If you are leading a team or a smaller group inside an organization, ask yourself what qualities of a good team leader would inspire your group to achieve at their highest level. A combination of traits including both technical and non-technical abilities holds the key to the solution.
For example, a good team leader has to be able to solve problems, make decisions, and communicate effectively. They must also demonstrate strong leadership qualities, including honesty, compassion, flexibility, and the capacity to uplift and encourage others.
Essential Traits Of A Good Team Leader
1. Team Player
A leader’s main responsibility is to empower and assist their team to accomplish both group and individual objectives. Delegation, teaching, and training may all be part of it, but at its core is a desire to help. Servant leadership, which emphasizes team development, is one of the essential qualities of a good team leader.
These ideas include anything from comprehensive personal development plans to the straightforward knowledge of your team members’ preferred methods of recognition. Servant leadership is more about enabling people to achieve than it is about ceding control.
Instead of just wearing a badge, it’s becoming more and more necessary to be adaptable and flexible because there are situations when being a manager is more important than being a leader. Someone who understands when to turn it on and off is an excellent leader.
Asking for input from your team is crucial if you are living up to your servant-leader side. Since they don’t want to hear the answer, many leaders avoid asking for honest criticism, which may be a scary process. However, the problems brought up during team feedback requests provide a guide to effective leadership. When these problems are fixed, your employees will be more engaged and will feel that their work is appreciated.
2. Active Listening
The late Steve Jobs claimed to have returned to Apple as a more humbled and capable leader after leaving in 1985; former Apple CEO John Scully attributed a large portion of this to Jobs’ improved listening skills.
It’s important to establish ground rules and introduce new methods for handling different job processes, but it’s just as important to sit back and listen to your team. To make wise judgments, a competent leader must be aware of what is happening with both their team and the business.
Being an effective communicator means being a great leader, and effective communicators pay attention. Proactive and perceptive listeners make for good leaders. Maintaining eye contact, never interrupting, and using nonverbal clues like nodding to demonstrate that you are listening are all necessary for being an active listener. Workers want to be heard, not patronized or, worse, ignored.
3. Self- Awareness
Self-awareness is one of the must-have qualities of an effective leader. A leader must always be conscious of their actions, their words, and the messages they are conveying via nonverbal cues. Team members continually watch leaders and imitate their behaviors and responses based on how they perceive the leader’s response, even if they may not always be aware of this.
This is particularly crucial during periods of transition or high stress. Workers will turn to the boss for official and informal direction on how to handle change or stress and will either instinctively or deliberately respond in the same manner.
4. Effective Communication
Effective leadership requires the ability to communicate intelligibly, succinctly, and diplomatically. There is more to communication than merely listening intently to other people and reacting correctly.
It also entails exchanging insightful knowledge, asking thoughtful queries, requesting feedback and original ideas, clearing up misconceptions, and being explicit about your goals. The most effective leaders also use communication to energize, encourage, and instill confidence in their team members.
5. Integrity, Humility, And Honesty
Honesty and integrity are essential qualities of a good team leader, yet both seem to be seriously missing. According to a US poll, 50% of workers said their managers lie and grab credit for every positive outcome.
These leaders failed to honor their commitments, took credit where credit was due, and covered up their errors by blaming others. Because of this, employees were dissatisfied with their positions, less inclined to take on new responsibilities, and more ready to quit.
Is a sports referee a leader in your eyes? They are nothing without honesty and integrity, they have power, and they assist teams in achieving a goal—whether that goal is good or bad depends on which side you support.
Experts in humility, or the state of being humble, are referees and umpires. NRL referees have embraced a set of basic principles and practices that include self-awareness, accepting that no one is more important than the group, and recognizing one’s talents and flaws.
To put it simply, you are demonstrating compassion and empathy as a leader if you are aware of how someone on your team is feeling and you take action to support them. Research has shown that even a fleeting sense of empathy for a team member might be sufficient to divert attention from one’s feelings. Take this opportunity to give that team member your full attention and assist them in achieving a common objective.
6. Accountability
Outside of the athletic arena, coaching is a vital leadership skill that enables you to keep yourself and your team responsible without putting anybody in the wrong. You may work with an individual or a team to help them take ownership of a goal by using techniques like the GROW (Goal, Reality, Options, and Will) model, but you must ensure that everyone is aware of the present situation and any hurdles.
But the most crucial thing to do is consider the next step, which is to ask the individual you are coaching, “How committed are you?” It will be simpler to establish responsibility if you know the answer ahead of time.
One essential leadership trait of effective leaders is their ability to hold oneself responsible in addition to their team. Self-reflection is a prerequisite for good leadership. You’re in a fantastic position if you can identify your own shortcomings and issues before someone else does. It is one of the prime qualities of a good team leader.
7. Relationship-Building Abilities
Early management academics believed that the job itself was the most significant component of the workplace. They created systems and carried out research aimed at boosting worker productivity, but they did not take much action to address the human aspects of their workforce.
Modern leadership theories address the workplace from a broader perspective and take into account the human aspects of workers, such as their need to build connections with other team members.
Employees cannot bring to their organizations only the portion of themselves that does work since they are humans. Leaders must be exceptional connection builders in every department of the company because they bring their whole selves to the table.
8. Being Authentic
Acting authentically is not striving to be someone we’re not rather than behaving like ourselves. When a leader acts genuinely, they reveal their real selves to their team members, and eventually, the team starts to depend on that leader for specific actions.
If a leader has patience, for instance, then every time the leader shows tolerance to team members, they are behaving genuinely. Team members will learn to assume that the leader will react patiently to everything they bring to the table the more they see the leader exhibiting patience. Another excellent strategy for leaders to develop trust with their team is to act with authenticity. It is one of the best qualities of a good team leader.
9. Lifelong Learners
Total Quality Management and other continuous improvement programs have been adopted by many organizations, especially by heritage brands that are unwilling to change. They have learned from seeing once-thriving businesses such as Kodak being overtaken by digital photography and Nokia being supplanted by smartphones.
Leaders who embrace lifelong learning may embrace this philosophy of continual development, as they know this is one of the must-have qualities of an effective leader. Prominent business leaders such as Bill Gates, Arianna Huffington, and Richard Branson have reading lists that aspirants to their positions examine. Online university degrees allow you to concentrate on your areas of improvement and maintain current knowledge. You may accomplish them at your own pace.
It takes much more than a promotion and a little charisma to be a good team leader. A wide variety of talents are included in leadership traits, which not everyone has naturally but which everyone may acquire.
It’s also a fantastic opportunity to start networking and create a support system and personal advisory board. The peer learning setting is beneficial since you are working with individuals who are comparable to you in terms of career level and who may be facing similar leadership issues or concerns.
How To Develop Your Leadership Abilities
Now that we know the vital qualities of a good team leader, how can you go about practicing and developing these qualities? Effective leaders need time to develop. You have to start somewhere if you want to improve as a leader and accomplish your personal and professional objectives. Take into consideration these recommendations:
Test, Try, and Improve: Begin by making little adjustments or actions to test the concept, then get input from a friend or colleague. Choose one or two areas you would want to focus on from the list of traits of effective leaders, then give it a go. Try a different way of speaking or behaving at a meeting, for instance, and then ask a colleague for feedback to see how closely it fits your view of what you were doing. This will help you become more self-aware.
Create A Network Of Support: Begin with one or two individuals who might serve as your accountability partners or mentors. Mentors assist us in adopting new perspectives on our behavior and the events that occur in the workplace. Accountability partners assist us in adhering to our established strategies. Consider someone you value and extend an invitation to them to serve as your mentor or accountability partner.
Establish Relationships: Skilled leaders cultivate connections. Gradually grow your network by starting small. Perhaps you should start by making an effort to have a conversation with one or two coworkers a week that you don’t usually communicate with and work your way up from there. You’ll soon develop a large network of acquaintances.
Learn More About Effective Leadership: Enroll in a single course or a full degree program. If you are pursuing a bachelor’s degree, for instance, you may want to think about adding a leadership undergraduate specialization.
FAQ
Q: What abilities does a team leader need to have?
A: Since you will be the team’s main point of contact, you should have outstanding communication skills. To guarantee efficient teamwork and cooperation, you also need to possess the ability to take proactive measures. In the end, you should lead by example and motivate the group to accomplish its objectives.
Q: What role does leadership have in an organization?
A: An organization’s corporate culture is cultivated and shaped in large part by its organizational leadership. Leaders influence the culture of the company by modeling certain beliefs and making certain choices. The engagement, contentment, and retention of employees are enhanced by a robust and healthy company culture.
Q: What does a management leadership style entail?
A: A leader’s behavioral approach to directing, inspiring, and influencing their subordinates is referred to as their leadership style. How leaders carry out plans and strategies to achieve certain goals while taking into consideration the expectations of stakeholders and the safety and well-being of their team is determined by their leadership style.
