Team Leadership
How to bring out the best in your team
The most efficient way to achieve more in less time, is having others do it for you.
But this is easier said than done. Most leaders expect miracles from their team, but underestimate their own responsibility in providing the the right information and resources to deliver outstanding work.
If your team is not performing as you wish, let’s together analyze the situation, set goals and design an action plan to:
- Better understand your team members’ needs
- Align their roles and goals with your organization’s strategy
- Give them the right tools and support to give their best work
Continue reading for some immediate inspiration.
My own team leadership journey
Since 2008 I’ve been leading teams in different settings (corporate, startup, freelance, non-profit) and studied leadership and communication non-stop.
From 2017 I’ve been personally mentoring purpose-driven leaders on their team leadership challenges.
From March 2020, with Gaianet, I’ve been practicing next-level team skills such as delegated authority, self-organization, and heart-conscious communication.
I distilled 3 underlying leadership skills which make 80% of the difference.
Master these skills, and become somebody who brings out the best in others.
1. Meaningful conversations
Step 1 is always to build a personal connection with each individual team member. You cannot separate the personal from the professional side. With money you can win people’s hands, but it takes a personal connection to win their hearts.
Radical honesty. Only when you open up and truly hear each individual’s desires, needs, wishes and preferences, you will be able to inspire and empower them in their own unique personalized way.
Ask what drives them. Ask which work challenges you should help them solve asap, in order to make everything else run smoother.
- Understand which few interventions will have the greatest effect
- Set each team member up for optimal engagement and flow
- Win their hearts, loyalty and commitment, in a genuine way
2. Delegating with care
One of the toughest skills for purpose-driven leaders. Take a moment to consider how difficult it is to effectively delegate work: you need to transfer complex information from your being into somebody else’s being, using only the very limited means of words. And then expecting them to do exactly what you have in mind, with similar or better quality.
A nearly impossible task… which is why 95% of leaders I meet struggle with this topic.
Although delegating work will never become easy, there are several best practices which make it easier. For example, having clear roles and responsibilities defined, giving clear assignments and providing the required resources, asking whether all is clear and agreed, and asking regular status updates.
- Limit miscommunication and personal frustration
- Worry less about missed deadlines and low quality outputs
- Waste less time fixing mistakes, and be more strategic
3. Constructive meetings
After you empowered each individual to work on the right things, you can interconnect the team, activate the mastermind, and facilitate ways for the team members to empower one another.
Each meeting needs a clear purpose, a format to accomplish that purpose, motivated participants, and a facilitator who guides the process. When you learn to effectively help the team fulfil each other’s needs, each individual will produce more with better quality faster.
In my online course Masterminding101 and in the Gaianet OS Playbook I share more best practices which you can apply immediately.
- Meetings become fun and inspirational again, raising people’s energy instead of sucking them dry
- Discover new opportunities and even quantum leaps by effectively putting your team’s minds together
- Empower your team to support each other, without you intermediating
Want personalized support?
Ready to change the way you work with your team?
Let’s get together to map your challenges and needs, and make an action plan.
If I have time, your mission resonates and we agree on a fair value exchange, I’m all yours for this mission.