How To Become A Good Team Leader

Good team leaders can be the difference between a positive, successful team and a disjointed, unsuccessful one. 

The essential role of a team leader is one which has a lot of responsibility and takes many skills to master, but when you do, it can have a huge impact on a business and everyone in it. See what leadership is, the qualities of a team leader and how you can improve your professional skills to become a good team leader.

Ensuring that your team is working collectively towards a common goal is key to achieving the results you need. Being able to communicate effectively is one of many leadership skills that is often undervalued, but it is fundamental to carrying out team leader responsibilities effectively. 

Make sure you communicate clear goals, and discuss how you foresee your team implementing the steps towards that goal through clear milestones.

Here are some key tips to help you identify and communicate the business’ visions to your team:

Effective leadership needs to take the whole team into account and promote employee engagement through positive team morale. When a team knows and understands the common goal, and knows that their leader understands team needs, then you are more likely to get their best work and achieve the goals you set out, making you an effective team leader.

Communication and being clear about goals is a lot easier when you understand your team and are able to see where they are coming from. Teams are always made up of people who could be coming from very different angles and communication styles and might understand things differently, and therefore emotional intelligence is key to any leadership role.

Understanding the members of your team, their personality types and how they communicate can help greatly in a team leader role, as it ensures that you can adapt your leadership style to effectively mentor each member of the team. This requires both effective communication skills as well as an ability to be empathetic, a degree of self-awareness and

Understanding each member of your team, as well as the team dynamics and structure in its entirety, also helps with other elements of team leading, such as delegation and team building. Knowing people’s strengths as well as their career development goals can help you to be an effective leader as well as enabling a more positive work environment.

Although it might not be nice to think about, you will need to confront your weaknesses in order to progress and become a great leader. It can be difficult to know what our shortcomings are in the workplace, especially if our role is centred around working with other people in a leadership position. If you already know some of your weaknesses, make a note of them and think of why you think you fall short in this area and how you can improve on those weaknesses.

For example, you might not be very good at decision-making as you are not confident in the decisions you have to make. If this is the case, then perhaps a course on business strategy or team leadership would be helpful as you can learn how to make those decisions and have the confidence in your ability to know the right course of action to take. 

Another way to determine what your weaknesses might be include talking to your colleagues, your team or your manager. This can help highlight weaknesses that we didn’t consider, help us rethink our weaknesses or help us recognise strengths that we were not aware of. Workshopping ways to improve these weaknesses with your team and being open to constructive feedback can help with this too. 

It is not the lack of weaknesses that make up the qualities of a good team leader, but instead, the ability to acknowledge and work on those weaknesses in order to become a better leader.

There are fantastic resources for team leaders or those who want to be team leaders to take advantage of to help them succeed. Courses in Leadership, for example, can help you develop team leader skills such as communication, delegation, problem-solving, decision making and project leadership. Management courses are another great option to develop your management skills, which include people management, project management and the skills needed to manage a team. 

There are a variety of online courses you can explore which can help you work your way up into a management role, increase your leadership job opportunities or improve your current skill set in team leadership. These courses are available online and from accredited course providers, which are recognised around the world, allowing you to present recognised qualifications to potential employers. 

If you are a new team leader or hoping to move into leadership soon, then a professional development course can help you develop the confidence, new skills and leadership qualities to become a successful team leader. Some of the skills you can learn through a leadership or management course include time management, team management, how to set team goals and how to effectively manage others.