How to Better Lead Your Team
When times are tough and you feel the intense pressure to perform, do you tend to fully empower or micromanage your team? Neither extreme is desirable nor fit for every leadership situation. While a completely hands-off management style can work for tasks where your team has high motivation and competence, it can backfire when teams need more direction, guidance, support, and coaching.
Conversely, micromanaging high performers saps both morale and productivity. So, what is the happy medium between empowering your team and supporting your team to increase employee motivation, engagement, and productivity?
The Keys to a Balancing Point
There’s more pressure than ever for leaders, especially for new people managers, to lead diverse teams effectively. But often, leaders don’t have the confidence and competence to make it happen. When we assess organizational culture, employees tell us that most team leaders struggle to build meaningful enough connections with their people to drive results.
It’s not for lack of trying or wanting to be great leaders. Research has shown that 54% of leaders use only one leadership style regardless of the situation.
The key is to situationally lead your team in a way that makes sense for each unique context. The balancing point for your team will differ according to the skills and working styles of your employees, the roles they play, and the goals and accountabilities of the team.
Ways to Better Lead Your Team
Based upon data from our action learning leadership development workshops, here are some guidelines that should keep you on track toward that balancing point so you can better lead your team by giving your team the right support or direction at the right time.
- Know Your Team
Because leaders use the wrong leadership style half of the time, it is imperative that leaders invest the time to diagnose the development level of each team member to help you choose the appropriate directive and supportive leadership behaviors at the applicable time. Otherwise, leaders won’t be agile or adaptive enough to help their teams perform at their peak.
Do you know how to best lead each team member? - Create Psychological Safety
A team that can talk in a straightforward and respectful way is a team that can work well together. Without the psychological team safety that comes with transparent communication and an environment that encourages different viewpoints and constructive debate, a team is muzzled and unable to share ideas and collaborate effectively.
Are you encouraging a variety of ideas and constructively debating them in order to zero in on how to best solve each problem? - Set Clear Expectations
Our organizational alignment research found that strategic clarity accounts for 31% of the difference between high and low performing teams. A team leader’s job is to set clear expectations. Each team member should fully understand and accept how they contribute to the team’s overall mission and how their success will be measured.
What are their specific responsibilities, how much autonomy do they have, what outcomes are required? Can everyone articulate the strategic priorities you have set for the team? - A Culture of Teamwork
As team leader, you are directly responsible for developing the team norms required for success. Your strategy must go through your team and your team’s culture to be successfully implemented. It is your job as a leader to create the environment for your team to perform at its peak.
Are you setting your team up for success? - Accountability
To better lead your team, you need to hold them accountable for outcomes. If they fall short, ask why, and do what you can to support their efforts. If they continue to deliver substandard work, help them find a role elsewhere. If underperformers are allowed to stay, the motivations and morale of the rest of your team will suffer.
The Bottom Line
To better lead your team, you need to stay close to them and set them up for success. None of the critical leader responsibilities can be accomplished unless you stay closely connected. Are you scheduling regular one-on-one meetings and weekly team meetings to monitor progress, air problems, confirm expectations, and align priorities?
To learn more about how to better lead your team, download The 4 Stages of Leading Situationally
Recent Comments