Leading a team takes more skill than simply directing people what to do. Great leaders know and embrace the following…

• Attitude is Everything! If you are not excited about the job, no one else is going to be either. As team leader you set the tone and attitude.  Your team members will be more excited and committed to a project based on how you communicate it to them.                                                                                                                              
• Use ALL your Communication Skills (and make sure to LISTEN).
• Make time. When you become a team leader, you are now in a different job and you’ll have to give up some of the things you were doing in order to take on additional responsibilities. This means being able to delegate. That will take time and perseverance to help your team members learn and embrace other goals and tasks. It also means empowering them and therefore giving up some degree of control. These things are the most difficult, because they require CHANGE.
• Be a Coach. This means giving your team the tools and training they need to be successful. It means sharing the knowledge that you have. It means that you are boosting your team to constantly improve. The mark of a great team is continuous improvement.
• Psychic Income is more important than you realize. From the Harvard Business Review: “Establishing a positive organizational culture, one in which employees and managers support one another, should be a top priority for organizations. Expressing praise and gratitude is particularly important for keeping up morale. Gratitude makes people feel valued, and positive feedback has been shown to not only reduce the negative effects of stress on employee performance—but actually to encourage more success. Neuroscientists have even shown that the brain processes verbal affirmations similarly to financial rewards. But we often hold back, unnecessarily, because we fail to realize the actual effects our positive messages have on others. When it comes to deciding whether to express praise or appreciation to another person, doubt often creeps in and our anxiety leaves us feeling overly pessimistic about the effects our messages will have—so we just refrain from using this valuable tool that would make everyone better off.”
  • We are conditioned to “fixing things”—which means finding and pointing out what is WRONG. We forget to talk about all that is RIGHT.
  • Remember to be specific.

• Empowerment breeds excitement and new ideas. Don’t get stuck in “we have always done it this way.”  Realize that you do not need to make every decision. There are several levels:

1. 1. You decide solely
   2. You confer with team and then you decide
   3. You and team decide together
   4. Team confers with you and they decide
   5. Team decides and informs you

•  Managing is Personal and Professional. Think about the best manager you ever had. They wanted to know you and allowed you to know some things about themselves- personally. There is a line between personal and professional and you need to know and maintain where that is, but don’t treat your team members as if their only value to you is what they contribute to the company.

Remember that your professional career is a journey –with other people. Keep learning new skills and make the most of it.