How to become a helpful team leader

 

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It is helpful if team leaders understand the conditions that contribute to or enable team excellence. Such understanding will allow the leader to bench-mark or compare his or her team’s performance to these standards and to determine possible areas of team weakness or ineffectiveness. Assessing how well the team compares to these established indicators of team success pro-vides a valuable source of information to guide the leader to take appropriate actions to improve team success.

1. Clear, Elevating Goal. “A compelling purpose energizes team members, orients them toward their collective objective, and fully engages their tal-ents” (Hackman, 2012, p. 437). Team goals must be very clear so that one can tell whether the performance objective has been realized. Teams some-times fail because they are given a vague task and then asked to work out the details (Hackman, 1990). In addition, the team goal must be involving or motivating so that the members believe it to be worthwhile and important.

2. Results-Driven Structure. Teams need to find the best structure for accomplishing their goals. Structural features that lead to effective team-work include task design, team composition, and core norms of conduct (Wageman, Fisher, & Hackman, 2009). Top management teams typically deal with power and influence, task forces deal with ideas and plans, customer service teams deal with clients, and production teams deal with technology (Hackman, 1990). Problem resolution teams such as task forces need a structure that emphasizes trust so that all will be willing and able to contribute. Creative teams such as advertising teams need to emphasize autonomy so that all can take risks and be free from undue censorship.

3. Competent Team Members. Teams should be composed of the right number and mix of members to accomplish all the tasks of the team. In addition, members need sufficient information, education, and training to become or remain competent team members (Hackman & Walton, 1986). technical competence to accomplish the team’s goals. Members also need skills necessary to collaborate effectively (Hackman, 1990). 

4. Unified Commitment.A common mistake is to call a work group a 

team spirit often can be developed by involving members in all aspects of not just happen: They are carefully designed and developed. Excellent teams are those that have developed a sense of unity or identification. Such team but treat it as a collection of individuals (Hackman, 1990).

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