When we read about teams that are successful, it is all too easy to fall into the trap of believing that they are all in perfect harmony, heading in the same direction and effortlessly delivering results.  While this might be great in theory, the difficult stuff and conflict is just part and parcel of any successful team.

So what can you do to deal with the difficult stuff in teams?

Make facts the primary focus

In challenging times it is easy to fall into the trap of getting personal, starting to criticise individuals and saying or doing something that you regret later.  Facts on the other hand are verifiable, objective and not personal.  For example, if there is a report that is showing that the level of sales is falling week after week, this is factual and verifiable.  A discussion around the facts is likely to be more productive and beneficial than getting personal and seeking a scapegoat.

Expand the options

Whilst logic might make you think that the fewer options the better, research suggests that it might well be worthwhile expanding the options.  Part of the reason for this is that people don’t feel pressurised to back one or the other and be seen to take seconds.  It also means that the energies of the team are on solutions not what has gone wrong.

Create a goal everyone can connect to

In most organisations there is one common goal that a team can connect to.  Sometimes it might be the client or customer.  At other times it might be an innovation or improvement.  Once you have people looking at the difficulty through a common agreed lens, conflict can reduce and result focus increased.

Make the decision making process fair

A decision will have to be taken by someone at some point and people accept this as long as they feel that there has been a fair process for reaching decisions.  What this means at a practical level is that people feel like they have had their opportunity to put forward their ideas, views and opinions and that there has been open and transparent debate.

Bottom Line – There will always be difficult stuff to deal with when it comes to team working.  The key to successful resolution is to avoid it becoming personal.

Leading a team on the face of it looks really easy. In reality it can be extremely challenging. As well as having the eyes of your boss and peers looking at how you are performing, you have to deal with all the different personalities and characters in the team you lead.

Given these pressures, it would be easy to crack and really struggle as a team leader.  Yet in truth there are things that you can do to become a better team leader.  So what are 7 things that you can do to become a better team leader?

Increase your self awareness

If you are going to lead a team effectively, you need to have a high level of self awareness.  Being self aware is not about identifying all of your faults but about understanding your motivators, your impact, what you do well and where you struggle.  When you are armed with these insights you start to build your team from really strong foundations.

Be clear about what is to be delivered

Every team exists for a reason and ultimately it is to deliver some result or contribution to business results.  As the team leader, you need to understand totally what is expected from the team and be able to effectively communicate it to other team members.

Involve others

Imagine there are two teams.  In the first team all of the ideas, ways of working and plans are developed by the team leader and imposed.  In the second team, the team leader fully involves team members in coming up with ideas, creating plans and deciding how to achieve them.  Which team do you think will deliver most?  As the team leader, focus on involving others more.

Have an effective decision making process

Every team member might not agree 100% with every decision that is taken but on the other hand they will find procrastination even more frustrating.  Make sure that for significant team decisions there is a clear process and criteria for reaching decisions so that things keep moving forward.

Don’t ignore the deficiencies

It is incredibly difficult to deliver results through a team if you have deficiencies in terms of resources, skills and expertise. At the same time, it can be incredibly tempting to make do, especially if you know that the organisation is facing challenging times. 

Don’t fall into the trap of ignoring deficiencies in the hope that they will go away.   Tackle them so that you keep progressing.

Encourage and support others

It is so easy to forget just how difficult it was when you were doing something for the first time or operating in a new set of circumstances.  Some just deal with this without any problems while others will have crisis of confidence.  As the leader, make a point of encouraging and supporting others through the good and not so good times.

Remember to recognise team effort

It never ceases to amaze me just how few leaders take the time to recognise the efforts and contributions of the team to deliver.  If you are someone who falls into this category, do something to create a habit of looking out for good things that the team has tried or done and acknowledge them for their efforts.

Bottom Line – Becoming a better team leader is a career long learning process.  So what steps can you take to become an even better team leader?

Put the same problem in front of 10 different groups in any organisation and they will all view it differently.  We all, to a greater or lesser extent view things through our own unique lens or perspective.

Let’s look at something that is probably quite topical in organisations right now, which is cost reduction.  One area of commonality is that every individual or group will be thinking what does it me for me or us. 

On the other hand if you asked people for their views on how others might view the issue, you might hear something like the following:

“The accountants will be in their element and finally feel like they are doing something useful”

“At last an opportunity to reign in those rogues in sales and marketing who never pay attention to any financial procedures”

“The CEO is only interested in engaging us to save his or her own skin”

“I hope that they don’t expect us to contribute as we are already cut to the bone in terms of staffing”

“No doubt it will be the lowest paid and least respected that will get a rough deal”

So if you are the leader who is trying to move things forward, how can you utilise these different perspectives?

Listen a lot

The real challenge is to get to the heart of the issue and that requires you to listen.  You often find that what they are presenting as the surface level problem is not the real issue.

Ask questions

Questions are another great way of really understanding the different perspectives.  Combine this with great listening and you are going to be well ahead of most.

Stand back from the detail

It is all too easy when times are tough and difficult choices need to be made to unconsciously become a collaborator.  While you need to listen and understand, don’t let it result in you losing sight of the issue or challenge.

Be open

In organisations, it is often the people closest to the point of delivery that come up with the best solutions.  Be open to these opportunities rather than needing to be right.

Bottom Line – We all to a greater or lesser extent view challenges through one lens. The challenge to be more successful when it comes to team effectiveness is learning to understand and utilise the different perspectives.

1. Strong fit in terms of personal and organisational values
2. You don’t have to micro manage people
3. People can distinguish between jobs and responsibilities
4. People deliver on commitments
5. People are passionate about the company and their work
6. People give credit to others

Bottom Line – Having the right team is vital to achieving success.  So how does your team measure up?

A team exists to deliver results.  We have all seen or experienced the benefits of being part of a team.  We can recall that it was challenging but there was a real determination to get the right result.  It can often seem like results just happen.  While there will be situations or opportunities that arise by chance, success in a teams does not happen by chance.  What three ingredients must teams have to achieve success?

Skills

It is hard to imagine achieving anything without skills.  Successful teams recognise that achieving results is not just about mastering one area.  To prosper they need a range of complimentary skills.

Firstly they need the right technical skills.  Having technical skills across a wide range of disciplines is highly unlikely.  For example, how confident would you be if you were introduced to a surgeon who was the technical expert in hip replacements and then being told that same surgeon was the hospital’s technical expert in IT, Accounting and Human Resources?   The challenge is to find those with the complimentary technical skills and blend them together.

Secondly, teams need to have the skills to problem solve otherwise they will just become stuck when faced with the inevitable and sometimes unexpected obstacles they will face.

The third area of skill is interpersonal skills.  This includes areas like communicating, influencing, getting others on board with the team’s ideas and dealing with conflict to name just a few.

Commitment

Teams are generally faced with one or more performance challenges.  These for example, could be related to delays in discharging patients from a hospital, high error rates in a production process, problems with staff retention or delivery delays.  Commitment in a team is about:

• Agreeing a specific set of goals

• Agreeing an approach to achieving those goals

• Having a clear purpose

Accountability

We are all familiar with the concept of being accountable for what we deliver individually.  In teams this personal accountability still exists but mutual accountability is another vital addition in successful teams.  Mutual accountability brings with it risk and requires high levels of trust, respect and commitment.  This presents a challenge for many teams and requires new ways of thinking and behaving.

At the end of the day teams focusing on a particular performance challenge can achieve more than one individual on their own.  The challenge is how to develop and embrace these three essential ingredients and incorporate them into the way the team works.

A team as a collective can deliver much greater results than any one individual could.  A key component in any team is the leadership of the team.  So what are my 4 key tips when it comes to leading teams?

Tip 1:  Have a clear vision

If you don’t know where you are heading, how will you know when you have got to the destination?  Put differently, it is essential that you create a clear vision of what you want the team to achieve so that it can be understood by everyone.

Tip 2: Learn to be a great listener

You are the leader and have many ideas, views, opinions and solutions.  Your team know that this but also want to be able to offer their views and feel like they have been heard. A good leader recognises this and focuses most of their communication on listening.

Tip 3:  Be someone who takes decisions

As a leader you need to weigh up the upside and downside of any particular option and then decide.  Team members may not always support your decisions 100% or may not have taken the exactly the same decision.  On they other hand they will respect you for not procrastinating.

Tip 4:  Empower your team 

One of the big advantages of a team is the range and variety of skills and experience that is available.  You know what you are good at and not so good at, so empower those to do what they do best.

Some teams seem to just keep delivering great results while others never seem to get out of the starting blocks.  So what is it that sets the successful teams apart from the less successful?

Hallmark 1: Challenging Objectives

A successful team thrives on challenge and setting them challenging objectives is a great way to motivate them.  Challenging objectives are those that will require significant effort, creativity and imagination to achieve, and at the same time are not so demanding that they feel impossible.

As a leader of a team, the skill you need to master is to set challenging but at the same time achievable objectives.

Hallmark 2: Common Purpose

Why does the team exist in the first place?  Does everyone in the team totally understand the purpose and are they really committed to it?
To achieve success a team needs to fully understand the team purpose and collectively get behind achieving the purpose. 

Making the time to clearly define the team purpose is absolutely essential.  For example, eliminating wasted capacity might not be a great motivator for some.  On the other hand, serving more customers or service users is more than likely to motivate most.

Hallmark 3: Use Resources Smartly

In truth most teams will find themselves short of some resources.  It might be financial resources such a budget or an intangible like a specific skill.  Successful teams know that constraints or limitations will always exist so they focus on using their resources smartly.

Hallmark 4: Mutual Trust

Trust is one of the most essential things in any successful teams and in truth is often one of the most difficult things to achieve.  It takes time, commitment and a willingness to rely on others to deliver.  In many cases it takes a major shift in mindset to achieve.

Hallmark 5: Taking the Rough with the Smooth

No team has it easy all of the time.  There will be periods of amazing progress and periods where the team just feels stuck.  Successful teams understand this and learn to keep focus on the purpose through the good and not so good times.

Bottom Line – Teams success is never guaranteed but keeping your attention on these hallmarks of successful teams can help you to achieve results.

One of the biggest challenges you will face as a team leader is dealing with teams that are poorly performing or are considered to be low performance.  Low performance teams are often stuck, not delivering on key outcomes, operating in a culture of blame and may even be in denial.  So if you are the leader of a low performance team, what can you do about it?

Tip 1: Acknowledge performance issues

Too often, performance issues are swept under the carpet in the belief that they will go away.  The first step of addressing performance issues is to get them out in the open.  Create the opportunity for people to get all of their issues out in the open in a non judgemental way.

Tip 2: Identify some successes

No matter how it might seem to those in the team, there are likely to be successes being achieved day after day.  Get the team to start to recognise and write down the successes that has been achieved collectively.

Tip 3: Get the team to identify improvement ideas

If you have a team that is regarded as being low performance there is little benefit in trying to impose solutions on the team and expecting them to all of a sudden change.  Focus attention on getting the team to identify improvement ideas.

Tip 4: Create a space to deal with conflicts

Low performance teams can often have conflicts and as the team leader you need create space to deal with conflicts.  It can also be helpful to have a way of recognising when conflict is showing up.

Tip 5: Take small steps

If a team is low performance and wants to improve, it is important not to be over optimistic about the speed or way in which change can be made.  Get the team to take small steps and recognise the achievements and successes.

Bottom line- low performance teams can be tough to deal with and require a sensitive and structured approach from you as the leader.  So what will you start doing differently?

When working with groups on team working, one of the questions I ask is

” What are the success ingredients of great teams?”

Almost without exception, one of the first things on the list is having a clear goal.

When you have a clear goal that you can articulate and is understood by everyone in the team, the team has focus.  They know what they are trying to achieve and the goal mobilises them towards achievement.

If you lead a team, how clear are your goals? 

If they are unclear or are not compelling enough, what could you do to address this?

Bottom Line – If you want a team to deliver, make sure the result is crystal clear.

Leaders’ priority is to deliver results.  When leaders deliver results they create success for the organisation’s they lead which leads to more personal success.  While leaders deliver results those leaders that are truly successful recognise that creating and building teams are critical to their success.   So why are teams so critical to your success as a leader?

Only one of you

As a leader you are probably extremely good at what you do and highly capable.  After all you would not have achieved the success you have so far unless you were good.  That said, there is only one of you and you have finite amount of time.  24 hours a day, 168 hours in a week, and 744 hours in a month is what you have no matter how great a leader you are.  With this limit in time, there is a limit on what you can get done on your own.

Skills, knowledge, experience and expertise

Teams bring a much greater of range skills, knowledge, experience and expertise than any one leader could ever have.  Think about it.  Every Managing Director or CEO started out their business career in a particular discipline.  It might have been marketing, sales, finance, operations or human resources to name just a few.  They started out experts and became generalists and more rounded.  At the same time they recognise that they can never be experts in every area of business so they build teams with complimentary skills, knowledge, experience and expertise.

Creativity

You might be a highly creative person. Imagine having 5 or 10 other creative people contributing ideas, knowledge and enthusiasm into creating a compelling vision for the organisation.  How much richer would the final product or output be in this situation?  Leaders who achieve success know that much more can be created through teams working together than working on their own.

So teams maximise the possibilities and achievements but what can leaders do to leverage the benefits of teams and achieve success:

1. Know what you are brilliant at

2. Be aware of the gaps in your skills, knowledge, experience and expertise

3. Make sure that your teams are full of people with complimentary skills, knowledge, experience and expertise

4. Make recruitment a priority area in your business so that you attract and recruit the best people

Bottom line – The best leaders know that teams are critical to their success.  So what steps are you going to take to be an even more successful leader?