Posts Tagged ‘how to lead a team’

As you progress in your career you are likely to find that sooner rather than later you are in a position where you are leading a team. While leading a team is hugely rewarding there are many challenges too. So what are the big challenges you need to overcome if you are to achieve success?

Challenge 1: Being Clear About What You Want To Achieve

A lot of people talk about mission statements and the importance of having a clear vision. In reality getting crystal clear about what you want to achieve is really tough and yet without clarity it is difficult to brief others.

Challenge 2: Getting The Buy-In Of People

Unless you have followers you are not a leader and not leading a team. Winning hearts and minds is tough, especially when proposing something different. Being able to step into others shoes is a major benefit.

Challenge 3: Responding To Different Agendas

Different people want different things from their work, their employer and boss. Responding to these different demands and agendas is tough.

Challenge 4: Handling Resistance

Resistance will come up whatever you try to do. It never ceases to amaze me the lengths people will go to in order to hold on to things, even those things that they don’t like when they face uncertainty.

Challenge 5: Keeping People Engaged

Many studies have identified that as few as 20% of people are actively engaged in the organisational agenda. Disengagement hurts organisations in terms of productivity, customer satisfaction and profits so don’t underestimate the importance of keeping people engaged.

Challenge 6: Handling Negativity

Some people are said to be glass half full people while others are glass half empty. In those situations where the glass half full dominate they can drag down even the most optimistic team members.

Challenge 7: Impatience

We all to some extent want quick results and the reality is that anything significant takes time to achieve.

Challenge 8: Remaining Positive Personally

You are a human being not a robot. In the face of a tidal wave of despondency it can be really tough to stay positive.

Challenge 9: Getting The Balance Right

There is a fine line between pushing people to hard and being a soft touch and it is tough to get it right.

Challenge 10: The High Jump Factor

When you achieve anything just like in the high jump the bar is raised to another level. As a consequence you are under constant pressure to continually raise the game of your team and yourself.

The Bottom Line: Leading a team can look really easy from the outside looking in. The reality is often very different.

Duncan Brodie helps professional people to become highly effective leaders. You can sign up for his free audio e-course here

Leading a team can be a challenge. There are many different personalities with their own desires, goals, agendas and perspectives.

So what are my best secrets of leading a team?

Secret 1: Aim to be consistent
• Don’t be the leader who is the split personality. Have a style and try to stick to it.

Secret 2: Take an interest in others

• Leaders need followers. The best way to build followers is to be interested in their success.

Secret 3: Be clear on expectations

• Despite what you think, people prefer clarity on what is expected of them to vagueness.

Secret 4: Provide support

• Teams have ups and downs. Support them through the good and not so good times.

Secret 5: Determine people’s motivators

• If you don’t know what makes people tick, how can you ever expect to motivate them?

Secret 6: Give feedback routinely

• People thrive on feedback. Make a point of giving feedback routinely.

Secret 7: Paint a picture

• The clearer the picture you can paint of where you want to get to, the better.

Secret 8: Build trust

• As someone said to me recently, “No trust equals no team”.

Secret 9: Keep it all in perspective

• Sometimes, especially when the going gets tough, it is easy to lose sight of the relative importance of things. Learn to keep things in perspective.

I wonder what secrets you would add?

For the exhaustive reference on working with, leading and managing teams, check out the special pre-release on my latest book. If you are serious about your team, don’t miss this special Click here for more details

Reality 1:
• You need to give the team a clear outcome.

Reality 2:

• People on teams are more likely to embrace decisions if they are involved.

Reality 3:

• Trust is key to any successful team.

Reality 4:

• The team members need to be aligned behind a common purpose or outcome.

Reality 5:

• You need to know how to get the best from every team member.

What other suggestions would you add to the list of realities?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here