Leadership & Career Development 1.3: Team Leadership
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LESSON: LEADERSHIP 1.2: TEAM LEADERSHIP
Effective Teams
To learn how to lead effectively, every self-made leader inevitably observed others who were in led. In this section, we will focus on being an effective team member which combines the role of a leader in a team atmosphere and using communication and speech skills to convey your ideas. We will first cover the idea of active listening and goal setting and then explore effective delegation.
Active Listening
Active listening brings about change in people and helps them to solve problems. Paying close attention to details results in a better understanding of what problems need to be addressed which means you can give better advice on how to solve them, resulting in effective leadership.
There are three main steps in active listening:
· Listen to understand all the information given to you.
o Information can be both verbal and non-verbal. People can communicate how they feel through their behavior as well as their words. For example, when someone is explaining a problem do they appear frustrated? Angy? Worried? Looking for non-verbal cues will help you understand how to approach helping your team member with their issue.
· Respond to how others are feeling.
o Respond constructively to how other people are feeling about the situation. This doesn’t mean to respond to anger with anger, but rather to acknowledge that they feel angry. Often, communicating the fact that you recognize what a person is feeling can help to defuse negative emotion. It lets the person know you are willing to acknowledge there is a problem that needs to be addressed.
· Put yourself in the other person’s shoes
o Empathize with the person: that is, imagine how you would feel in their position. Taking the other person’s perspective, will allow you to understand why they feel the way they do. This understanding will show you care and are truly listening and will allow you to better assess the situation and provide fair solutions problem.
Goal Setting
A good goal is a S.M.A.R.T. goal. It’s not enough to say you have a goal. To be something that you can work towards, what you want to achieve must be actionable – you must state your goal in a way that you can take steps to get it done. One very effective way to ensure your goal is actionable is to make sure it has the S.M.A.R.T. goal characteristics. Your goal must be:
Specific
· State exactly what you want to achieve.
Measurable
· How will you know when you’ve achieved your goal without having some sort of measurable mark or signal to tell you that you’re at your goal.
· A goal must be specific and not general. Saying “I will raise money” is not stating a goal while saying “I will raise $500” is stating a goal.
· To be a goal, you must set a marker related to your activity: How will you know when you have achieved your goal?How much money will you raise? How many windows will you install? How many people will you network with at the reception?
· These markers will allow you to check your activity to be sure your activity is moving you closer to your goal rather than farther away from achieving it.
Attainable
· You must ask if your goal be achieved. Is it possible?
· If it is possible, you then must ask if you’re will to do the work – dedicate your time and effort – in order to achieve the goal.
Realistic
· Planning a strategy and goal that you know and believe you can do.
Time Specific
· Laying out in advance how long it will take you to complete your goal or sub-goals within the main goal.
Conflict Management & Decision Making
Sometimes actions taken to achieve goals do not go as planned. A good leader must know how to handle these issues and problems, especially those involving their team or project.
Resolving these problems is known as conflict management. Managing conflict effectively means making decisions about how to resolve the conflict that arises.
There is a specific process of thought that goes into problem-solving & decision-making:
1. Identify the problem
2. Generate possible solutions/brainstorming
3. Evaluate + Prioritize
4. Decide on what course of action to take
5. Plan for implementation
6. Evaluate your decision and restate points or change implementation plans if needed
Delegating the work or actions required to implement the solution is part of conflict management.
Delegation involves meeting with your group to effectively discuss the problem and solution. Meetings should respect people’s time and result in meaningful decisions.
Three things ensure a meeting will be effective and ensure issues are addressed, and problems are solved.
1. Make a written agenda for the meeting. List what needs to be discussed and what problems need to be solved.
2. In the meeting don’t agree with everything being said. No one is always correct and your value as a team member lies in the questions you ask.
3. Prioritize. Not everything can be achieved. Make sure the most important and urgent issues or problems are addressed first and that less important issues are dealt with later.
Characteristics Of Effective Team Members
Effective team members do the following:
1. Recognize that everyone on your team serves as a team leader
o Everyone serves a specific purpose in a project. Proving the importance of your team means commending their efforts while recognizing how your relationship with them produces effective results.
2. Balance appropriate levels of participation
o Make sure that everyone on your team is assigned an equal amount of work and a specific function. Encourage your teammates to make suggestions. The only bad idea is one that is not thought of and shared with other people.
3. Ensure that all viewpoints are explored
o During a meeting make sure everyone has an opportunity to speak and their opinion is considered. This ensures everyone can and has agreed to the steps the team takes to achieve their goal.
4. Bring problems to the team (upward feedback)
o Show that you have thought things out by mentioning problems that could come up in order to show good conflict management skills.
5. Maintain confidentiality
o Never repeat anything personal involving others in your group. Personal matters should be kept separate from the group to ensure the focus is on the project and not the people in the group.
6. Provide open, honest, and accurate information
o Always be open and honest in sharing what you think and how you feel about an issue. And anything you state as fact should be based on information that can be retrieved and shared to support your claim.
7. View criticism as an opportunity to learn
o Being open-minded also involves being able to take the heat of criticism. If it is easy for you to give advice about things then you should be able to take criticism.
8. Act in a positive and constructive manner
o Take a positive approach to the project and your team members and you’ll find ideas flow more freely, work is done more efficiently, and problems are solved more effectively. We all relate to each other and in groups feed off each others’ energy. If you think positively others will do the same.
9. Provide appropriate feedback
o Feedback involves advice or how you feel about things. Just think before you speak and be mindful of how people might take your comments. Be sure your feedback is about the task or problem and not about the person.
10.Participate voluntarily
o Waiting to be assigned to do something shows a lack of initiative. You will feel more engaged in your work if you have a say in what role you would like to serve and what task you’d like to be responsible for.