There are approximately 5.5 million private businesses operating in the UK. Go to any of them and ask about their high-performing employees or teams. Odds are good that a member of management can point to those employees or teams without pause.
Yet, high-performing teams don’t exist in a vacuum. Just as importantly, they can prove surprisingly delicate. Disrupt the team too much and all of that high performance can collapse.
High-performing teams need effective leadership just as much, if not more, than average teams. Are you worried that your high-performing teams are operating on the edge of disaster? Keep reading for some key strategies for leading those excellent teams.
Understand Your Team Members
Leading a team is about more than just issuing orders or detailing project milestones. Yes, there is some of that, but it’s almost secondary. A good leader needs emotional intelligence to understand their team members.
That understanding will help you see why a team member won’t do well in a leadership role but will excel at support tasks. Granted, leaders must sometimes push team members. Emotional intelligence will help you understand where you can and cannot push them.
Flexibility
The post-Covid business world looks very different from the pre-Covid business world. Maximizing team performance means exhibiting some flexibility. For example, have you mastered managing remote employees?
A flexible leader works within the constraints they find to bring out the best in their team. Sometimes that means spending more time on remote employees. For example, leaders must often enforce communication rules that keep remote employees plugged into the process.
You may need to give remote employees more face time if only over a Zoom call. That extra face time helps ensure you understand their needs. It also reinforces the all-important interpersonal connection between you and those employees.
Nothing will destroy a high-performing team faster than neglecting to credit remote employees for their contributions.
Process Building
High-performing teams don’t do black magic to achieve their results. Although, it might look that way from the outside. These teams often develop and master processes.
Process building is one of those leadership skills that you cannot overvalue. In many cases, it’s just good communication.
Good leaders dig into what their teams do and ask questions. Understanding what the team is doing and how they do it can often let you build a process that others can follow.
Effective Leadership and You
When it comes to high-performing teams, effective leadership matters. Good leaders help those teams continue performing at that level.
Effective leadership deploys emotional intelligence to understand the team members. This lets you push team members in the right way and at the right times.
An effective leader is flexible. With teams often working remotely, you must remain flexible to meet their needs and ensure sustained work quality.
Finally, effective leaders become experts at process building, which facilitates replication.
Asset Training Academy provides leadership training online and in-person throughout the UK. For more information about our services, contact Asset Training Academy today.