Have A Clear Vision of What You Want To Achieve You need to get really clear about what it is you want to achieve during your time in your leadership role. How to balance being an inspirational and comforting leader … Yet humans are social animals, and the basic work unit in most public and private sector organizations is the team. Therefore, don’t underestimate the importance of keeping your staff motivated and engaged. Learn how to apply the six different leadership styles depending on the situation, and how to successfully navigate your team through the different stages of team formation. Stepping into a new team often brings the challenge of learning the best way to lead the team. In December 2013 the conference organizer EBCG invited me to Prague to lead a workshop on team leadership. Responding to these different demands and agendas is tough, but rewarding if you can get it right. Other challenges include getting the right reporting structures in place (matrix structures tend to interfere with good teamwork), clarifying team members’ roles and responsibilities, ensuring team behavior and performance is adequately incented, and dealing with team killers. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” One reason why is that many team leaders falsely believe that team member skills, experience, and abilities are all that matters, when in reality there are other team talent considerations. Team Building Workshop with DISC® Profile, Team Building with Emotional Intelligence. Some leaders are directive, while others are more open, inclusive and encourage collaboration with their team. This means keeping an eye and ear out for it, and acting on it quickly. To be a leader, you need people to follow you. Leadership poses a host of challenges. Too many organizations forget leadership is a team sport. It is easy to see how these seven challenges build on each other. Development of leadership qualities: Though being the leader of a team could be a challenge it is also an extremely enriching experience. They often arise in periods of instability or change, such when a program or period of work is beginning or ending, or when a group or organization is in transition. Stop blaming organizations and others for your shortfalls and failures. Perhaps the easiest to overcome but the most overlooked challenge for team leaders is implementing the right norms to drive team member behavior. You can find more about Gordon’s books, products, and consulting services at: www.curphyleadershipsolutions.com and www.TheRocketModel.com. Conflict can make people think differently, expanding knowledge and insight, and innovation can happen and results flourish. Use this activity to create a powerful shared vision your whole team can get behind. It is easier for leaders in some industries (retail, restaurants, and manufacturing) and functions (sales, operations, and customer service) than it is for others to quantify team performance. Stop blaming organizations and others for your shortfalls and failures. We achieve this through practical high-quality leadership programs, self-directed action planning and embedded learning support. Being a leader can be really lonely. Being ethical and honest in all things is crucial to a team leader. There is no excuse for team leaders for not implementing a set of meeting, communication, decision-making, accountability, and self-adjustment norms that help rather than hinder team performance. The end-goal of overcoming manager challenges. Team goals and strategies define the activities that need to be completed for teams to be successful. Team leaders need to understand that vision, mission, and purpose statements are merely statements of intent; they usually will not result in any tangible action until they are translated into meaningful goals, metrics, and strategies. Creating an Environment that Encourages Women in Leadership, How to revolutionise your leadership skills. You need to get really clear about what it is you want to achieve during your time in your leadership role. For example, team size can be problematic, and many executive leadership teams are too big to be effective. ; Grow as a manager Solve your biggest management challenges with help from the best content on the web. Most of the time team members have a shared understanding of their team’s purpose, but team leaders may need to work through this issue with new or highly dysfunctional teams. It also de-motivates team members, which ultimately impacts the bottom-lineof your business. Many project managers and team leaders work hard to clarify team values early in the formation process. There are several external challenges as well in leadership. A multi-billion dollar client recently underwent a major reorganization, which lead to the reformulation of a number of teams. Conflict is one of the biggest challenges facing any team. In fact, with the changes and pressure facing today’s nursing leaders, the general feeling is that the challenges are becoming harder to face and overcome. If there is one thing team leaders can learn from their athletic coach and military leader counterparts it is teaching their teams how to win. The challenge for team leaders is to make the most efficient and effective use of team members’ time and talents, and this means clearly defining when individuals, sub-groups, or the … Helping a team align on purpose and group culture is a vital part of being an effective leader. It is tough to gain clarity, but necessary if you’re going to achieve greatness as a team leader. These goals will identify the activities to be performed and whether individuals, sub-groups, or entire teams are best suited to get them accomplished. You don’t engage in behavior that is seen, in your workplace culture, as being wrong or unacceptable. December 14, 2013 fm. Understand your team Uncover your team’s real needs by giving them a safe space to share honest, anonymous feedback. Teams that get along fabulously and never argue over goals or the work to be performed are usually led by team leaders who value getting along over winning. That is often easier said than done. A prolific author, he has written 19 and sold over 100,000 books and written numerous chapters and articles on leadership and teams. Challenge #4: Manage Team Talent. How many articles and blogs get published each year with authors claiming that their lists of characteristics or traits is all it takes for someone to be a great leader? Team goals and activities will also determine how many people are needed, how they should be organized, what roles are to be played, which norms are needed to bolster team performance, and how to properly manage conflict and help teams win. What we call Challenge #1, the first of the “New Manager Challenges,” is the challenge of being promoted to a position of supervisory responsibility over former peers. Being Treated Equally. Disengagement in teams is often a result of lack of clarity on team goals and how they contribute to the organization. One of the challenges of being a leader is good communication with employees. Part of being a great leader is having the ability to lead a team to success despite setbacks like miscommunication, limited resources or pressure. One of the biggest challenges my female clients are currently facing is equality in the workplace. If you’re not convinced that trust has an important role to play in teamwork, turn your attention to the extensive research on teamwork in Google's Aristotle Project. The best way to do this is to lead by example. So-called “good” leadership is often a lot easier to describe than to actually implement. The distractions that you face can make it easy to lose sight of long-term and even short-term goals. Challenge #6: Teach Teams How to Win. What percentage of leadership development program content focuses on getting to know oneself better or being true to oneself? Of all the challenges facing team leaders this may well be the most difficult to overcome. 1. Discover our 1 day Leading Teams course. As a situational question, you should use the STAR method to showcase your ability to recognize a challenge and make a plan to overcome it. Teams play a pervasive role in organizations, and those wanting to be effective team leaders will need to overcome seven challenges unique to teams: Challenge #1: Create a Common Understanding of the Situation. Lack of projects, scarcity of funds and lack of support from clients are some of the external challenges faced by a leader. It is easy to forget that leadership is a team sport, as most of what gets written about the topic focuses on leaders. Companies would be far better served by ensuring those teams critical to strategy execution were operating on all cylinders than spending money identifying and developing high potential talent or sending leaders off to executive education programs. Leadership Directions’ mission is to help emerging and frontline managers achieve positive, long-term behavioral change for themselves and their teams. Teams tend to get disengaged when there’s a lack of proper direction or vision. Team members fail to understand their role in the bigger picture which leads to lack of motivation. But as leaders look to broader, longer-term concerns, here are the five most common leadership challenges I heard from them. Teams rarely if ever get mentioned in the leadership literature, are underrepresented in many leadership competency models, do not make up any of the curriculum in a vast majority of leadership programs, or are taken into account when promoting people or appraising their performance. Challenges of Being a Leader Being named a manager does not automatically make you an inspirational leader. So, what are the significant challenges you need to overcome to be a successful team leader? A challenge for team leaders is getting team members aligned around a common worldview. Trust was found to be a key require… Leaders can sometimes feel overwhelmed by these challenges, but take heart in the fact that you’re not alone. 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