Successful Leaders Build Effective Teams

The best leaders understand and embrace the critical importance of creating effective teams to achieve a shared purpose/vision. Great teamwork doesn’t happen by accident; it requires leadership that proactively creates team cohesion and a positive work climate, with members who clearly understand their role and what it means to be an effective team member.
 
Too often, however, teams operate suboptimally with members who are underutilized or frustrated. Research by the Ken Blanchard Company and Training magazine found that only 27% of people think their work teams are high-performing and only one in four believe their organization does a good job training people to work on teams.
 
Conflicts among team members are not necessarily bad, but need to be appropriately managed to hold ego and emotion in check. Craig Weber, author of “Conversational Capacity: The Secret to Building Successful Teams That Perform When the Pressure Is On,” observes that the extremes are fight versus flight, a need to win versus a willingness to minimize. Much better, Weber asserts, is finding the sweet spot where candor and curiosity are in balance. Effective team members need skills in both areas.
 
You can read Dr. Teschner’s full column on this topic in the January 17, 2020 edition of the New Hampshire Business Review here: https://www.nhbr.com/building-great-teams/.
 
As a leader, you have an extraordinary opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives. Don’t underestimate your impact!