In our society, we applaud leaders. Many of us aspire to be leaders. After all leaders by definition have
followers. This is where team leadership
gets complex. Unprepared leaders can
easily run amuck.
Team leaders, to be effective, have 11 specific dimensions
that they must always balance. Those that
balance well, develop effective high functioning teams. The factors I speak of are:
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Team Effectiveness Dimensions
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Numbers 1 through 10 are tough! If that isn’t enough, there are still the external
relations! The team will need budgets,
resources and support from this group of stakeholders so they must be a key
factor in the leader’s circle of influence.
This is confirms the complexity of the leader role.
How would a leader know if they were effectively balancing
all these factors? Good leaders request and humbly receive feedback from team
members and many other sources. Good
leaders are always listening. Anonymous
votes on Likert scales would be an easy method of gathering a visual picture of
any team’s perception of these dimensions.
Using this as a baseline will give any listening leader a strong picture
of the team’s perceptions. These visual pictures
can be kept over time to foster discussions with the team to support growth.
Subsequent issues of this blog will deal with the implications
high and low effectiveness markings on these dimensions. Stay tuned for more learning!
