Leading a team can be challenging, but fundamentally, effective team leadership is about (a) ensuring that your team has all the capabilities, cooperation, coordination, communication, cognition, coaching, and conditions it needs and (b) enabling them to learn and adapt as needed.
The following are 10 team leader tips for applying the science of teamwork. As you read through the recommended actions, we encourage you to identify at least two that you can use over the next few months to help your team succeed. You might decide to start doing something you don’t currently do (or do enough) or instead focus on an action or two that you already know about but will commit to paying closer attention to over the next few months.
1. Ensure that your team has the talent it needs to be successful.
a. Recognize that teamwork can rarely overcome very large talent deficiencies in core areas. A team needs ample talent.
b. Be honest about your team’s talent gaps and take action: provide individuals with targeted training or coaching to increase their capabilities; acquire, move, replace, or borrow talent to fill in talent gaps; or modify task assignments or work procedures to better fit team member capabilities.
c. When hiring your next team member, clarify the competencies they need to possess, including both technical competencies and teamwork competencies.
2. Staff your team with enough team members who think “team first” (i.e., who have “collective orientation”).
a. Not every member of your team must be high in collective orientation, but you need enough who are. When hiring a new employee or assembling a team, assess more than technical expertise. Ask candidates about their prior team experiences and be alert for red flags, such as excessive complaining about or blaming of prior team members. Avoid people with toxic personalities even if they appear to be technically qualified.
b. Be careful not to burn out your most team-oriented people by overrelying on them to fill in, help others, volunteer, work late, etc. If upon reflection, you realize that several of your most team-oriented people have left your teams in the past, it is possible that you either burned them out or failed to recognize their contributions to the team.
c. Recognize and reward teamwork, and you’ll gain a reputation as a leader for whom team players want to work. Tolerate jerks, and you’ll gain a different reputation.
3. Take actions that builds your team’s “collective efficacy”—so they believe the team can win.
a. Teams that believe they can win are more likely to do so. While self-confidence is helpful (“I can succeed”), it is insufficient when team members must rely on one another. They need to believe in the team as well (“We can succeed”).
b. Boost your team’s collective efficacy by discussing and celebrating team wins and accomplishments. Solving problems is important, but be sure to also spend some time on the team’s successes. Ask, “How can we build on this success?” and “What did we learn from this win that we can apply elsewhere?”
4. Act in a manner that consistently promotes a sense of psychological safety in your team.
a. Psychological safety is what enables team members to believe they can speak up, admit mistakes, ask questions, offer a dissenting opinion, seek feedback and be themselves—without the risk of being judged harshly. As team leader, you can greatly influence psychological safety, and it’s among the strongest predictors of team performance.
b. To help create psychological safety, admit when you don’t understand something or made a mistake; encourage team members to voice concerns; and thank them when they have the courage to offer a dissenting view. Treat mistakes as opportunities to learn, not opportunities for blame.
c. But recognize that promoting psychological safety does not mean being weak or tolerating unacceptable behavior. You can address performance problems and still develop psychological safety in your team.
5. Prepare your team members to back up one another.
a. Back-up behaviors (e.g., helping out, filling in, providing reminders) can be crucial for a team’s success. For backup to occur, team members need to know when and how to do so and must possess the right skills.
b. Clarify your expectations about when backup is needed and who should provide it, and selectively train people to know “enough” about other people’s tasks to be able to help.
6. Conduct periodic team debriefs to help your team “self-adjust.”
a. The best teams are rarely great on day one. They become great by making small, ongoing adjustments.
b. Get in the habit of conducting periodic team debriefs to discuss how the team has been working together. Ask what went well and where improvements might be beneficial. Discuss teamwork and task work, agree to one or more tangible adjustments, and then follow up to assess progress. You’ll finds tips and an outline for leading a team debrief in Tool B toward the end of the book.
c. When conducting a debrief, start by asking questions rather than telling your team what they should do. Teams adapt more effectively when they self-discover what they did well and can do better. After they’ve had the chance to share their perspectives, you can fill in anything they missed or redirect them as needed.
7. Monitor and boost the quality of communications in your team.
a. How often are your team members “surprised” because they weren’t told something or were unaware of an action or decision? Communications often suffer because people falsely assume “Everyone knows that.” Get in the habit of asking team members, “Who else should know about this?”
b. More communication is not always better. Simply talking more (or sending more emails) is not enough. Quality communication is a result of team members sharing unique information, in a timely manner, and restating what they heard to ensure clarity.
c. If communicating with “outsiders” is critical, be sure that (a) the right people are handling that role (being “boundary spanners”) and (b) they are well prepared to do so. When you need all team members to communicate a consistent message, be sure they all know the message. That won’t happen by chance, so discuss with them, “What will we all tell people about X?”
8. Be sure your team members are on the same page (maintain “shared cognitions”).
a. Effective teams maintain shared cognitions about direction, priorities, roles, and ways to handle certain situations. If asked about these factors, would your team members provide the same answers? Don’t assume this will happen naturally.
b. Allocate time to review and discuss current priorities and direction. What does success look like for our team? What are our top priorities? To build shared understanding and future readiness, periodically discuss relevant scenarios. To anticipate if–then contingencies, ask, “If X happens, who should do what? Why?”
c. Role clarity is critical. Role gaps (e.g., I assume you’ll handle it, and you assume I will) and role conflicts (e.g., we each think we own a decision) create problems. List your team’s major activities and decisions and, for each, clarify who is responsible for it, who should be asked for input about it, and who should be updated afterwards.
9. Continue to sharpen your team leadership skills.
a. Leadership matters, but effective leadership doesn’t mean being the most visible, forceful person in charge. Overreliance on rewards and punishment drives compliance but doesn’t build commitment. Demonstrate that you are committed to your team members’ success and not just your own—convey some sense of “servant leadership.” Ask, “What can I do to help you and the team succeed?”
b. Encourage team members to provide each other with constructive feedback, to offer advice, suggest new ideas, and hold each other accountable. You can’t be there for everyone all the time, so some “shared leadership” will probably be needed for your team to thrive.
c. Help your team establish an inspiring sense of identity. Discuss, “Why does our team exist”? “Who do we impact? Who relies on us?” and “How can we really make a difference?”
10. Use your influence as a team leader to improve the environment in which your team operates.
a. Unfavorable conditions hinder team success—and no team operates under persistently favorable conditions. Does your team lack critical resources, access, time, information, equipment, or support?
b. Be sure you know the difference between your team’s needs (without which the team is truly unlikely to be successful) and wants (things that would be helpful but aren’t essential) and spend most of your negotiating “chips” trying to acquire needs.
c. Avoid making commitments to your team that you aren’t sure you’ll be able to keep. If a decision is outside your control, it is better to tell your team “I’ll look into that problem, and let you know if it can be changed,” than to say “I’ll get that fixed” and then failing to deliver. Breaking your word is a big trust killer.