6 Ways Leaders Can Promote Team Function

​Great teams don’t just happen. They take work. They are built on relationships and, like any relationships, they have their ups and downs.  Teams are influenced by internal and external factors and they have distinct personalities.

If you are the formal or informal leader of a team, how are you influencing the way the team functions?  How are you molding the team personality?  Are you promoting healthy communications?  Are you keeping the focus on the collective?  How do you handle challenging moments?

In working with teams of all kinds, I see how team leaders (again, the formal or informal leaders) influence team dynamics, either for the better or (inadvertently) for the worse.

​Here are the 6 key ways I see formal and informal team leaders positively contribute to team function.

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1. Asking questions – Great leaders ask meaningful questions that prompt critical thinking and open the floor for meaningful sharing.  Using starter questions like, “Tell me what comes to mind when you hear…” to probing questions like, “Can you elaborate on why this image doesn’t work for you?”, the leader pulls the thinking from the group members.
2. Modeling positive communications – Even when there is tough conflict, positive leaders communicate with a focus on issues (not people) and finding solutions (not complaining about problems).  “Sales and production are looking at what goals they can agree on,” is both honest and positive compared to, “The yahoos in sales are still over-inflating their goals and creating impossible numbers for production to meet.” Is this spin?  Yes. And it’s spin that matters, especially when it’s coming from a recognized leader (again, a formal or informal leader) because it sets the tone for how people work together and for the general culture.
3. Emphasizing both character and competence trust – Character trust (relationship-based and requiring personal vulnerability) and competence trust (based on completion of work at high levels) go hand in hand.  Individuals generally lean more toward one or the other in terms of what they personally value and most focus on demonstrating.  Ultimately, both matter and matter equally. Great leaders demonstrate both and hold others accountable for both.
4. Getting into the yuck – You know the yuck moments, right?  One common examples is when someone in a meeting makes the quiet comment or gives the subtle look that clearly communicates unhappiness of some sort.  Everyone feels the yuck, but does anyone address it?  There is nothing easy about this, but when a leader brings the yuck out into the open, new depths of trust emerge quickly.  Sometimes this happens non-specifically, (“As I look around, I can tell that we’re not all on board with this. Let’s hear some more discussion…) while at other times it’s more direct (“Erin, you seem really bothered by the decision to go with the 2nd proposal. What’s on your mind?”). By bringing out the yuck, there is a lot conveyed, including sensitivity to others’ feelings and thoughts, a culture of direct and assertive communication.
5. Leading by example – As already touched upon, great leaders walk the walk.  They don’t just talk about positive communication, asking probing questions and communicating carefully, they execute it over and over, and especially during challenging times.  This is one of the true hallmarks of a stellar leader.
6. Emphasizing collective success – I imagine that you’ve heard: “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’.”  While cliche, there is important truth here.  A true team (rather than a workgroup) has interdependence that means that all major successes (and failures) are collective.  It is all too easy to lose sight of what the collective goal is.  Perhaps it’s reaching new revenue levels while increasing client retention.  Or delivering higher levels of customer service.  Or transitioning to more standardized processes in order to promote sustainability.  Whatever the collective goal is, great leaders know it, and speak it, and anchor people back to it over and over.  Leaders with power over compensation even tie performance-based pay to collective goals and not individual goals. (Now, that’s serious alignment!)

The end of the year is soon and this is a natural time for reflection and goal setting.  Perhaps in this article you see an opportunity to build yourself as a leader who does even a little more to promote positive, healthy team function.  If so, I hope you’ll embrace making changes and taking new actions. Doing so may not be easy, but it may be what sets you and your team apart from the rest.