Tools for Team Leadership

Delivering the X-Factor in Team Excellence

Gregory Huszczo

• Publisher: Nicholas Brealey Publishing
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780891063865
• eBook ISBN: 9781473644335
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Management

This self-study training guide puts the power of participative leadership into the hands of every manager, trainer, consultant, and team member struggling to help teams succeed. Packed with more than eighty new and field-tested tools, Tools for Team Leadership solves the mystery of why some teams—regardless of talent—succeed while others fail and delivers everything you need to master the "X-factor" skills of team leadership.

CHAPTER 1
THE NEED FOR TEAM LEADERS AT ALL LEVELS

Helping Teams Help Themselves

Perhaps the best team I was ever part of was an education staff of a large organization. Virtually every member stepped up to the task of providing leadership from time to time. People genuinely respected each other but cared even more about providing the best programs and services. Peers challenged each other constantly. Whenever anyone acted blasé about an issue raised at a staff meeting, that person would be confronted and reminded of his ability and expressed commitment to address the issue in a better way. Everyone was task oriented, relationship oriented, and customer oriented. Isn’t that what you want from leaders? While the team had an official “director” who reported to a vice president, she didn’t tell us what to do—she simply made clear our team goals and created a climate for getting things done well. We were a team full of leaders, not a team whose individual actions were coordinated by a single leader. The best teams are leaderful, not leaderless.

Over the last couple of decades, companies have been encouraging the development of self-directed work teams, problem-solving committees and task forces, and even executive leadership teams. Attempts to use teams are evident in nearly every major organization today. Are you now in a position where you have the opportunity to be a leader? Whether your position is that of team leader, supervisor, area manager, coordinator, professional resource specialist, general manager, executive, union leader, or president of the company, the benefit of a team approach is to be found in collective action, not in the actions of individual heroes.

Three Chief Requirements for Building
Team Leadership

If you truly want to help your organization with your team-oriented leadership, you will have to fulfill three chief requirements: raising awareness, generating options, and planning for success.

Raising Awareness

Your first assignment, if you have the courage to undertake it, is to get the team to take an honest look at itself. You need to serve as a large mirror, one free from distortion. It may seem like magic when a team jells, but there is a structure to that magic. Your job is to help each team make an accurate assessment of its actions and structure. Why do things go well when it is succeeding, and what are its problems when it is struggling? You need to be able to help the team describe what was and is happening so that it can live its life consciously. You are acting as a key catalyst by raising awareness for the whole team. It is a basic premise of this book that a team is better off knowing what is going on than not knowing. The team may be a little too close to its day-to-day activities and routines to notice the patterns. If you have a keen sense of the obvious, you are likely to be helpful to teams in organizational settings. Helping a team understand its strengths and its problems is the first step in its becoming more effective.

Generating Options

If you are looking for a single best way to help teams, you are reading the wrong book. There is no one best way to capitalize on strengths and minimize weaknesses—instead there are many pathways to the same result. The members of your team—like all of us—develop habits and set ways of doing things; you need them to consider other options. The wisdom of teams results from the diversity of views available. You need to free up their minds to brainstorm strategies and tactics that can make a difference. You can also help by adding options for the team to consider, but be careful about getting sucked into making decisions for the team. It is best to facilitate consensus decisions.

If you want a committed, not merely compliant, team, you need to get the members to choose from among its options while staying within the boundaries set by your organization. Leaders in a team environment provide guidance in a process that alternates between expanding the thinking of the team and then gaining a focus regarding what is to be done to resolve the issues.

Planning for Success

Too often, teams are so relieved they have come up with a solution that they fail to take the steps needed to ensure the strategy is put into practice. Teams dump this responsibility on management or the system and then get frustrated when action does not follow. The team concept is not designed to create a new complaint department or to facilitate members lower in the organization in pointing the finger of blame at other teams or members of management. If you are going to help your team, you need to push it to make the ideas it produces operational. What tactics and actions are needed for an idea to be realized? Who needs to do what with whom by when?

You cannot second-guess the team after decisions have been made. You need to help the team produce an action plan for whatever solution the team decided on in the previous stage. The action plan must rely on actions taken by team members themselves—if it primarily dictates what others in the organization should do to solve the problem, the likelihood of successful implementation is low. Freedom of speech is important, but the key to empowerment is team self-reliance.

Leadership in a Team Environment

What do you know about leadership? What do you know about teams? Who has influenced your thinking about how to be an effective leader and how to be a part of a successful team? Exercise 1 provides you with an opportunity to think out loud about the lessons you have learned from your experience. As a pairing exercise, it also enables you to simultaneously practice the core relationship building skills of sharing information, listening effectively, and providing constructive feedback.

Six Key Lessons for
Leaders in a Team Environment

While there have been thousands of research studies on the topic of leadership over the last one hundred years, the findings have not been all that consistent. It appears that leadership is as much an art as it is a science. However, a few things seem clear. The essence of leadership in a team environment is influence, not control. The key is developing collaborative partnerships while helping others help themselves. A review of the literature establishes six key lessons for leaders in a team environment to learn.

EXERCISE 1
Lessons from Experience

Phase I: Sharing Experiences

Directions: Pair up with another person. Decide who will share experiences (the “sharer”) first and who will take on the role of being an effective listener (the “listener”). The listener will also take on the role of providing feedback. After completing the exercise, switch roles and repeat the exercise.

ROLE OF THE SHARER

Share your perceptions of yourself as a leader by answering the questions below. You will be given the total, undivided attention of your partner (the listener) for five full minutes.

• If you could take a leader (from today or the past) to dinner, whom would you choose, and what questions would you ask?

• Who is the person who has most influenced you as a leader?

• What was the best or the worst team you were ever on? What did your experience on that team teach you about teams in general?

• What has experience taught you about creating change and helping others?

• How would you describe the characteristics of your leadership style?

• What are your strengths as a leader?

• How does your organization’s situation affect your approach to leadership?

• How much credibility do you have as a leader?

• What behaviors do you need to work on in the upcoming year to become a more effective leader at your level?

ROLE OF THE LISTENER

• Give your total undivided attention to the sharer

• Just listen very well—don’t direct the conversation

• Don’t interrupt too much

• Help the sharer feel comfortable but keep the focus of attention on the sharer

Phase II: Providing Feedback

Directions: In your role as listener, provide your partner (the sharer) with constructive feedback. Be sure to describe what you hear before you interpret it. Try not to judge whether what the sharer said about his or her experiences, or what he or she learned from those experiences, is good or bad, right or wrong. Try answering the following questions in this order as you provide feedback.

• What did you hear or notice? (describe)

• What did it mean to you? (interpret)

• What did you learn? (summarize)

Phase III: Identifying Learning

Directions: Together with your partner, identify what you learned about

• Listening

• Sharing skills

• Providing feedback

• Characteristics of effective leadership

• Characteristics of teams

• Creating changes in people and systems

• Each other

1. Leaders are made, not born. Some individuals will be born into more opportunities for leadership than others, but they are not actually born with the skills needed to succeed as a leader. Despite the expression “He’s a born leader,” researchers have yet to discover any DNA patterns that determine leadership talent. Some people develop their skills and nurture their opportunities and some squander them. What have you done to discover your natural talents and put them to use? What have you done with your opportunities? To what extent have you truly learned from your experiences? Have you learned from, or merely survived, your experiences? If you want to be a leader in a team environment, you must be willing to apply and develo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Exercises
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Introduction
• 1 The Need for Team Leaders at All Levels
• 2 Your Natural Leadership Strengths
• 3 Effective Teambuilding
• 4 Knowing Why the Team Exists
• 5 Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
• 6 Problem Solving and Decision Making
• 7 Resolving Conflict
• 8 Motivating and Coaching Teams to Success
• 9 Leaders As Ambassadors of Team-Based Change Efforts
• 10 Monitoring and Reviving Teams
• 11 Helping a Whole Team of Leaders
• 12 Summary: The Learning Leader Makes a Difference
• Appendix A: The Exotic Orchid Role Play Exercise
• Appendix B: Jacobson’s Progressive Relaxation Technique
• Bibliography
• Index