Stepping into Team Leadership

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Expectations of a Team Leader

For instance, if you work with people located in different sites, what is the best way to build relationship?

However, people don’t like it when their boss watches them all the time, so don't overdo it. It is important to remember that trust works both ways which means that it is sometimes okay to take the backseat and trust your team that they will do their best at work.

You've noticed that one of your team members is underperforming. Choose the question/s that you will use to effectively challenge and support that team member:

Lastly, walk the walk People expect that leaders take ownership for the performance of their teams.

When a leader demonstrates this sense of accountability, he does not only build a trusting relationship among his team members but also promote a sense of fairness among employees and the organisation.

For instance, if your team weren't able to hit the project's current target, what is the best question to ask?

Scoping work and setting expectations

Some of you might say that one of your greatest objective is to ensure that the whole team work process go smoothly from the initiation phase up until the end.

Say, you did convey this goal with your team and they nodded in agreement like they thoroughly understood.

But then when it’s time to get the output, you realised that this is not what you asked for.

Scope creep happens when a client wants more than what the contract or agreement specifies. This causes a huge concern to leaders as their team might be doing a lot of unnecessary work which may result in project delays or longer project life cycle. By defining a clear scope of work (SoW), you will be able to document everything that you need to achieve and avoid problems like scope creep. A clear scope of work will also make managing your clients' expectations easier for the team. How then can we develop a comprehensive project scope management?

Part of your work as a team leader is to make sure your team actually understand what is asked of them. Now this seems pretty simple but let’s take a look at these two scenarios:

Case #1: Chris is a team leader who handed off work expectations to his team during a busy period. He only gave bits and pieces of information about them, which weren't enough for the team to do their job effectively.

Case #2: Lisa believes that she has the best team and would often refer to them as “rockstars.” Since she believes that they could wing it, she finds it unnecessary to discuss further information about their work expectations.

The next thing you need to do is to walk them through those expectations.

If you can, demonstrate it to them.

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Team Time Management

Managing your team's time is different from managing your own. For one, team work involves different people working together rather than just doing individual work. This requires organisational rhythm and collaboration. At the centre of it all is a **strong team leader **who can communicate and coordinate actions among team members. In this lesson, we will talk about the best practices for managing your team’s time.

Tip #2: Delegate Tasks

Delegating task is never an easy thing to do especially when you let others do the work that you used to do for some time or train someone else to do it.

However, you don’t all have to do everything on your own. Knowing someone in your team who can do it better than you will save you a lot of time and allow you to focus your energies on doing more important tasks.

You’re the one in charge with finalising the code on your company's software, and you’ve decided to teach this skill to one of your three employees. To whom will you delegate this task?

Communicating Within Your Team

At its most basic level, communication is about sharing ideas and exchanging information. When you work as a team leader, the completeness, precision, pacing and medium of your communication will have a significant impact on how your team will carry out the work expect of them. This will also have a strong effect on how your team will respect you, each other and the work that they will do. What is it about effective team leaders that allows them to communicate so well?

Speak in their language

People communicate and think in different and unique ways. Knowing the preferred communication style of each team member will help you bridge the gap and relay your messages more effectively.

Each team member has concerns and ideas which need to be heard, and when they know that you care about what they think and feel, the more the likely they are to freely share their ideas and give genuine feedback.

Don't forget to make it fun

Doing an activity that everyone enjoys is a classic way to reinvigorate communication among the team members and help them feel more comfortable.

And the more comfortable they feel, the more naturally they will talk and reach out.