Leading a Team: Three Major Challenges You Will Face and the Most Effective Ways to Overcome Them
Leading a team can be a daunting task, and there is a lot of pressure placed on the leader to make sure that the team is strong, successful, cohesive, and high performing. But how is this achieved? Here are three major challenges in leading a team and the most effective ways to overcome those challenges!
Challenge #1 in Leading a Team: Gaining the Trust of the Team
You must gain the trust of your team quickly and maintain and nurture it for the duration of your leadership.
You can and should FIRST gain the trust of your team by getting to know them personally and professionally:
- Know their strengths, their goals, and their challenges.
- Know (appropriately) what’s going on in their personal lives so that you can support them as a WHOLE person, not just an employee.
How do you know these things? ASK! Ask them in conversational.
Set aside intentional time to meet regularly with the members of your team. Ask them what their professional goals are and provide opportunities for growth and challenge. Accommodate adjustments when it allows them to have a better work-life balance.
Challenge #2 in Leading a Team: Confusion in Direction and Decision Making
One of the quickest ways to frustrate your team and lose their engagement is to be unclear with your directions, expectations, and decisions.
Your team looks to you as the leader to clearly lay out the path to success. That includes delegation, assigning tasks, setting deadlines, communicating progress, and letting the team know when you’ve made a final decision on something.
First, over-communicate! It cannot be said enough. The team needs to know when changes in operations or decisions affect the work they were doing. If a change occurs and the team is unaware, they may waste significant time and resources on something that is no longer needed. And THAT is frustrating beyond belief to a team.
Secondly, If you are at a crossroads in a project, and the team is looking to you to make a decision, let them know exactly where you are in your thought process. Are you gathering information, looking for input, or directing performance?
If you’re gathering input from the team, for example, be very clear on who will make the final decision and when. When a final decision is made, make it clear whether or not there is no further room for input or if the discussion is ended. This is a challenge in leading a team, but a team constantly uninformed or in limbo is likely to fail.
Even if your team ultimately disagrees with your decisions, they will respect the fact that you gathered information and input, and then made a decision. You didn’t leave them hanging in limbo without clarity or guidance.
Challenge #3 in Leading a Team: Healthy and Productive Team Relationships
You are the leader of the team, and you set the example on what respectful teamwork and communication looks like.
If there is an issue between team members, you are responsible for coaching those employees, guiding their work, and holding them to your expectations of professional behavior in the workplace.
One challenge in leading a team is that even the employees who are not involved in conflict with other teammates will be watching the way you handle issues and judging you based on your actions, and more importantly, your inactions.
“Nothing will kill a good employee faster than watching you tolerate a bad one.” -Perry Belcher
Need to give difficult feedback to someone? Check out 6 Hacks for Hard Conversations for tips on maintaining a strong relationship with candor and kindness.
You can do it! Overcome these 3 Challenges Leading a Team!
What you do as a leader of a team matters! There are many challenges in leading a team, and these three often cause the most disruption amongst team members, productivity, and quality work. Combat these challenges head on through genuine interest in your team, clear guidelines and decision-making, and following through on all expectations you set of your team members.
Good luck out there!
Want more? Check out the rest of the Professional Development articles!
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4 Comments
You Can Call Me Jess
I love this article even in connection with me being a teacher!! Great simple suggestions and not a huge list! 🙌🏼🙌🏼
Caitlin
Thank you! I’m glad to hear the tips are transferable across industries 🙂
Kara
These are all so true and you’ve come up with wonderful ways to overcome the challenges! I know from experience my team leader has caused some confusion with their decision making in the past, but as a team we’ve focused on communicating better and that has smoothed things out a bit 🙂
Caitlin
Thanks Kara! I appreciate the input and agree decision-making can be a major challenge for teams moving forward!