Team Leadership Rule 5: Establish a Team Identity

Twelve Rules for Team Leadership

Providing the team leadership that transforms groups into teams does not require the Wisdom of Solomon, the Willpower of Ulysses and the Strength of Hercules—but it helps.

Here are twelve leadership principles to keep in mind when playing the role of team leader.

Team Leadership Rule 1: Understand the Phases of Group Evolution

Teamwork does not happen overnight. Just like kids and families, groups lurch through different developmental stages. One of the more widely known approaches is Tuckman's forming, storming, norming and performing model. A fifth stage called mourning is sometimes added when teams break up. A key challenge for those in leadership roles is to use methods that bypass the destructive conflict characterizing the storming phase.

Team Leadership Principle 2: Grow Leaders if You Want to Build Teams.

Most of what is called a "team" in corporate America, really are mislabeled groups. For example, in the early days of Total Quality Management, one person related to me that upon coming back from vacation, he no longer had a department, but now had a team—he was no longer a supervisor, but was a team leader. While he was given the label of team leader, he was never given the leadership training on how to lead.

At the c-level, we see a similar phenomenon, CEO's calling their group a team. In fact, some leadership experts believe that getting executives to work together as a team is even more difficult than seeing teamwork in the ranks.

Team Leadership Rule 3: Provide Human Relations Training To Group Members

The above story illustrates a common leadership issue: management typically does not provide training "soft skill" traning. Having real teams, not the make believe variety, requires new knowledge and new behaviors. Companies must invest in developing people skills for teamwork to flourish.

Team Leadership Rule 4: Teams Need Continuous Support From Executives

Team building classes are ultimately an exercise in futility for the trainers and the participants if executives fail to support their teams. Many teams die, killed by the very executives who say they want them to flourish.

The "flower principle" applies. Teams are not weeds that grow unchecked in the corporate structure. The are more like a rare flower that will quickly die when neglected or sabotaged.

Team Leadership Rule 5: Establish a Team Identity

Teams have an identify, groups do not. It's next to impossible to establish the sense of cohesion that characterizes teams without this fundamental leadership step.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14