Team Leadership Dos

Sometimes I find the best leadership in my faith tradition and I have recently read a book by Alain Emerson§ that has really helped me and confirmed some of my practices, especially when it comes to Team Leadership.

Here are his suggestions for leading teams, with my “twist” on them:

1.     Be with your team members intentionally to find out who they are and how they tick. – Take the time to know who you lead and so you can delegate and give projects to them appropriately.

2.     Build in long enough key planning times so that your team has a vision and then you can set key objectives and goals can be set and reached in a timely manner. “Without vision, the people fail”.

3.     Develop a culture of self – and team – reflection. Reflection causes learning - and change.

4.     Name and nurture one another’s skills and gifts. Celebrate them – and the wins gained by each member. Also, encourage one another to work on weaknesses. Change can happen.

5.     Recognize seasons and events in your team members’ lives – is there a new baby? Give them slack. Is there a retirement coming up? Get ready to celebrate the time together. Has a spouse or a parent died? Allow for processing and grief. Allow for change and frustration; allow for all emotions, “good” and “bad” (there is no such thing, but I think you know what I mean).

6.     Discuss the issues, the expectations, find out the assumptions. Allow for difficult conversations and if you make a mistake yourself, be a model and own it.

7.     Make sure there is role clarity and “function” clarity for all. Again, celebrate the successes of your team, and of individual members.

8.     “Be aware the futility of cult personality above team.” This I quote. It is key. We are all human and nobody is perfect and the leader (and the team, and the organization) need to know this!

This is what I learned from Pastor Emmerson’s book. Maybe you would find it good for you, too.

Have a lovely rest of the week.

Patricia Jehle               patricia@jehle-coaching.com

*The Cruciform Leder by Alain Emmerson, publisher, Muddy Books