Building Better Teams through Effective Team Leadership

The dynamics of effective team building present many unique challenges that arise largely from the individual personalities that individual team members bring to the group.  To address this, team leaders must not only facilitate and guide a team’s activities towards the final goal, but strive to improve the level of cooperation amongst team members while accommodating the individuality of the members themselves.

This often becomes a challenge for the team leader.  Ensuring the delicate balance between individuality and team loyalty is of utmost importance for the success of the team.  It is essential for this balance to occur to maximize the level of teamwork and cooperation throughout the team.

Effective team building will occur when the members of team cooperate, not compete.  It is the responsibility of the team leader to ensure that team members not only take ownership of the tasks at hand, but willingly cooperate with the other team members when working toward success.  Competition lowers performance and often brings out the worst in people.  This will in turn will hinder, not promote the fulfillment of the goals.

Competition will often lead to conflict within a team.  It is impossible to maintain a conflict-free team environment.  People still bring their individual traits and beliefs into the team environment.  Team leaders must be aware that conflicts may arise and have mechanisms to deal with them.

Turning conflict into something seen as healthy and productive can propel the team towards successfully meeting its goals.  Team leaders should deal with conflict quickly and effectively, looking beyond the individual traits of each team member.  An effective team leader will identify the problem causing the conflict and “attack” it, not the people perceived to be causing the problem.  By focusing on the positive aspects of the situation, and on what can be done to deal with the issue at hand rather than what can’t be done will often mitigate the conflict.

Encouraging different points of views and honest dialogue among team members and providing an opportunity for each to understand the other person’s point of view encourages respect and communication in the team.  A major part of effective team leadership centers around developing and keeping the trust and respect of the team members.  Earning the trust and respect of the team will not only engage the members, but keep them focused on accomplishing the tasks at hand.

Building trust and respect can be accomplished utilizing clear communications.  By acting as a role model and performing as team members are expected to perform demonstrates leadership.  By clearly establishing expectations using effective communications and by demonstrating how to meet those expectations through personal actions allows the team leader to build instant credibility with the team.

It is essential that team leaders create an environment permitting members to take calculated risks without fear of reprisal or fear of failure.  This creates an atmosphere allowing team members meet any challenge that arises and deal with issues outside the boundaries that had been established for the team.  It also provides team members the freedom to manage their own risk based upon their own comfort level and aversion to the consequences of risk.  This is different than encouraging team members to take chances, but facilitates the development of a creative environment that allows for educated risk taking.

Another tool available to the team leader contributing to effective team building is the concept of “reward and recognize”.  Feedback is essential for the success of the team.  Acknowledging a job well done is a powerful team building activity.  However, caution must be taken to ensure that the perception of favouritism is not created.  If it appears that the praise is directed towards an individual, this could potentially result in animosity amongst team members. 

This does not mean you never recognize individual accomplishments and praise people for their efforts.  Recognizing individual accomplishment is an important aspect of team building if done correctly.  Each individual should have a sense of importance and be seen as contributing towards the team’s success.  Being recognized is perceived as being appreciated.  As a team leader, it is essential that employees know their individual efforts are meaningful and important to the team as a whole.

An effective team leader must also know how to cope with poor performance by team members and deal with situations when things are not going right.  Not all feedback has to be positive, but feedback should never be perceived as being negative.

Events will arise that will require corrective measures be taken to address deficiencies in either the team as a whole or in an individual team member.  It is important to provide constructive rather than destructive criticism.

Simple things can be done to alleviate the sense of failure that may exist in the team or a team member.  Turning a negative situation into a learning activity can not only improve actions, but achieve the desired outcomes resulting in changes in behaviour.  Giving team members an opportunity to reflect on the situation as well as making suggestions on how to improve things allows the team to take ownership of the situation.  Focusing on the positives is much more useful to the overall success of the team than focusing on the negatives.

Team leaders showing an understanding of other influences in a team member’s life that contributing to the certain situations shows the team a team leader cares.  By recognizing the outside influences such as family life, team leaders can quickly gain increased respect from the team.  Playing to the human side of a team and its members can be inspiring and motivational.

The results of effective team building through effective leadership will be obvious to the organization.  Not only will the team achieve its goals, there will be a feeling of euphoria as people feel good about what they are doing.  There will be an increased desire to cooperate throughout the organization and to help out co-workers.  People will generally feel good about themselves and even better to be recognized as a member of a successful team.

You can  also read more about how Competition Can Destroy Organizational Team Building.