Team Leadership – These 3 Skills Will Make You a Successful Team Leader
Your success as a team leader depends on how successful your team is.
Do you want to learn how to motivate each of your team members to perform at their highest level?
Here are 3 skills that will help you become a successful team leader:
1. Lead, inspire and motivate
In order to be able to lead, inspire and motivate your team, your team members need to value you as a person and as a professional.
You need to gain their trust and here is how you do it:
- Get to know them personally;
- Ask them about their previous challenges and wins;
- Invite them to speak about their personal projects and goals and their family and take an honest interest in what they have to say;
- Know their strengths and weaknesses;
- Assign tasks to leverage their strengths;
- Ask them if they want to work on their weaknesses and strengths and find a way to support them (pay for online courses, after work webinars etc.);
- If you can give them valuable info or recommendations;
- Ask them what they need to get the task done;
- Congratulate every team member for their input and mention one thing they did which contributed to the team’s success;
- Talk to them in private if they missed their deadline or they didn’t do a good job;
- Make sure their goals and aspirations are aligned with company’s goals;
- Show empathy for their problems;
- Allow yourself to be vulnerable;
- Take ownership of your mistakes.
Once you have achieved a high level of trust, you can lead, inspire and motivate your team.
Key takeaway: Show them respect, interest and empathy and lead by example.
2. Failure management
You and your team worked hard on your project. Long hours at the office, everyone putting 100% effort, dedication and creativity. Unfortunately the project wasn’t successful.
Next day, all your team members are disappointed and frustrated. How you motivate and inspire your team after a setback is very important.
Take your team out of the office and help them understand how you see the future. Paint a crystal clear picture of what you want your company to look, the people you want to work with and how your company will change the world.
- You are the first person who should believe in the future;
- Believe in it and your team will believe in you to take them there;
- Acknowledge everyone as a valuable member team;
- Remind everyone that you are in this together and you will persevere as a team;
- Reframe the failure with all your team members and turn it into a learning experience (read How to reframe failure – 6 steps)
Key takeaway: Acknowledge every team member for their input, discuss the good and the bad and reframe the failure.
3. Growth mindset
Carole S. Dweck is a psychologist researcher who discovered that success is strongly correlated with mindset. Namely, she found there are two kinds of people: people with fixed mindset and people with growth mindset.
People with fixed mindset believe that intelligence and abilities are fixed entities. They believe they have a certain amount of intelligence and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Whereas people with growth mindset believe intelligence and abilities are malleable. Their set of skills and abilities can change and grow through dedicated activities: practice, improving through failures, working through setbacks. Carol Dweck’s discovery is particularly relevant to the business environment.
Here is why:
- A company which employs fixed mindset people cannot survive and be innovative;
- Managers with a growth mindset inspire their employees to seek constant improvement and developing of skills;
- Employers with a growth mindset drive innovation and support the company’s struggle to overcome industry changes.
