When it comes to team management, one of the most important areas for a company is to focus on effective team leaders. The second most significant factor in employee retention is management quality. Even if you don’t think your existing leadership skills need improvement, they should be updated regularly to keep up with the ever-changing business scene. You have more time than you think to develop the necessary competencies and skills to become an inspiring leader. The Online Training PMP Certification is the world’s leading project management certification offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI), a non-profit organization whose goal is to advance the project management profession. We’ve compiled a list of a few critical team leadership tips to assist you in understanding how to achieve more consistent results that encourage long-term organizational success. Read on the blog to learn more about “how to lead a team?”
Now we shall start the blog by understanding the definition of team leading.
What is Team Leading?
The technique of inspiring individuals to act in a certain way is known as team leading. Effective team leadership motivates and engages people, allowing them to reach their greatest potential. In a nutshell, a team leader directs, guides, and supports the team while also monitoring its overall operation.
Although leading a team can be intimidating, it is a skill learned with time. Your actions as a team leader have a significant impact on the organization. As a result, you must embrace certain characteristics to help you become a better leader.
A team leader is in charge of overseeing the operation of a group. This function aims to offer team members guidance, support, and direction to execute assigned duties successfully. Group leader tasks normally do not include taking on inherent manager obligations like employee discipline or annual performance reviews. Instead, the team leader acts as a communicator, problem-solver, resource manager, motivator, and performance monitor to get the task done.
Now that you are familiar with team-leading, let us consider their importance.
What are the Benefits of Having a Team Leader?
Because some processes are too large for a single manager to handle, employers add a second layer of management in the form of a team leader. Although the manager’s responsibility is shifted down a rung, they retain accountability.
The roles of team leaders and managers are distinct. For example, unlike managers, team leaders will not command, change plans, enforce policies, or develop their teams through hiring and dismissing. But, team leaders within an organization usually play a motivational and inspirational role. In addition, they’re adept mediators and relationship builders, bridging the gap between employees and management. Finally, they can move projects forward when they use their leadership skills.
After understanding the benefits of team leadership, let us now see some of their duties.
What are the Responsibilities of a Team Leader?
A team leader’s job is to set expectations, monitor progress, motivate and provide guidance and support to complete tasks. Employee discipline and annual performance assessments are not typically assigned to team leaders. They do, however, serve as a communicator, problem-solver, and resource for teams to achieve predetermined objectives. A team leader’s main responsibilities are as follows:
- Choose team members who have the skillsets required to achieve a specific goal
- Develop and implement strategies for team members to achieve the goal
- Assign responsibilities to team members based on their strengths and skillsets
- Provide the training required to accomplish certain tasks to achieve the goal
- Encourage and assist team members frequently to keep them motivated and working toward a common objective
- Oversee a team’s day-to-day activities
- To ensure that the project is completed on time, keep track of each team member’s contributions and participation
- Create and disseminate project progress reports to management regularly
- Ascertain that resources are being used effectively
Duties Of a Team Leader in the Workplace
Team leaders are important in several working situations because they are in charge of delegating, overseeing, and leading team members to ensure that tasks and projects are completed. While team members aren’t frequently in management positions, they lead teams of employees and carry out the responsibilities that come with that degree of authority.
Now that you have understood the roles and responsibilities of a team leader, we shall see how a team leader leads the team for the first time.
How to Lead the Team for the Very First Time?
Leading a team for the first time, whether you’re starting one from scratch or taking over an established one, can be intimidating. There is no foundation to build on in terms of personal experience. If you’re a first-time team leader, you’re probably either looking forward to the challenge or pondering quitting—or a combination of the two. Furthermore, more teams are working remotely or using a hybrid approach of in-office and homework. As a result, today’s new leaders have a lot more on their plates than ever before. Here are a few tips for those aspiring team leaders:
1. Get To Know Your Team
Leadership is all about persuading your team to accomplish its goals. If you don’t get to know your team members and what makes them tick, you’ll have a hard time with this. While it may be tempting to rush right in and make major movements right away, keep in mind that you’re not there to flaunt your ego.
Take the time to listen to your team members, learn about their concerns and goals, collect ideas, and assess potential strengths and shortcomings. Only then can you develop a leadership strategy that has a possibility of succeeding. The first step toward bonding with the team and earning their respect and trust is to get to know who you’ll be working with. The ancient saying “listen twice as much” applies here.
Make contact with your team, particularly those who may be experiencing difficulties. Once or twice a week, new team leaders successfully hold brief 10-15 minute check-in conversations. You can even have “office hours” on your calendar where people may plan meetings and connect with you if they need assistance or want to speak.
2. Clearly Communicate
Communication is one of the most important aspects of leading a team efficiently. Successful leaders communicate their expectations to their teams in a way that is both clear and appealing. Communication, on the other hand, should be a two-way street. You should maintain your doors open in addition to learning the art of persuasion. Actively listen to your team members’ ideas and thoughts and respond appropriately.
3. Make Time For Leadership
Team leaders must devote time to the role to be effective. But unfortunately, this obligation is frequently just added to someone’s already long to-do list, putting the new leader up for failure.
You must be visible to the team and available to assist them as a team leader. Fostering a healthy working environment and community is important for your new leadership role. You won’t be as visible or able to support your team if you’re preoccupied with your crucial hands-on duties. So, before taking on a leadership job, make sure you examine and re-negotiate your workload.
4. Get Your Employees Involved
Employee engagement may be a significant motivator for a company. Working with and managing your staff as a team leader puts you on the front lines. Your team members will feel valued at work if you provide timely feedback and consider their best interests. They’ll take ownership of you and your work. Your employee engagement traits can empower your workers and keep them focused on their objectives.
5. Be Honest and Kind
When your colleagues make mistakes, leading a team can be frustrating. Make it clear to your employees that it’s always preferable to fail and learn from their mistakes. You are a mentor as well as a leader. You can assist your staff in learning from their errors. On the other hand, some employees may be overachievers who excel at their jobs. This should not prevent you from giving each team member equal weight.
After understanding how to lead a team for the first time, we shall see how to lead a team effectively.
How to Lead a Team Effectively?
Professionals considering taking on the role of manager must have strong leadership qualities. While managing a team may appear to be a fun and simple task, it comes with a long list of obligations. As a manager, you must demonstrate good team management abilities and ensure that your team members get the most out of their work. The job is both exciting and difficult. So, here are a few tips that help you lead your team effectively.
1. Set Goals? and Track Progress
Make a list of your objectives and keep track of your progress toward achieving them. Set individual and team goals for your team, and keep track of how close you are to achieving them. This may seem self-evident at first, but we get caught up in daily client requests and monthly reports all too frequently, and the larger aim or vision fades away.
Setting and achieving milestones will give you a clear picture of the team’s overall efficiency and daily development, even if your goals aren’t as lofty. With practice, you’ll be able to identify your weak places and enhance your performance. ??
2. Be Clear in Your Communication
Always keep your staff updated on project objectives, priorities, and critical deadlines. Effective communication is critical for establishing your reputation and obtaining your team’s support, so make sure you give clear instructions and constantly encourage questions and criticism.
3. Balance Personal and Professional Life
Building personal ties with your team members is important for leading a team. Demonstrate to them that you’re capable of a good friendship in addition to your professional connection. In addition, be the leader that cares about and prioritizes the well-being of your team. If you sense that one of your team members isn’t in a good mood, for example, inquire about their day before moving on to work.
4. Apply Constructive Criticism to Your Work
Constructive criticism entails expressing good and sensible ideas about other people’s work, including positive and constructive criticism. Constructive criticism is typically delivered in a friendly rather than adversarial manner. Give your team constructive, specific, and real feedback while evaluating their job. Don’t be afraid to compliment, but be direct and firm when required.
5. Encourage your Customers to Provide Feedback
Employees are sometimes hesitant to speak about certain situations until prodded. Gather feedback on issues like support, training, and resources, and keep an open-door policy, so your team knows you’re willing to listen and assist.
After understanding how to lead a team effectively, let us get to know a few of the features of a team leader.
Characteristics Of a Team Leader
A good team leader possesses several qualities and attributes that motivate his teammates to follow him. Team leaders are born with specific characteristics, such as compassion and honesty, or formal education and experience develop leadership skills. The attributes of an effective team leader inspire the team’s trust and respect and increase productivity. Here are a few characteristics that should be present in a team leader.
1. Communication
A competent leader can communicate goals, tasks, and other organizational demands to their team clearly and straightforwardly. To guarantee that expectations are given to their staff in a way that they can grasp, leaders should be masters of written and verbal communication. Listening closely, speaking, recognizing body language, and being aware of your tone are all part of being a good communicator.
2. Be Productive
Nothing makes you feel better as a team leader than seeing your colleagues enthusiastically discussing the product or service you deliver. The tough aspect is determining whether it will result in helpful dialogue or unneeded workplace friction. According to internal communication studies, most mergers and acquisitions do not fail due to disagreement. Instead, they fail because of “organizational quiet,” caused by a fear of conflict. A team leader’s responsibility is to foster proactive debates while keeping them professional and fruitful.
3. Be Confident
Have faith in yourself and the choices you’re making. Leadership necessitates moral behavior, consistent performance, open communication, and open team dealings. There is no place for uncertainties or a lack of self-confidence because it will impair your team’s morale.
Even though you’re thinking outside the box, your aggressiveness and confidence will win you points with the team, allowing you to turn your visionary ideas into reality. A team leader must provide encouragement and guidance to the team while keeping them informed to preserve their self-confidence and perform even better.
4. Ability to Make Decisions
It is unavoidable for a leader to be faced with numerous decisions, so one of the five traits of a strong team leader is making sound judgments. Some of the choices will be minor and personal. Other judgments will be significant and significantly impact the entire team. The capacity to choose the best option distinguishes a competent leader from a mediocre one. Successful leaders aren’t frightened to make decisions because they know how to weigh the pros and cons of several possibilities before selecting the best one.
5. Self-Awareness
Internal and outward self-awareness are two types of self-awareness that the finest leaders have. Internal self-awareness allows them to see their advantages and disadvantages. Their ability to grasp their impact on others and their views is external self-awareness. Self-awareness allows leaders to see where they require assistance, how they should rely on their team, and where they should strive for progress.
6. Be Respectful
Treat your subordinates, coworkers, and peers with the same respect you expect from others. Your actions demonstrate your respect, and once the team sees that you are courteous of others, they will follow in your footsteps and treat others with the same respect.
Support and appreciate your team, and you’ll notice a difference when each member is prepared to put in a little extra effort to earn your approval. Respect and a cheerful attitude are contagious, and this will aid in developing a helpful and productive work environment.
Now, we shall move to know some of the strategies of a team leader.
Strategies of a Team Leader
Every leader in today’s competitive business world sets organizational goals to achieve the organization’s vision. One of the many elements that a competent leader considers to attain these goals is the best use of human resources. Client expectations, like business dynamics, are changing at a faster pace. To match clients’ high expectations and keep the company in the market for a long time, the most crucial thing is to bring out the best in the personnel.
The management team and people in positions of leadership are critical to the overall success of a call center. While communication is the foundation of successful leadership, there are five other critical methods that a contact center manager may employ to help a team succeed.
1. Rather than Telling, Ask
A call center manager should consider themselves to be a coach as well. This means that instead of always providing answers, managers should offer team members the opportunity to study independently. Of course, it’s natural for managers to want to share their knowledge. Still, by asking team members questions and letting the self-discovery process unfold, managers can help team members learn and better prepare them to handle situations on their own in the future. It will also lead to a greater sense of pleasure and accomplishment.
2. Assemble a Diversified Team
Diverse points of view are beneficial. This is important to remember while recruiting because, as a business owner, you may be looking for employees that think and act the same way you do, expecting that this will benefit your company. However, this is difficult to come by, but it also makes no sense in business. A varied team with people from various backgrounds, experiences, and cultures fosters an environment to gain from multiple perspectives.
3. Develop Your Coaching and Mentoring Skills
Although becoming a good coach and mentor is not for everyone, it is an important attribute that a great leader must possess to boost employee performance. It’s a time-consuming procedure that necessitates a lot of effort, but it has numerous advantages for good team leadership. A competent coach must essentially encourage, provide feedback, and actively listen to the issues that employees confront.
4. Continue to Learn and Pass on Your Knowledge
Develop your future leaders as well. If necessary, work yourself out of a job and find anything else to do. Teach your staff about your blunders and provide them with leadership skills. Some people will be alarmed by this, but true leaders will not be; they will be able to let it go.
5. Appreciate Your Peers
When managers fail to recognize or reward hard effort, employees become discouraged and desire to do less. People can become uninspired and apathetic over time. It can be as basic as expressing “thank you” for a job well done, and including performance-related bonuses is a great way to go.
People want to hear that they are valued regularly and doing a good job. Simple words of encouragement are an easy, inexpensive, and motivating way to support someone if they’re doing well.
Now that the strategies of a team leader are clear to you, we shall see how a team ladder motivates the entire team.
How Can a Team Leader Motivate Their Team?
Motivating your staff is certainly at the top of your priority list as a leader or manager. The motivation levels of your team members can impact their productivity, quality of work, engagement, morale, and interpersonal connections. As a result, it’s critical to set up the right environment for your team’s drive to develop. We’ll teach you how in the next section.
1. Pay Your Employees a Fair Wage
When you decide on salaries for your staff, make sure they’re comparable to what other companies in your industry and area are paying. Remember that 26% of engaged employees claim to leave their current job for a 5% wage rise. So don’t let great people go because you’re paying them too little.
2. Encourage Collaboration
Encourage members to work as a team by emphasizing the value of collaboration and the link between it and accomplishing group goals. It’s worth noting that work becomes a lot easier and faster when people collaborate. Linking performance to team goals might help drive your team even more.
If collaboration is encouraged, individual team members will feel less alone and disconnected from the workplace. Employees will feel more involved and a part of a wider community, which will motivate them to work harder and appreciate their jobs.
3. Provide Support
Change frequently necessitates the team learning new abilities to comprehend and interpret new working ways. The team leader must allow the team and individual team members to create and test the new strategy. Ascertain that the proper level of development and training has been provided and that the team and its members have adequate opportunity to confirm their newly acquired abilities.
4. New Ideas Should Be Encouraged
Each team member will feel empowered by carrying out day-to-day work, proposing new ideas, and seeing them through to completion. Give individuals the opportunity to take charge, and you’ll be astounded at their capacity to come up with fantastic ideas.
5. Maintain a Safe Working Environment
Healthy and happy employees are more engaged and driven, which substantially impacts productivity, satisfaction, and innovation. Create an environment where workers enjoy coming to work and want to spend their time there. Look for settings with a positive vibe, such as wide rooms with plenty of natural light to add to the positive vibe. Because most individuals work from home, maintaining a good work environment entails maintaining a healthy and cheerful online workspace. Ensure that projects and activities are well-organized, that communication is open and transparent, and that everyone is visible, communicating and delivering the same amount of energy as they would physically.
6. Create Possibilities For Growth
When team members learn and improve their skills, they feel more valuable. Therefore, you should provide possibilities for growth and development to your personnel to motivate and inspire them to accomplish excellent outcomes. These changes should be targeted to the specific needs of each employee and can include:
- More training
- Setting difficult goals
- Inviting an employee to observe you
- Invest your time teaching and mentoring someone
Focus on teaching your employees transferrable skills that they can use for multiple jobs and encouraging them to create learning goals for themselves.
Motivation is an important component of any workplace, and you should strive to keep your employees motivated and inspired. You’ll be certain if you do this.
Conclusion
By now, you guys are aware that in today’s commercial world, leaders must increase their expertise, tackle complex problems, and successfully offer solutions. Also, you have got an idea of how to lead a team effectively. You will gain more than just skills via certification training. It provides you with the credibility and self-assurance you need to advance in your job. We, Invensis Learning will become your knowledge-based professional growth partner. So upskill in Agile Project Management Certification, Project Management Certification, Quality Management Certification, IT Service Management Certification, DevOps Certification, and other related courses from us and gain a competitive edge.
