Office Captain TeamBecoming a team leader is not enough for your personal career or even for organizational growth. The point here is you need to be a good team leader who can run and manage the team effectively. In order to do that you need to develop certain skills as well as remember certain points all the time.
Let’s dive in to the 15 easy to implement tips on how to be a good team leader.
#1. Think Yourself – Are you Fulfilling your Roles and Responsibilities
One of the main things that a team leader should do is a periodical self-check on whether they are able to fulfill their job roles and responsibilities or not.
This is because taking a self-check will give an idea of where you stand and whether you are working efficiently or not. It is a great way to correct yourself and also acts as a reminder to fulfill them.
In general, organizations prepare perfect roles and responsibilities on what needs to done with respect to your position as a team leader. If you were able to accomplish them, that’s all is enough. You had already achieved a great part in the process of how to be a good team leader.
#2. Enjoy your Work
Wholeheartedly accepting the responsibilities of the team leader and enjoying the work is the most crucial thing of all. If you can’t enjoy the work, you really can’t be soulful in fulfilling your job.
So, understand the situations, relate yourself on how your job influences the society and the family of your own. Stay motivated, be happy, and be positive all the time, keep all your efforts to achieve the best results.
Also, never treat your job as a separate entity from you, make it a part of your life such that not to feel any burden.
#3. Don’t be Dictatorial – Change your Leadership Styles
After becoming a team leader, many individuals often behave in the way of being strict and dictatorial to their team members. Mainly in their plan of setting the things the right way.
But be known that being strict or dictatorial might be good for a very short period of time to accomplish the tasks or to increase productivity.
But in the long run it imparts a lot of stress and dissatisfaction across the team members and eventually making them move out of the team or the company.
So being a dictatorial leader may not be helpful in the long run. It is also the same with other leadership styles too.
So, if you want to be an effective team leader, then you must know how to flex from one leadership style to another basing upon the situation.
#4. Open Communication
Being open with your employees, discussing the issues and processes whenever necessary creates a generous environment between the team leader and the members of the team.
Also be free to accept the comments, ideas, or feedback on the workflow from your team and discuss them openly.
This type of environment increases the approachability and leaves a greater room for your employees to contribute more to the success of the team and the business.
Open communication doesn’t mean sharing the sensitive or confidential information but the regular processes, the management ideas, new strategies, and so on. Which you think discussing with the team members can polish up the process.
#5. Respect the Ideas or Suggestions
Making your team members involved in the process development whenever necessary is a great idea, but at the same time, if you want to be a good team leader, you also need to respect the ideas or suggestions that are put forward by the team members.
Acknowledging the ideas gives positive signals and makes your team members comfortable in giving the suggestions in future.
#6. Be an Active Listener
Active listening is another main skill that a team leader must-have. This is because communication is the part where most of the time things get completely wrong.
For example, think that one of your team members came to you to discuss an important issue and you are listening to it working on your laptop and not even looking at the face of the team member. In the end, you said ok, I will look into it and later you forgot the issue.
Think about it, although you are busy, it is important to genuinely listen to your team members rather than a fake smile or signs that you listening to them.
This is because active listening it’s not just useful to ensure understanding and resolving the problem, but it helps a lot to build a great relationship, trust, and the approachability of your team members.
#7. No Partiality
If you want to be a team leader whom the team considers a good one, then you should never be partial to any member of your team.
Liking some in your team and disliking the others can create a lot of problems. It may disrupt teamwork and harmony. Also, it can result in conflicts for which the company might need to pay off.
Disliking some members of the team, not listening to their ideas or giving preferences to your favored, really disturbs the team and if it continues, you might lose the talented pool or their ideas, which can worth considering.
Also, in some situation’s teams can even spilt into groups, internally.
So, if you want to be an effective team leader, then you should never be partial at the same time you must treat all your team members equally.
#8. Set Clear Goals
Clear goals and perfect planning act as a path of success. It is the responsibility of the team leader to make sure that their team members understand what the ultimate aim is and the goals they need to achieve in that process.
The team leader must also ensure that the goals set are clear enough and whether the planning done is perfect or not.
The goals set should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time based (SMART).
At the same time, the team leader must also assess team performance and take the necessary steps in the process of achieving the goals.
#9. Set Expectations and Create Confidence
Apart from setting clear goals, a team leader must also set clear expectations for the individual members defining their roles and responsibilities.
It helps to get a clear idea for the team members on what is expected from them and also acts as a reminder for them.
Also, setting the expectations really matters in terms of increasing productivity.
But keep in mind that setting expectations to the individual team members won’t be enough for getting the results, it is the responsibility of the team leader to boost the confidence levels in the individual team members that they have the potential to achieve them.
#10. Monitor and Mentor
The ultimate aim of any team is achieving the targets in time and that too with efficiency and higher productivity.
To achieve all this the team leader must monitor the team’s performance regularly. By this, the team leader can easily identify the top performers and the poor performers within his team.
Speak up openly with the poor performers and understand where they lack behind and strengthen them by mentoring. Also, explain them to take the situation positively and as a great opportunity to learn things and to strengthen themselves.
Help them in all the way to improve their performance in a course of time.
#11. Recognize and Appreciate Honestly
Recognitions and appreciations really act like magic on your team members. This is because all of your team members work hard to achieve their targets within the deadlines and that too with good quality. During this process, most team members face a lot of stress.
Your words of appreciation will impact a lot on the team members, and simply your recognition will help to relieve a lot of stress they faced in reaching the targets.
Recognitions also help the members to get satisfied with the work they had done and even encourage them to put more effort.
But be known to appreciate and recognize with honesty, don’t just say the words we really thank for your efforts for the purpose of appreciating.
Speak honestly, appreciate from the heart, take examples of their teamwork, say a few sentences on the team’s efforts, thank each and every one of your team.
Say the impacts of their hard work, how it contributed to the business, and further to the clients and the society.
Also, it is also the same with recognitions, recognize your team’s efforts, explain the achievements to the higher management, and have a recognition mail written to the entire team from the management, it helps a lot to improve employee satisfaction.
But make sure to have a group or team recognitions rather than an individual as they can raise internal conflicts.
#12. Manage Conflicts
Conflicts are inevitable in teams at some point in time and managing the conflicts is a must-have skill for a good team leader.
Most of the time, conflicts arise due to a particular set of circumstances while making decisions or opposite viewpoints or even due to the personal behavior of team leaders or other employees.
If the conflicts are destructive enough to split the team, the team leader must involve and must be able to resolve the issues by a win-win situation.
That is why if you want to be a good team leader, you must possess certain skills to manage the conflicts at the same time must be open and proactive to deal with conflicts at the seedling level rather than allowing it to become a tree.
However, not all conflicts are bad, as some may bring up important issues or creative ideas on an easy workflow that needs attention.
#13. Build Trust
Several of us often consider trust as a minor factor in a team or even in a company, especially in this opportunistic world. But it isn’t true. Trust plays a major role in building the bond between the company and its employees as well as with the team leader and his members.
If the team members consider a team leader wasn’t trustworthy, they can’t speak openly and they just don’t want to open up the issues present, which will be a great loss for the growth of the business.
At the same time, building trust doesn’t mean just about speaking openly but to be honest in what you speak.
Building trust also helps to get more ideas, to discuss issues, developing the workflows, refining the strategies, and to build harmony in the team.
So building trust in your team members is a must and should in the process of how to be a good team leader.
#14. Admit your Mistakes
We are all humans and mistakes can happen, but the point lies in admitting the mistakes rather than covering it up.
As a team leader, you should never blame your team members for the mistakes you have committed at the same time you should also ensure to safeguard them in their times and later on explain the situations to them and get everything on track.
This helps to build up a great relationship in the team.
Also not just admitting the mistakes or safeguarding your members is enough but needs to learn from those mistakes and take necessary steps such that it doesn’t get repeated.
But in the process, you should never give up new strategies, taking risks, and trying new things to improve team functionality and productivity.
#15. Check your Behaviour
Checking your behavior as a team leader is another effective way in building up yourself as a good team leader. This is because frequently checking your behavior will let you know your own faults, where you are going wrong from the path of success.
You should not only check your behavior with respect to your team like building trust, encouraging ideas, openness, and honestly but also with respect to the organization like loyalty, accountability, productivity, and so on.
Add comment