1. Maintaining morale and keeping people positive.
2. Generating new and different ideas to tackle old and long standing problems.
3. Dealing effectively with the underperformers.
4. Getting everyone to pull together, especially when they have different values or aspirations.
5. Dealing with the dominant people who try to railroad everything to suit their circumstances.

What else would you add?

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

As your career starts to gain momentum and you start to demonstrate what you can deliver personally, chances are you will find yourself in a position where you are given your own team to lead.  Leading a team brings with it a number of challenges and can feel like no matter what you do someone will be unhappy.  So if you are to succeed as a team leader, what 5 qualities are essential to your success?

Quality 1: An effective listener

One of the most important and yet most challenging things for team leaders is effectively listening to others.  It can be hugely tempting to try and rely on your position power to make things happen and while this might get some results in the short term it is unlikely to work in the long term.  Make listening more effectively and actively a priority if you want to make an immediate improvement in your team leadership competency.

Quality 2: Treating everyone fairly

Just as in life, there will be some people that you connect with more than others.  This in itself is not a problem as such unless it starts to compromise how you treat others.   Treat everyone fairly and you will gain the respect and support of those that you lead in most cases.

Quality 3: Providing clear direction

As the leader of the team you need to provide direction to others.  This includes giving a clear message of the overall direction of the team or function as well as clearly setting the expectations of the team of people that you lead.  If you fail to do this, chances are that the results that you deliver will be less than they could potentially be.

Quality 4: Making decisions

You might not always have 100% support for every decision that you make but people will value the fact that you take decisions.  Being led by someone who procrastinates over every decision is a huge de-motivator and hugely frustrating for those that you lead.

Quality 5: A genuine interest in others

If you don’t show any interest in helping others to achieve results and success in their careers why should they be interested in helping you get results?  Team leaders who make the time to take a genuine interest in helping others achieve results will get benefits well in excess of the investment of time and energy that that they make.

Bottom Line – Team leadership is challenging and rewarding.  Doing some simple things exceptionally can make a huge difference to the results and success that you achieve.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps professionals and organisations to achieve better results through improved team working.  Click here to find out more.

We all recognise and know what a big difference a leader can make to a team.  At the same time team leadership can be tough.  So what are 5 realities you need to face up to when it comes to team leadership?

Reality 1: Your success depends on having the right team

While easy to say in practice it is much more difficult to achieve.  You often inherit people or find it difficult to move on those who are not a good fit.  You also need to be adept at identifying the types of people and the qualities you need to create great results.

Reality 2: Conflict is part and parcel of a team

While you hope to achieve camaraderie and get everyone working together the truth is conflict will always be part and parcel of a team.  As the leader the challenge is to use conflict productively rather than allowing it to be destructive.

Reality 3: You need to get all views aired

The value of a team is the diversity of opinions, ideas, perspectives and ways of looking at things.  Some will readily offer their thoughts and views while others need to be encouraged to speak up.  As the leader you need to make sure that an equal opportunity to speak is given to everyone.

Reality 4: Your status does not guarantee success

There may have been a time in the past where leaders achieved success based on position power.  These days such a style of leadership rarely works.  People need to respect you and feel that you respect them if they are going to support you.

Reality 5: You set the tone for the team and the results it achieves

As the leader the tone you set or even your attitude goes a long way towards the results that a team achieves.  If you have a general attitude of finding a way to achieve something you are much more likely to deliver more than someone who focuses on the obstacles.

Bottom Line – Leading a team is tough.  So what do you need to focus on to achieve more success as a leader?

As a leader you will have the role of leading what may well be a very large team of people.  With more organisations now operating across the globe, you may well find that you are also having to lead a virtual team located hundreds or potentially thousands of miles from where you are based.  So what are my 8 top tips for leading teams?

Tip 1: Set clear goals or outcomes

If your team or teams are to achieve anything they need to have absolute clarity on what you expect them to deliver in terms of goals or outcomes.  While in theory this might seem simple, too often leaders fall into the trap of setting very vague or ambiguous goals.  To overcome this start by getting clear about what you want to be different 1, 3 or even 5 years from now and then narrow it down to a very clear purpose.

Tip 2: Facilitate more and direct less

As the leader of the team, think of yourself as the conductor of the orchestra rather than the person playing an instrument. Your role is to bring out the best from everyone in the team so that you get optimal performance and results.

Tip 3: Learn to listen

We were all given two ears and one mouth.  Yet often you would think that it was the other way round.  Don’t fall into the trap as the leader of the team of spending all of your time talking and little or none getting the contributions of others.

Tip 4: Reward team rather than individual performance

If someone is going to be rewarded just for what they do individually, what incentive is there to contribute to team performance?  Aim to create reward structures that mean that if the team wins, everyone wins rather than being narrowly focused on individuals.

Tip 5: Be consistent

All leaders have their own style which is to be expected.  At the same time it is important as a team member to have some sort of consistency in leadership style.  There is nothing worse in having to guess what leader has turned up on a particular day so try to be as consistent as possible.

Tip 6: Be a role model

As the team leader you set the tone for the rest of the team.  How you behave, how you interact, how you deal with difficulties and conflict will all impact on the team.  Decide on the tone you want to set then model that for others.

Tip 7: Provide opportunity

One of the big attractions of being on a team is that you often get the chance to work with different people or to take on new challenges.  Use this as an opportunity to grow and develop people.

Tip 8: Take responsibility and praise others

When things don’t go according to plan, take responsibility and don’t seek to apportion blame.  When things go well don’t grab the glory and make appoint of praising others.

Bottom Line – Leading a team looks easy yet in truth it is hugely challenging.  So what do you need to be doing to create more success as a team leader?