The Top Characteristics of a Good Leader
A good team leader always gives respects and has trust to their team. Establishing mutual trust and friendship with your team requires time, patience, and effort. Getting people to work together with the same mindset is not easy. Sometimes many leaders jump to start achieving goals before structuring the basics of team building, like establish clear goals, and create a good environment where all team members feel comfortable to work and motivated to contribute.
- Get to Know the Team:
“One of your first priorities should be to get to know your team members and to encourage them to get to better know one another,” says Shapiro.
Always try to avoid immediately start talking about the work and the task result. Take 20 to 30 minutes daily to interact with your team in the initial few weeks. Visit your team’s members at their desk or in break time, ask them about their lives or their interest. This type of interaction will help you to build a good relationship with the team. It also can help you to know about which team members dealing are with the financial issue or some family problem, that can result in a loss of work focus.
2. A great strategist:
One of the most important tasks of a team leader is to set ambitious but achievable goals with the team’s input. You need to explain in detail how you expect to achieve the goal and how you want the team will work. If you don’t make these clear for everyone, you risk creating an environment where people feel unwilling to contribute. By setting goals early, the group’s decision making will be more clear and more efficient.
“It’s always better to start with more structure, more touch points, more check-ins at the begining,” says Shapiro
3. Transparent team communication:
Explain to your team what’s behind each of your decisions and what’s your priorities are. Don’t hide anything with the team. Whether it’s good or bad news. Every team member should know what’s happening in the team. By communicating your vision and values, you will show your team that you are committed to a healthy degree of transparency.
4. Creating an innovative work environment:
Creating an environment where every team member has an opportunity to participate and share their ideas and opinions without any hesitation is important. The team would become more innovative through this. Create a communication channel where team members can share their idea and discuss that with the team. Encourage small and incremental innovation rather than radical innovation. Even if the idea is not implemented, team members should be encouraged to share ideas. The important thing is that your team members see that you appreciate their effort.
5. Being Respectful:
A good leader always shows respect to their team members, and they will do the same towards you. Everyone wants to have their life, efforts, identity and interests to be treated with respect. By being respectful to everyone, you will become a respected team leader. By being disrespectful affect your team’s productivity and performance.
Principles to Remember
Do:
- Be clear about what goes into your decision making and how you will evaluate the team’s progress
- Encourage team members to connect — better communication early on will help avoid misunderstanding and poor results later
- Look for roadblocks or grievances you can fix — it will earn you capital and inspire the team
Don’t:
- Jump into trying to accomplish the work without building the relationship with the team
- Assume that new team members understand how you or others work — take the time to explain processes and expectations
