According to John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”
In the post-pandemic era, CEOs value effective team leaders who can successfully lead teams and maintain an engaged workforce despite rearranged work habits. They are highly likely to consider such employees for senior leadership roles.
Global leadership consultancy firm DDI, in its CEO Leadership Report 2023, found that mid-level leaders play a powerful role in creating an organization’s talent backbone, and companies with high-quality mid-level leaders are likely to fill 65% of critical leadership roles.
However, moving from a functional role to a leadership role is challenging. Managing the increased responsibility of a team’s goals, swapping the tactical hat for a strategic hat, and leading former peers are some challenges you might face when you become a team manager.
In this blog, we will cover all the essential skills and strategies you need to acquire to become a successful team leader who is respected by team members and valued by the senior leadership.
Team Leadership: Essential Skills and Strategies for Success
- Understanding Team Leadership
- Essential Skills for Effective Team Leadership
- Leadership Styles and the Team Dynamic
- The Role of Team Leadership in Professional Development
- The Role of Team Leadership in Conflict Resolution
- Challenges of Team Leadership in Modern Work Environments
- Tools to Effectively Manage a Team
- FAQs
Summarize this article for me pleaseUnderstanding Team Leadership
Team leaders are crucial in helping organizations maintain the quality of operations and sustain growth and expansion. Great team leaders support their team’s work, encourage them to achieve team goals, and maintain productivity while keeping an eye on the big picture.
However, for a new team manager, the transition from being an individual contributor brings significant changes. You now have your entire team’s performance to be responsible for. This requires doing things differently and developing new skills.
The roles and responsibilities of leaders
As a team leader or manager, you are responsible for strategizing and overseeing business, ensuring that company objectives and team goals are achieved. A good leader and a successful team usually go together.
Team leaders build company strategy and guide and motivate their direct reports to execute it as planned. They also represent the team in cross-functional spaces and engage with stakeholders across other departments.
Leaders are responsible for hiring team members with the right skills and providing them with the necessary resources and support to do their daily tasks well. They must ensure that their team members are engaged and motivated and that the team understands their roles and goals.
Great leaders have certain nuanced team leadership skills in common. They believe in delegating work and empowering their teams. They think strategically, build relationships, communicate well, and focus on problem-solving.
With 40% of US employees working remotely at least one day a week, team leaders now also need to be skilled at developing a comfortable hybrid or remote working environment.
Summarize this article for me pleaseEssential Skills for Effective Team Leadership
Communication
Effective communication is the cornerstone of team management. It ensures a clear understanding of goals, promotes collaboration, and keeps the team aligned throughout a project’s lifecycle.
However, communication styles can vary significantly within teams.
Recognizing these differences and using multiple communication strategies based on the team structure and location fosters an environment where all team members feel comfortable contributing.
For example, if your team members are remote or geographically distributed, ensure you send key discussion points from the meeting over asynchronous channels like Slack or ClickUp Chat so everyone knows what was discussed.
Tailoring communication to team dynamics
Consider your team’s composition. Do they favor in-depth discussions or concise communication? Frequent updates or spaced-out interaction? Asynchronous collaboration tools or in-person sync? To be effective as a team leader, learn each team member’s style and try to customize your communication style to match theirs.
Addressing problems proactively
Clear communication by team leaders not only keeps projects on track but also allows for the early identification of potential problems. If a team member encounters a potential hurdle while working on a task, find ways to discuss it with the entire team, collaboratively brainstorm solutions, and address the issue directly within the task context. This transparency and open communication enables swifter resolutions and a smoother overall workflow.
As a team leader, you must proactively offer your team ideas and strategies to improve and maintain performance instead of giving reactive feedback.
The ClickUp Project management software has essential tools for communicating, addressing issues, and staying on track with the project.
The Agenda Template by ClickUp helps you make the most of your meetings with your team. Use it to outline meeting objectives and topics to be addressed, break down tasks into action items, and assign responsibilities.
Using this template helps team leaders to:
- Ensure all relevant issues are addressed in the meeting
- Prepare participants by giving them an overview of what will be discussed
- Establish a proper structure and order for the meeting
- Encourage active participation
Regularly and transparent communication
Host daily stand-ups for 10-15 minutes to communicate with your team. Use this time to co-create a team culture that breaks down siloed work by encouraging shared accountability and transparent exchange of ideas and coaching team members on achieving organizational goals.
Goal-setting
Even the most talented team can feel lost at sea without clear goals. Setting goals isn’t just about ticking boxes at the end of a project; it’s about providing your team with a roadmap for success. The spark ignites motivation, fosters collaboration, and ultimately leads to achieving those “Aha!” moments.
Why goals matter for teams
Your team can collaborate effectively if they understand where they’re headed. Clearly defined goals provide a shared sense of purpose and direction. They act as the North Star, guiding everyone’s efforts towards a common objective. This clarity breeds focus, allowing your team to prioritize tasks and allocate resources efficiently.
Motivation through goal-setting
Goals aren’t just about direction; they’re about inspiration. When goals are achievable yet challenging, they create a healthy sense of competition and a desire to excel.
Goal-setting tips:
- Use goal-setting tools: Project management software can be used to develop an in-depth goal-setting framework. ClickUp’s Project Management Platform can help you document company goals and timelines, break them down into team and individual tasks, and assign clear ownership for each. This ensures transparency and allows teams to see the connections between their responsibilities and the overall objectives of the organization
- Create SMART goals: Ensure that the goals assigned to your team are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timebound) goals so they can understand what needs to be done and how to measure success. ClickUp Goals can help you organize objectives to motivate your team to achieve them. You can also use milestones to highlight crucial stages
- Build accountability: Save and track your team goals in a centralized and shareable repository that team members can access. This helps them address any doubts and enhances accountability since everyone can view the progress
Trustworthiness
Here’s why trustworthiness is a non-negotiable leadership skill.
If you win your team’s trust, they are more likely to work together to achieve a common goal, even in the most challenging times.
As a good team leader, here’s how you can build trust:
- Promote transparency: Be transparent with your team members at all times. Is there a layoff in the pipeline? Communicate. Is the organization going through a rough patch? Again, communicate. Don’t keep your team members in the dark
- Build connections: Connect personally and emotionally with each team member. Dedicate time to having regular one-on-one catch-ups with your team. This can go a long way in ensuring that nobody feels disengaged or lost
- Walk the talk: Your actions are the best way to win your team’s trust. Communicate honestly and with trust, hold yourself accountable, and show them respect and consideration
Positivity
Team leaders with a positive outlook create long-lasting and impactful working relationships, making it relatively easier to achieve goals.
The guiding principles of an effective leader include building a positive work environment where the team feels valued, motivated, and productive.
A McKinsey study shows that 89% of employees believe a safe and respectful workspace is essential.
As a leader, it is up to you to ensure your team’s psychological safety. Your team should feel comfortable expressing their views, concerns, and ideas without fear of backlash. They should be able to fail and learn from it because you encourage them to see failure as a learning opportunity.
You can also create a positive work environment by encouraging communication and collaboration, providing clear goals and regular feedback, acknowledging and recognizing good work, and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
To adopt a positive leadership approach:
- Know your team: Understand your team dynamics—who is performing well, who requires additional support? Once you have a clear picture of each individual’s strengths and areas of development, you’ll be able to solve problems faster and build a positive atmosphere for your team
- Promote collaboration: Engage in team-building activities like ice-breaker sessions and team games. These fun activities can help your teammates get more comfortable with one another and improve collaboration
Self-accountability
Before you expect your team to be accountable for their actions, master the skill of self-accountability. An ideal team leader shares accountability instead of blaming their team members for not fulfilling goals.
To improve your self-accountability skills:
- Transparency: Set clear expectations and be transparent about your performance with your teammates
- Accountability partner: Find an accountability partner, say another leader from a different team. This partner will be your go-to person for discussing goals, issues faced by your team, positive affirmations, and occasional rants
Summarize this article for me pleaseLeadership Styles and the Team Dynamic
Being a leader is like being the captain of a ship and navigating it through various challenges. There is no single formula for it. Styles change based on the nature of the leader and the team.
You don’t need to stick to a single style. You can experiment with different styles and prioritize one over the other based on situations.
Let’s look at the three common leadership styles:
Democratic leadership
This type of leadership involves collective decision-making, fosters mutual respect, and promotes diversity and transparency. The team leader encourages active participation, engages in meaningful dialog, and encourages ownership of outcomes.
This leadership style is ideal for teams with multiple personalities as it emphasizes collaboration and empowers cross-functional employees to speak their minds without worrying about judgment.
Google is known for its unique organizational culture. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin initially adopted a democratic leadership style to build a culture of open communication and encourage employees to participate more in decision-making. No wonder Google is one of the most innovative brands in the world and manages a global workforce where everyone participates equally in decision-making.
Democratic leadership has a long-term impact on your team. Employees are more comfortable sharing their ideas. Democratic leaders build a communication-driven culture where creative thoughts flow naturally, and employees are always ready to brainstorm ideas.
Autocratic leadership
Autocratic leaders don’t encourage team collaboration and are often criticized for lacking emotional intelligence.
While this leadership style works well in demanding situations where you must make decisions faster, it does not work well in larger departments. Sure, these leaders ensure the team does not deviate from pre-defined rules, but strict autocratic leadership can result in high attrition.
Laissez-Faire leadership
Also known as delegative leadership, this leadership style takes a hands-off approach and gives everyone the freedom to make decisions. Leaders provide their teams with the tools and resources needed to succeed, but they remain uninvolved in day-to-day work.
As it encourages independent thinking, this leadership style is ideal for creative agencies and advertising companies. It is also effective when the team consists of experts who don’t need much guidance. However, in teams with inexperienced members, it can lead to a lack of role clarity and loss of direction.
Summarize this article for me pleaseThe Role of Team Leadership in Professional Development
Winning the trust of executives
When you lead a cross-functional team to achieve a goal, you prove your emotional intelligence, competence, and business acumen to the senior executives. It helps them trust you easily with complex responsibilities. This means faster growth opportunities, frequent rewards, organization-wide recognition, and timely salary increases.
Networking with top professionals in your industry
Leadership roles help you expand your network, navigate the industry, interact with top professionals, and improve your chances of landing better opportunities. Apart from external networks, the ability to communicate with people of all personality types also helps you delegate tasks smoothly as you become adept at interacting with co-workers, supervisors, and team members.
Building a personal brand
As a successful leader, your achievements and recognition can help enhance your personal brand.
Summarize this article for me pleaseThe Role of Team Leadership in Conflict Resolution
Conflicts within teams are common, and a good team leader can easily address and resolve team conflicts and disputes.
Here are some attributes that can help you successfully resolve conflicts:
- Practice active listening: Hear each team member individually to discover and address the cause of the conflict. Maintain an unbiased approach where everyone gets equal treatment
- Have a problem-solving attitude: Instead of getting overwhelmed with frequent conflicts, identify patterns to spot the trend and find a solution that addresses the root causes of these conflicts
- Have patience and empathy: Create an environment that discourages blame games—encouraging team members to sort out interpersonal differences maturely
Summarize this article for me pleaseChallenges of Team Leadership in Modern Work Environments
Conflict management
Workplace conflict is a serious issue. As a leader, you must handle it unbiasedly so employees don’t feel insecure or undervalued. A survey showed that 31% of employees who experienced conflict in workplaces reported that leaders didn’t take them seriously when they reported a conflict.
From a new leader’s point of view, handling conflicts can be overwhelming, especially when too many team members with different backgrounds and personalities are involved. You have to manage their emotions and opinions respectfully without sounding biased.
In such situations, communicating openly with all the team members involved in the conflict is best. Managing conflict well is one of the primary hallmarks of a great leader. To improve your conflict resolution skills, you can:
- Practice active listening
- Build and show empathy towards colleagues
- Manage your own emotions well
- Focus on resolving the matter without worrying about being right
- Communicate often and well
Change management
As an enterprise starts scaling, change becomes the only constant. Change can include workplace culture, market positioning, internal policies, and technology change, among other things. It is often difficult for employees to adapt to these frequent changes quickly, which leads to critical issues like conflicts, occasional setbacks, sinking productivity, resistance to change, and uncertainty.
To overcome these challenges and help employees embrace change, team leaders must:
- Maintain a positive attitude
- Communicate proactively with the team
- Have a change management plan to execute the changes effectively
- Motivate the team
- Be prepared for setbacks
Don’t hesitate to arrange 1:1 calls with your team members to hear them out, understand what is bothering them about the change, and communicate empathetically how this change will benefit them in the long run.
Stakeholder management
The key to successful stakeholder management is striking the perfect balance between managing your team, staying on good terms with the leadership, and maintaining a productive relationship with your co-workers.
While this sounds daunting, you can manage stakeholders by understanding direct and indirect stakeholders, categorizing them based on where they fit into your work environment, understanding their needs, and acting accordingly.
For example, your team members are direct stakeholders, as your recognition potentials depend on their performances. Accordingly, you can prioritize them the most and focus on their needs first.
Building an effective and aligned team
Building a team out of people from different backgrounds and possessing different personality types is challenging. An effective and empathetic leader is central to this group.
Here are some ways in which you can build a cohesive team:
- Treat all team members equally and encourage them to collaborate instead of competing
- Empower them to own outcomes
- Encourage team-building activities such as online games, offsite trips, etc.
- Inspire the team to look toward a larger, shared purpose
Motivating, engaging, and retaining teams
According to a survey by GoodHire, a background check company, 82% of American employees said they would potentially quit their jobs because of bad managers.
Employees often deal with issues such as lack of recognition and appreciation, unsatisfactory compensation, and the absence of a constructive feedback system, which leads them to search for new opportunities.
As a leader, you are responsible for identifying and solving issues impacting team engagement. High attrition rates in a team can signify a leadership failure. To ensure that you don’t lose good performers in your team and that team targets can be met, you must have a plan of action to keep your team motivated and happy. It also makes financial sense; replacing an employee costs up to two times their annual salary.
To keep your team motivated and reduce employee turnover, here are some steps you can take as a leader:
- Build strong relationships with individual team members
- Recognize and reward good work
- Be fair and objective while reviewing their performance
- Schedule regular meetings and reviews with the team as well as with individuals for feedback and problem-solving
- Seek their input on strategies and plans that impact their work
- Help them find and capitalize on growth opportunities
If you are a new manager and have little or no experience with 1-on-1 discussions and performance reviews, don’t worry. We have templates to get you started.
The ClickUp 1:1 Meeting Template helps you drive structured meetings with team members. The template includes pre-built pages for employee roles, expectations, and recurring meeting agendas for each team member.
It helps you define and share agendas, align your team around goals and priorities, and receive and share actionable feedback.
Team development
A supportive leader doesn’t just get things done by their team. They motivate their team to achieve professional and personal growth. However, employees often have a lot on their plates, and frequent deadlines swamp them. In such situations, they quickly relinquish personal and professional development activities and prioritize regular job responsibilities.
A leader should delegate responsibilities better and allow staff free time to pursue professional development courses, improve their soft skills, and grow as professionals.
Leaders should always be available to respond to their questions and concerns to help them evolve as professionals and plant the seeds of leadership in their minds.
Summarize this article for me pleaseTools to Effectively Manage a Team
Leading a team brings with a unique set of challenges. You need all the help you can get, to keep work on track and your team at its peak. The best team leaders use all-in-one tools like ClickUp to manage cross-functional teams like pros, monitor team performance, ace their time management skills, and improve employee engagement.
Here’s why ClickUp is every team leader’s BFF
- Save time and effort by using AI tools in ClickUp. Use ClickUp Brain to convert broad goals into smaller tasks and sub-tasks, add descriptions to each task for your team’s visibility, write project updates, and generate standups automatically with your AI project manager. You can also use its AI Writer for Work to write emails, notes of appreciation, summaries of meeting notes, and so much more
- Get complete visibility into all projects and task dependencies at a glance with features such as Gantt charts, ClickUp’s Board View, etc.
- Prioritize tasks to help team members follow a common goal and focus on what’s important
- Drive accountability and delegate effectively with task assignment and project ownership
- Promote transparency with threaded comments in tasks so everybody is on the same page and blockers can be identified and removed
- Build a shared understanding and clarity over each project and reduce friction and confusion with collaborative ClickUp Docs, and ClickUp Chat
- Manage and track all projects in a shared ClickUp Dashboard and track daily, weekly, and monthly progress over ClickUp Goals without jumping into multiple team meetings that might exhaust your team members
Save time when starting a new project with ClickUp’s project management templates. From workflow automation, pre-built workflows, Gantt chart creation, and organizing tasks, project details, and documents, these templates do the heavy lifting for you.
For instance, Gantt chart templates in ClickUp can save project leaders time and effort and ensure no step is missed.
The ClickUp Gantt Timeline Template is one such advanced solution. It allows team leaders to oversee operations with a daily, monthly, and yearly overview. It helps you simplify project planning and tracking by
- Creating tasks with automatically updating timeline bars
- Organizing tasks into projects
- Providing clear visualization of progress with color-coded statuses
Summarize this article for me pleaseDrive Team Success with Great Team Leadership
A team leader’s job is difficult, but great team leadership is possible with the right tools and skills and an enthusiastic team. By building and practicing skills like communication, team motivation, delegation, positivity, and trust, you can go from a good to a great team leader.
Tools like ClickUp can help you empower your teams to work together effectively and achieve goals as a team. Remember, your team is your tribe—support them, listen to them, and find solutions with them, not for them.
To explore how ClickUp can boost your team leadership skills, sign up on ClickUp for free.
Summarize this article for me pleaseFAQs
What is an effective team leader?
An effective team leader is one with leadership skills such as communication skills, delegation, goal setting, and self-accountability, who can transform a team of individuals into a collaborative group working together to achieve common goals.
How do you provide team leadership?
You provide team leadership by understanding each team member’s unique strengths and development areas, learning their working styles, and supporting them with actionable solutions while keeping a firm eye on overall organizational goals.
What are the qualities of a good team leader?
While there are many qualities in a good team leader, the most important ones are emotional intelligence, trustworthiness, positivity, excellent communication skills, the ability to delegate and motivate, and the desire for constant learning and improvement.
Questions? Comments? Visit our Help Center for support.