6 Things Any Leader Can Do To Build A Great Team
As a leader approaching team building proactively and creating an environment that allows everyone to flourish is a very powerful skill to learn.
A great way to start is sitting down with your team and deciding what your definition of a successful team looks like. Together you can set your visions, values and culture and use these to guide all your work both individually and collectively.
Listen to my podcast episode - The Secrets to Leading Successful Teams – for some practical exercises on how you can do this.
Make a difference to how your team comes together and build your skill as a leader with these 6 essential responsibilities for leading a successful team:
1: Setting Direction
In your team, everybody needs to be clear on where the team is going together and where they fit into that individually. It’s simply making sure that everyone knows what they’re working towards. Having a strategy or plan, goals and objectives can greatly help with this.
2: Treating People as One Team
This is especially important if you have a number of different teams within a department that you're leading. When you’re able to, bring them together and communicate with them collectively.
Setting your expectations that they are one team and you expect them to act as one can be really helpful.
3: Bringing Clarity
Clarity is particularly when it comes to roles and responsibilities. Look at all areas, projects and tasks your team members are responsible for and make sure there’s no ambiguity. Your team need to know what they’re responsible for, who they’re accountable to and who gets the credit. Being as clear as possible will also help to avoid tensions.
4: Ensuring Fairness
Although we might all feel that we’re fair leaders, we all have unconscious biases which we need to bring awareness to. This can be as simple as stepping back and reflecting on whether you are treating everyone the same, giving equal attention and have clear relationship boundaries.
It could be that someone in your team is more difficult to deal with so you find yourself avoiding giving them tasks or interacting with them too much. In contrast, there may be someone you have a really good relationship with and regularly chat to. They may get more access to information or given more opportunities to work alongside you.
5: Getting Social
A great thing you can encourage as a team leader is for your team to form relationships on a social level. There is evidence that teams who eat lunch together, work much more effectively together as and are more productive.
If you know someone on a more personal level, you’re more likely to want to help them, enjoy working with them and give them the benefit of the doubt when challenges come up.
6: Managing Tensions
With different personalities working together, there are bound to be tensions that arise. Here are 4 quick tips to address any team tensions.
- Check that you’re not causing any issues. You might be putting pressure on the team, focusing too much attention on one project or favouring individuals.
- Model the behaviour you want to see. Be a model of the values and culture you’ve set for your team and be conscious that you’re not exhibiting the behaviour you don’t want to see.
- Set clear boundaries and maintain them. Be clear on your expectations of what you want your team to do, when you want them to do it and how you want them to act with each other.
- Don't be a playground monitor. It’s not your job to be in the middle of any team tensions and fix them. As a leader, you can mediate if necessary but try first to create an environment where individuals can own their relationships and address their challenges themselves.
Listen to the full episode on the Influence & Impact podcast on Carla’s website, Apple, Spotify or Stitcher
For more articles on the issues that impact women leaders at work follow Carla Miller on LinkedIn
Find out about the various ways Carla works with women leaders and organisations on her website www.carlamillertraining.com
