How can good leadership help increasing team effectiveness?
3 useful tips to help increasing team effectiveness
The Leadership role and team performance are like the wheel and the axle. One cannot work or survive without the other; and when one fails, the other is sure to fail too. Much has been researched, studied, said and written about good leadership helping improve team effectiveness. The point, though, has still to make an impact on organizations and business entities because then we would have had all companies doing well.
Who is a leader?
This is a person in an organizational setup who is entrusted with the job of leading others. Which means that he has a team to support him with work that in turn is about the organizational goals and objectives. How the leader gets the work done by his team members is defined to the maximal extent by his working style, approach and attitude towards his fellow team members. The purpose of leadership is to provide directions to the team so that the overall goals of the organization can be optimally achieved. He sets the tone; he is finally responsible and accountable for achieving the business mission. It is evident that the leader needs to invest his time and energies in team building and employee engagement.
While conventionally it was thought that leaders are born, today the thought has changed. It needed to change with rising competitiveness in the corporate world where the role of the leader was understood to make a difference and it was realized that people with the knack to lead people needed to be trained with skills and proficiencies so that they were clear about their roles and responsibilities.
All in all, leaders need to be visionaries and futuristic, however big or small their job role is in the organizational structure.
How can a leader help increase team effectiveness?
1. Team building the right way helps improve effectiveness.
Since his team members and the performance of his team is thoroughly intertwined with how well the leader is equipped to mentally and professionally; it is his job to ensure that he gets the right team hired for the work and focus to build the morale of his team members to motivate them to collaborate positively with one another. Building a strong team entails first getting the right people on board.
The leader needs to work with the HR department to scrutinize each candidate application, thoroughly review the skills and proficiencies of the candidates, understand their qualifications and interests, also comprehend their attitude and acumen before hiring them for the job. Once the person is part of his team, it is invariably his responsibility to extract the best work from the person.
In order to ensure that his team members are giving their best, he needs to come up with practical and realistic strategies. He needs to define the company vision to his team members with clarity; explain and spell out the expectations from each of his team members in clear terms and then be involved himself on a day-to-day basis with the work in hand. A lot also depends on the bond that the team members have amongst themselves. Ensuring that his team bonds well is again one of the leader’s job.
2. Team engagement is one of his primary roles
It would be assumed that his primary role would be the achievement of goals and budgets. This is his key responsibility for sure, but in order to reach there, he needs to have a plan of action. One of the key elements of the plan is team engagement. Engagement is how well the individual team members gel with each other, not to sit and gossip, but to put their efforts in the achievement of the team goals.
In a professional environment, it may or may not be of essence that team members get to know each other informally and personally, but in their official job roles, it is good if they get to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Knowing who is good at what helps formulate faster and effective strategies.
Leaders need to create an atmosphere of brotherhood and unity amongst team members where he himself is open and fair-minded. Also, if the leader takes the endeavour to understand his team members at the individual level, the bonding will only get stronger and mightier. The better the understanding, the stronger will be the collaborative effort amongst members. And better the collaborative efforts, the chances of getting to the goals faster and optimally enhances.
3. The leader needs to be the custodian of team morale and inspiring innovative work
The best way to affect team performance is to assign responsibilities, delegate work and keep encouraging the members to come up with creative and unique ideas for enhancing the quality of work and achieving goals. Building trust amongst team members and creating the right ambience is his job. A lot of team leaders keep a balance between official work and spending personal time with team members.
A lot of leaders invest in team-building activities and training that help upgrades the skills of the team. From ice breakers to stress busters, there are lots of activities today that can be planned in conjunction with internal and external trainers to keep the team morale high and enthusiastic. Celebrating success, applauding and acknowledging good work, a pat on the back, giving constructive feedback rather than indulging in criticism are all some of the tried and tested methods to extract the best work from team members.
Encouraging members to voice their opinions, share their ideas, letting them deal with the day-to-day nuances of their jobs, intervening only when required are again some proven ways of maintaining a congenial working atmosphere in the office.
Conclusion
A leader is a role model. Over a period of time, his team members will start to emulate him, consciously or unconsciously. It is his responsibility to ensure that the right people are there to work with the right attitude and involvement. His morals and ethics will affect the values and morality of his team creating an environment accordingly that will either encourage or discourage his people to work better and effectively.
