Here’s a sentence that is true for 90% of workplaces, but never uttered out loud: most people promoted to leadership roles are given little to no training on how to do the job.
They are given a fancy new title, a bigger desk and a slightly different workload, and then left to figure it out, which most do – eventually. Unfortunately, for both the company they work for and the team that they lead, this is usually achieved by making many small mistakes along the way.
Understanding what makes a good team leader matters for everybody in the room. Good leadership significantly shapes what a workday will look and feel like, and sadly, so can poor leadership. Here’s how to avoid that.
What is a team leader?
In the simplest of terms, a team leader is a person who leads a team of people, usually towards a shared goal. It sounds fairly straightforward, but the reality is that it is about so much more than merely giving orders and sharing responsibilities. This can look like many things: making sure everyone is on the same page and that the focus is clear across the board, adjusting goal posts and redistributing work when things change, keeping morale high when things don’t go to plan, settling disputes, or making decisions when no one else wants to.
The peculiar thing about what a team leader is, is that despite sharing the same titles across every sector and organisation, there are a million different variations to the actual job that they will do. A team leader on a hospital ward will have a vastly different day to a team leader at a marketing agency, for example. Yet the underlying skill set needed to be a good team leader is the same across industries. Both will need to understand people. Both will need to communicate under pressure. Both will need to know the time is right to step in or step back. When these skills are teachable, why are newly promoted team leaders not sent to appropriate training?
A team leader is more than just a manager with a friendlier sounding job title, too. Management’s priority tends to be big-picture stuff: processes and outputs and client liaising. Team leaders are the step between them and the workers that help to produce those outputs, whether that’s by motivating them, developing them, or listening to them when things aren’t working.
What makes a good team leader?
The striking truth that we referenced earlier is that good team leaders are made, not found.
There‘s a persistent myth that leadership ability is something you either have or don’t have; some innate quality that announces itself at birth, and makes you a leader of men. While there may be bossy people or people who are good at planning things out, it’s not really true that you have to be naturally good at every skill needed to answer ‘what makes a good leader.’
Real leadership is not a personality trait, but a set of habits and ways of doing things. That often includes consistency, and communicating successfully with everyone on the team, both by listening and giving direction. And they take accountability seriously, whether it is their own, the client’s, or the team themselves.
Underneath all of this is a degree of emotional intelligence, which is the ability to read how people are feeling about something and to adjust accordingly, so that they can respond to issues without adding to them. This skill, in particular, is one that is lacking in a lot of quickly promoted team leaders.
What are the duties & responsibilities of a team leader?
The duties of a team leader may vary from one business to another, but there are a generic set of responsibilities that cover all team leader roles. On paper, they look fairly straightforward: setting goals, allocating work, monitoring progress, giving feedback, reporting upwards, resolving conflict, supporting development, and keeping morale in reasonable shape.
In practice, those responsibilities have a way of arriving all at once, on a Tuesday afternoon, when two people are off sick and the deadline has just moved forward by a week.
The responsibilities of a team leader extend well beyond task management. At its core, the duty of a team leader is to create conditions that allow their team to do their very best work, which will always come down to ruling by being a human rather than something to fear. A team that feels supported and which believes in the success of the task will always outperform one that does not.
How to be a good team leader
As with most skillsets, knowing how to be a good leader and actually doing them are two different things. The gap is easy to bridge, but it is where most companies fail to invest in. Here’s the best ways to achieve it yourself:
– Invest in self-awareness
Ask anyone for bad work stories and you’ll quickly see that this is one that many leaders think themselves not in need of. They tend to be the ones who need it most. This goal is not so much about achieving it, but imbuing your working life with it. Ask for feedback, and sit with it with an open mind, rather than dismissing it if it makes you uncomfortable.
Leaders who understand their own patterns (good and bad, and especially under pressure) are the ones that can actually change for the better.
– Build genuine relationships
This is more than knowing how Steve in IT likes his coffee. Taking the time to understand each person on your team, what motivates them and what makes work difficult for them, is not a soft skill in the dismissive sense. It is the practical foundation of getting the best out of people. Trust is not built through team-building exercises, but by consistent mutual respect, and real conversations over time.
– Communicate with clarity and purpose
You might know what you want from your team, but do they? Ambiguity is an expensive trait to have in a team, usually leading to people assuming things and spending time working on the wrong things. Say what you mean and be consistent with it. But also make room for discussions, as if the team are asking questions, then you know that they have been paying attention.
– Commit to continuous learning
No one knows everything, and anyway, everything changes all the time. Whatever sector you are in, good leadership requires ongoing investment: through formal training, peer learning, or working with a coach. The credibility that comes from visibly continuing to learn is itself a form of leadership, and might inspire your team to follow suit.
Quick Guide: What are the 5 qualities of a team leader?
As you have probably realised by now, there are multiple factors that contribute to leadership success. However, research and first-hand accounts consistently highlight these five core qualities as the most essential for any effective team leader:
- Emotional intelligence: A leader who cannot read a room is not going to achieve much in getting people to work to their full potential. This comes before and above everything else.
- Clear communication: The age old saying rings true here: say what you mean and mean what you say. Your team will respect you for it. Give feedback that is specific and actionable, and always create space for questions from your team.
- Accountability: A great team leader will hold themself to the same standards as their team, and will own their mistakes and wins without any drama, always giving credit where it is due.
- Decisiveness: Teams need direction in the good and bad times. A leader who endlessly deliberates or is guided by moods and whims creates anxiety where there need not be any. The ability to decide something and commit to it is a key part of what makes a good team leader.
- Adaptability: On the flip side, it is a rare plan that goes ahead without alterations. Effective leadership means being flexible in how things are achieved, the ability to take new information seriously and not taking each change as a personal attack or defeat.
Overall, long-term leadership success requires a particular kind of intellectual honesty. That is, the willingness to revisit assumptions, to admit when something has stopped working, and to keep growing in the role rather than simply getting more comfortable in it. The leaders that people remember well are rarely the ones who had all the answers. They are the ones who kept asking better questions.
