of great leadership.
Motivate teams and get every obstacle cleared. Motivate teams and reach set goals. In fact, motivate teams and everything about teamwork streamlines to optimal results.
But in order to motivate teams, you need to be versatile. You need a full range of methods. Moreover, you need to possess special abilities, from public speaking to one-on-one mentoring and listening. Seems improbable? It’s actually achievable.
Team decisions are, at the core, delegating with superpowers. Using team decisions as a strategy has several key advantages. It means that you clear the way for leadership to focus on what’s important. You build team trust by enabling teams to make executive calls. And you flatten the hierarchy for a bit. Boost trust, enhance positive peer pressure and incentivize innovation. Or at least superior problem-solving, at all levels.
Team decisions are a productivity enhancing process. In short, it enables teams to take on some executive-level decision-making. It’s based on distilling managerial-level challenges. Clearing the decision space for the leader. Allowing the leader to focus on what’s important. Long-term strategy. Or large, tough spontaneous issues. Team decisions might sound like pampering the leader. Like they’re a way to cut down on leadership decisions.
But team decisions are more than treating the leader as a glass canon. They’re a way to offer some head space and focus. Effectively, they enable managers to make headway on strategically important decisions. Meanwhile, the team structure takes care of the rest; to an extent, they’re default decisions.
Team strengths are instrumental to boosting productivity and the success of your business. By playing team strengths, you increase team trust and team engagement.
Team strengths should be your focus even before building the team. Especially if you use team goals to target objectives. Team strengths are what a good leader uses to get the team through.
Executive communications are leadership informational exchange. It’s what happens when key people from the executive team have something to say. A key person may be the CEO, or any departmental head or a representative. Which means that executive communications are very important.
After all, when an executive team member has something to say, people pay attention. And departmental teams also pay a lot of attention. Also, whoever does not pay attention, stands to lose. From employees to investment bankers, everyone has an eye on executive communications.
Leaders or managers, this is the problem. While managers can be leaders, the reverse is not a must. In fact, these two roles are often separate. After all, modern businesses seem to prefer it this way. While leaders lead, managers manage.
On the other hand, every organization strives for success. Hence, any team wants to achieve, above and beyond. However, most often, management does not have a leadership role. In fact, management often deals with quality control and compliance. Also, they exercise control and offer accountability. Modern managers do all sorts of things, yet effective leadership seems to not be on the list.
