Dick Wulf, MSW, LCSW
Avoiding the Four Biggest Mistakes in Team Leadership
Teams usually underachieve or fail because of four all-too-common mistakes:
- The team leader leads individuals rather than the team as a whole.
- The team does not adopt and commit to a critical purpose stated in terms of results.
- The team leader does too much for the team and builds dependency upon leadership that cripples the team and its members.
- The team leader does not encourage and instruct interaction among team members.
Effective leadership avoids these mistakes.
The lack of effective team leadership is not readily apparent because we are satisfied if any kind of leadership is taking place. But to a "trained eye" the leadership of teams is usually not even leadership of TEAMS! Instead, it is usually only leadership of individuals grouped in a so-called team.
Unfortunately, the general feeling is that team leadership is not much different from the leadership of individuals. And that is the biggest mistake of all. Teams are completely different than individuals! True, they are made up of individuals. But that is precisely what makes teams different.
An individual does not need to relate with himself or herself to be effective. But a team does need its members to interact and draw out the best from each and every member. And this is just one example of the many critical differences between a collection of people and an actual team. Team leadership is leadership of relationships and personal interactions. It involves those skills that help people work together. Individual leadership, whether alone with an individual or directed toward individual employees on a work team, is something altogether different.
To quote the late Dr. William Schwartz, under whom I studied at the Columbia University School of Social Work during 1965-67, "A team is a collection of people who need each other to work at accomplishing a common purpose." A team can best be understood if it is seen as a living organism, much as a family is a living and vital social organism. Thus, a team must be led as a whole—as a team rather than a collection of individuals.
So let's look at four big mistakes in the usual kind of team leadership, mistakes that cripple performance and limit accomplishment.
THE PRIMARY MISTAKE: The leader leads individuals rather than the team as a whole.
If a team leader leads individuals using a team setting, there will be some success, but not nearly as much as when the team is the focus of the leader's attention. A genuine team will not usually come into being if the leader centers his or her attention on individuals. A collection of people being herded in the same direction will not prosper and grow into a powerful force for getting work done, building job satisfaction, solving problems quickly, etc.
If, on the other hand, a team leader leads the collection of people to become an authentic team, a strong society will develop that enables individual members to function and grow by leaps and bounds more than any other team leadership model. And the team, so ignored by so many team leadership models, will go on to accomplish very surprising results.
Leading a team is a completely different paradigm than leading individuals. Think of the coach of a football team contrasted with the quarterback coach. The first must focus on how the various individual members of the team relate to each other, work together, carry out the plays, etc. The quarterback coach is concerned with very different things: individual performance, individual morale, etc. Or think of an orchestra conductor who must be concerned that each musician is playing his or her part and that the whole orchestra is in harmony. The flute instructor, on the other hand, is focused on the individual. Now imagine the quarterback coach trying to coach the whole team with the methods and skills used in working with the one quarterback. Or imagine the flute teacher conducting the orchestra with only oneonone skills. It wouldn't work.
The flute player is not the orchestra; the orchestra is like a living organism of its own. Likewise, the quarterback is not the football team; the team is something completely different from the quarterback, even though it contains the quarterback.
The successful team leader (like the football team coach or orchestra conductor; unlike the quarterback coach or flute instructor) has the team in mind, talks to the team almost all of the time (only occasionally to individuals), analyzes how the team is developing and what it needs to do next to go further, gives the team work to do, and helps with a host of other team-centered concerns.
Think of all the other benefits of focusing on the team as a whole. There will be greater team building and much more growth in individual members! With the leader's focus on the team, the members will make decisions together, work together to accomplish the team purpose, resolve barriers that block progress, etc. Both the individuals AND the team will grow and become stronger and more capable. This then translates into more effective individuals and a strong team.
This empowering model of team leadership expects a lot of the team and is very affirming. It is not the typical "Let's see how comfortable we can make the team experience." Instead, it is more like saying, "<et's show the team and its members how much they can accomplish by working together as a team."
THE SECOND SERIOUS MISTAKE: The team and its members do not know and are not committed to a critical and dominant purpose.
If people do not know they are a team (an organism apart from each person's separate individual identity), then each person will only focus on individual purposes. When these individual (hidden) agendas clash, the "team" breaks up through nonattendance or some other fatal reaction.
Teams fail and often go out of existence because the team leader does not help the team and its members decide upon and commit to a critical team purpose. Without such a purpose to guide functional behavior, the team will very likely become dysfunctional. And without constructive behavior and rewarding accomplishment, the team becomes a less important activity. It ceases to be a means to a critical purpose and meaningful goals.
When the members of a team do not know what is the team's purpose, their behavior will not be focused. What happens in the team will often become less and less satisfying and people will start dropping out of the team. They will often be confused as to the real reason for the team which was never decided.
On the other hand, when a team is led as a team, careful time is taken at the start to help the team adopt a purpose that is critically important to the team members. Thus the team members might decide that the team purpose will be to get the job done well and enjoy themselves while doing it. Expected behavior in light of this team purpose is discussed.
THE THIRD DISASTROUS MISTAKE: The team leader does too much for the team and its members.
When a team leader continually does things for people that they can do, he or she cripples them, both as a team and also as individuals. Almost all popular models of team leadership teach doing way too much for the team and its members. This subtly communicates that the team and its members are not able, and thus expected, to do things that they most surely can do. (It is no wonder some employees do so little.)
Take for example the situation where a team member is too talkative and pushy. Most models suggest that the leader take the person aside and talk to him or her about the unwelcome behavior. This takes away a very strengthening opportunity for the team and subverts the team's growth process.
This empowering model of team leadership teaches that the team as a whole should deal with the domineering member—that he or she is the TEAM'S problem. And so the team leader helps the team deal with the dysfunctional behavior. The members and the team as a whole become more skillful. The team members will not only have to confront, but also learn to support and encourage in order to keep the person contributing, but in a more sensitive way. Giving the team the problem is critical to the development of the team and its members -- in many ways. Most important is the fact that the team can do the job a thousand times better than the leader. It has more resources, more talent, more time, more energy, and so on.
Therefore, the successful team leader is constantly vigilant to assure that he or she does not hold the team and its members back by doing things that they can do. Instead of talking, directing, empathizing, and a host of other things the team and its members can do better, the wise team leader is constantly thinking about what the team needs to do to be a more dynamic team, briefly modeling behavior that no team member can model, and teaching what no team member or members can teach. Then the wise team leader allows the team and its members to do such behavior from that time on.
THE FOURTH DISASTROUS MISTAKE: The team leader does not encourage and instruct interdependent behavior among team members to create powerful synergy.
Without support, teams will functionally interact with one another only when it is obviously necessary and comfortable. But, an observant team leader will see many more occasions where team communication through actions and behavior would speed things along, build the team, improve the product, etc.
Teams usually function far short of their potential. Synergy is absolutely necessary for maximum performance of the team. Synergy, where the sum of the whole is much, much larger than the addition of the parts, is much more than one-on-one communication between team members. It requires interaction and interdependence among all members. Synergy brings out everyone's best contributions—at the best time—in the best way.
Perhaps the team member who would be most helpful at one stage of a project or discussion is not contributing. This might be due to lack of confidence, conflict on the team or with some of the team members, troubles at home, fear of being wrong, or something else. When one team member who does not have a strong relationship with the hesitant member asks a member who does have such a relationship to help the hesitant member contribute, that is an example of synergy. That is what a professional team leader wants to produce in his or her team.
Until mature synergy develops, a team will underachieve and not come close to its maximum potential.