10 Essential Skills to Become a Successful Team Leader and Manager

1. Confidence (Not Arrogance)

People are naturally drawn to confident leaders. Having clear goals and a clear sense of direction on achieving those goals is critical to successful leadership.

Just be careful that your confidence doesn’t turn into arrogance.

Think about the pilot of an airplane. In order to fly from point A to point B, a pilot needs to be confident in the route chosen, his/her ability to fly the plane and the competency of the crew. That pilot inspires confidence and most of us would be willing to take that flight. If however, that pilot starts out with only a vague idea of where they are going and the route they will take to get there, it doesn’t inspire confidence and very few people would be willing to follow that captain’s lead.

2. Decisiveness

Leaders make decisions in a timely manner. Not doing so is just letting the situation escalate until circumstances dictate an answer. Letting this happen is the exact opposite of leadership and will not inspire anyone to follow.

3. Organization

A good team leader recognizes that all resources are limited. This includes monetary capital, human capital as well as time. Being able to organize and prioritize each of these things so that waste is minimized is essential to a good leader.

Hint: Employ systems to streamline productivity as much as possible. Have a standard system to deal with email, paperwork, time management and anything else that you can.

Without organization, a lot of important decisions will be left to circumstance.

4. Negotiation

Whether it’s in the job description or not, almost any team leader needs to be a good negotiator.

Disputes and conflict will inevitably arise within your team. When that happens, you need to be willing to settle these disputes and restore harmony within the group.

Always keep in mind that when dealing with different personalities, perception is reality. You may see one side as rational and the other side as ridiculous, but through that person’s eyes, they have a legitimate gripe. You need to not only solve the immediate issue, but also ensure that any resentments won’t impact the larger goals of the team.

Start by listening and acknowledging both sides, half the battle is reassuring people that you have heard them and take their issues seriously. Then, try to come up with 2 to 3 compromised solutions that would be acceptable to you.

Finally, ask them to pick the scenario that they both could live with. You’ll find that while neither one gets what they want, if they feel invested in the solution, they will be much more likely to abide by it.

5. Delegation

Knowing how to delegate is not an option for a good team leader; you MUST be able to delegate tasks to your team members without micro-managing them.

In order to become an effective delegator, you must first have a clear understanding of the scope and time frame of the project. You also need a good understanding of each team member’s skill set.

Once those things are clear, you can then break down the goal into individual tasks that need to be accomplished within a time frame. You can then assign each task to a team member according to their individual skill sets.

Your job then becomes one of answering questions that arise, monitoring progress and tying everything together to make a finished product. Proper delegation is the truest form of management.

6. Prioritize

Being a good prioritizer is an undervalued skill, but it’s essential to optimizing your team’s time, effort and resources.

In a team leadership role, you need to be able to prioritize the tasks that are the most essential and the most time sensitive for the success of the project. From the point of view of the small business owner, you need to prioritize what you will personally do.

In my businesses, all of my efforts are devoted to activities that will increase sales and income for the company. I spend my time marketing, networking and promoting the businesses. Anything that takes me away from those activities needs to be done by either an employee or it gets contracted (or delegated) out to a specialist.

7. Motivator

Being a good team leader means knowing how to motivate both the group and the individuals within the group. Using techniques like outside team building exercises can enhance group cohesiveness and group problem solving skills. These are the very things necessary when working in a group environment.

While implementing good team building activities is essential, it’s not enough. You need to understand how to motivate the individuals within your team. Everyone has their own motivation for doing things.

Some are motivated by money, so is there a bonus at the end? If not, make sure they understand that their performance will be taken into consideration during their next annual review.

Some people (especially parents) may be motivated by having a more flexible schedule. Can you offer them Friday afternoon off if they come in an hour early on Monday – Thursday? (or stay an hour late)?

Some people are motivated by fear of consequences. And while constantly threatening people’s jobs may work in the short term, it’s no way to motivate people in the long term. But that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be consequences for missed deadlines or poor performance.

As a team leader, you have both the carrot and the stick at your disposal.

8. Maintain Composure

Any human endeavor that requires group coordination over a period of time is bound to run into snags, problem and issues, some foreseeable, some not. When these issues arise, a good team leader will stay focused on solutions rather than being fixated on the problem. This attribute does not come naturally to most people, but it is one that can and should be learned.

I personally learned this skill when I became a pilot. First of all, as any pilot will tell you, if you get into trouble flying an airplane, the worst thing you can do is panic. No one makes good decisions in a panic of distressed state of mind.

It’s important that you are able to calmly gather all the information about the problem before you do anything that might make the issue worse. Only when you are clear about the nature and cause of the problem can you then address it properly. There’s a reason that most plane crashes are due to pilot error. Don’t let pilot error crash your project.

9. Encourage Creativity

This has a lot to do with having good listening skills. A good leader will listen to their team at least as much as they direct the team.

Having regular meeting where team members can discuss the problems and issues they are having is a great way to not only build team cohesiveness, but it also allows for the brainstorming of ideas to solve problems.

As a team leader, you should set ground rules for these brainstorming sessions that include:

There are no stupid ideas – Brainstorming sessions by their nature are creative endeavors, nothing squelch’s creativity faster than a judgmental atmosphere.
Don’t criticize other people’s ideas – A brainstorming session is not the forum to decide if an idea is good or not. In fact, you should be encouraging people to come up with wild, strange or unlikely concepts. After all, that is how industry changing breakthroughs come about.
Build on other’s ideas – This is where encouraging wild ideas pays off. It’s very common that one person’s idea will trigger someone else’s different (or even better) idea. In effect, your team is harnessing and building off of each other’s brain power. And this is what we are after, it’s this type of “out of the box” thinking that can lead to revolutionary changes.

10. Integrity

No one can be an effective leader without integrity. It doesn’t take long for the troops to lose confidence in a leader who won’t stand up for them or who blames others for their mistakes. These types of leaders quickly evolve in to tyrants. They are no longer seen as a “team player” by the group and trust quickly dissolves. Once this happens, they no longer have the ability to inspire people to follow them, and the only tool left is to lead by fear and intimidation.

Obviously, this can work in the short term, but not as a long term strategy.

To avoid this, you can inspire confidence in your organization by listening to your staff and taking their advice (when warranted). Be forthright and admit to mistakes when you make them. And finally, don’t be afraid to go to bat for your employees with upper management if you think you are right. You don’t necessarily have to win, but it’s important that your troops see that you tried.

If you employ these tactics, you can inspire people to follow your lead without having to rely on intimidation or fear.

_{Full Article by David Carpenter, Lifehack}