Without leadership, there’s no direction. Why? Because if people are not lead, everyone goes his or her own way or do whatsoever they please, then no achievement. But a Leader in a team will take responsibility, and guide the team towards achieving a pre-set task or goal. Regardless of the fact that there has to be a leader in a team, it doesn’t mean that the team members can’t possess or display leadership qualities amongst themselves especially if the team leader is not available. Hence, the reason for this article. Do you want to develop leadership skills in your team? Then read on.
Need for Leadership Skills in a Team
Before you can develop leadership skills in your team, you must first know why you need to do this so that you’ll see reason to take the remainder of this article seriously. Here are a few reasons leadership qualities are needed amongst team members:
1. Responsibility
If every member of the team are disciplined in leadership qualities, they will automatically grow a sense of responsibility. They wouldn’t have to wait in order to be when told to execute their job or tasks. Doing things at the right time and doing it well without being cajoled- That’s a sense of responsibility that leadership brings.
2. Building Morale
Leadership development amongst team members help keep the team’s morale on a high. This helps keep members motivated and ensure that morale is fever pitch. Developing their leadership skills also boosts their confidence which will help them approach their jobs in a positive manner.
3. Promotes Value
Building leadership in your team helps promote value that are essential to the success of an organization. Because this qualities will ensure that each member exhibits honesty and integrity in all their activities, hence, members will become role models to each other, ensuring that everyone acts the same way. This way, value is promoted.
4. How to Identify Leaders in Your team
It is true that everyone can be trained to lead, however, there are some born leaders that have the potential and talent to lead. They are always there in any team, but you may not know. See how you can identify leaders in your team.
>> Recommended reading: How to Evaluate the Team?
5. Focus on Potential and not Performance
Performance is indeed measure if ability and expertise but to identify a leader, you need to look beyond performance so you can understand a team member’s desire and aptitude to grow, develop others, communicate effectively and influence the rest of the team positively.
6. Implement Job rotation
Inc.com advise that you give potential leaders the opportunity to display their qualities and gain experience by rotating them through different roles and obligations within the team. This challenge will help stretch their skill level.
Exposing them to unfamiliar tasks or roles, helps them with the exposure to new skills and expands their expertise.
7. Look for Result drivers
Another way to identify leaders in your team is to look for team members that always drive for results in light of an issue. That is, members that don’t give up when complications arise but instead, look for ways to solve the issue and provide results.
8. Evaluate Resilience
This trait is important in a team. A team without a resilient member means the job would never be done because every obligation or tasks come with its challenges. If no team member motivates or evaluates the team to keep trying then the chances of getting the job done is slim.
>> Recommended reading: Time Management: A Guide to Boost Productivity
Ways in Developing Leadership Qualities in Your Team
Now that you know why developing leadership qualities is necessary, here are few ways to develop the leadership qualities of your team.
1. Practice Discipline
If you are not disciplined or don’t exhibit discipline in both your professional and personal life, then how do you expect your team to do the same? Discipline will inspire others in your team to imitate as well.
Demonstrate discipline by meeting deadlines, keeping to appointments and ending meetings on time. If you are disorganized, then don’t expect your team to be otherwise.
2. Learn to Follow
Another effective method of developing your team’s leadership qualities is to learn to follow. When you don’t feel threatened or have no problem yielding control to another person when appropriate then they’ll be more likely to step up to the plate for you.
You can’t expect them to develop their leadership skills if you don’t give them the opportunity to display it.
3. Reward Effort and Success
Leadership is not supposed to be executed because of the rewards or gains, however, there’s no better way to motivate your team and encourage them to be responsibility like giving incentives and rewarding hard work and success.
Reward effort and success and watch how your members will start to display a sense of responsibility along with other leadership qualities.
4. Encourage Growth
By promoting the intellectual growth of your team members, you are also sharpening and developing their leadership qualities. Because as they learn new things and develop their skills, they feel more obligated to oversee some certain things in the team.
Always strive to encourage their growth. Not just the growth of one member but all.
>> Recommended reading: Leadership skills in three keywords
How to develop leadership skills with technology?
Should you aim to gain the respect of a dedicated team, you must be transparent with it. One of the best strategies for applying leadership skills is to implement collaborative tools in the work environment – in which decisions are registered and priorities are clear.
Runrun.it is a work management platform which helps you to manage the workflow while collects data on each activity performed in your company to track the hours worked. In addition, you can choose your most important metrics to be shown in a custom Dashboard. Try it for free: http://runrun.it
