THE ART OF TEAM LEADERSHIP

Creating a winning team doesn’t come just from having the right individuals. You may have a group of talented individuals, but if each person is not doing what adds the most value to the team, you won’t achieve your potential as a team.

You’ve got to put people in places they belong. Thus, to be able to put people in the places that utilize their talents and minimize the team’s potential, you’ll need these 3 things:

Knowledge of the Team

You can not build a winning team or organization if you don’t know its vision, purpose, culture or history. If you don’t know where team is trying to go and why it’s trying to get there, you cannot take the team to the height of its potential. You’ve got to start where the team actually is; only then can you take it somewhere.

Knowledge of the Situation

Even though vision or purpose of an organization may be fairly constant, its situation constantly changes. Good team builders know where the team is and what the situation requires.

For instance, when a team is young and just getting started, the greatest priority is often to gather good people. But as a team matures and the level of talent increases, five-tuning becomes more important. As such a time, a leader must spend more time matching the person to the position.

Knowledge of the Players

Teambuilding is not working on an assembly line. As such, a leader who intends to make everyone else conform to his/her image, to approach their work using the same skills and problem-solving methods, is only courting disaster.

As you work towards building a team, evaluate each person’s experience, skills, temperament, attitude, passion, people skills, discipline, emotional strength, and potential. Only then will you be ready to help a team member find his proper place. In other words, knowing the person you are trying to position in the right place (niche) counts. “The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual,” – Vince Lombardi, NFL Champion Coach.

A sign of a great team is the proper placement of people. In other to help people reach their potential and maximize their effectiveness, stretch them out of their comfort zones, but never out of their gift zones. Moving people outside their gifts leads to frustration, but motivating people out of their comfort zone leads to fulfillment!



Source: The 17 Indispensable Laws of Teamwork, John C. Maxwell
2007 Shaques Publishing Inc