Team Leadership

Per the Team Diagnostic™ model, team leadership is one of 14 Team Performance Indicators™ (TPIs). It’s a strong sense of team leadership. This includes but is more than the role of the team leader. Team members contribute as the need for their leadership arises. The team leader or sponsor’s role is clear and supportive of the team as a whole.

What’s Team Leadership?
Mostly, when we are talking about team leadership, the word of ‘team leader’ jumps to our mind and all our attention is paid on team leader，something like ‘if you want a team successful, team leader is the key and his/her leadership should be developed from level 2 – Interpersonal relationship manager/Communicator to level 6 – Mentor/Partner’. And we need powerful leaders because they can transform teams and ignite meaningful change. They can look ahead. They begin by sharing their vision for the future. They embrace and lead change, support team members and champion others’ growth. They can look outward, constantly assess industry changes and market forces. And they stay closely attuned to the changing needs of customers. All of all, seems one person can change everything.
But we are facing a team, we can find things is more than that. It’s more like a system in front of you. Within the system, diversified people have different point of views, different communication type, multiple interaction happens in the system, the leader can’t replace all members and get their job well done. If we want the team success, we should treat the team as alive and dynamic system. With clear job allocation and assignment, the team will empower leadership to team members among the system like a ship, no matter who is been assigned to do any specific work, he/she is granted a role of leadership to get the assignment accomplished, and meanwhile other team members are ready to support him/her. Every member in the system should rely on every other, proactively show their own leadership to get his own job well done. As a result of this, the whole team leadership can be demonstrated, and the final team performance results can be achieved. In the word of TCI, the system requires leadership and the team provides leadership as needed whether it comes from the hierarchy in the organizational structure or from the workstation next to yours.
On the other hand, we don’t want to ignore the significant role of the team leader. In this role, the leader simultaneously holds the mission and tone of the team as well as the functioning of the members within the team. And leaders look to maximize and encourage the contribution of each team member. They hold the success of the mission and the healthy, motivated spirit of the team as paramount. In this model, leadership has the particular quality of making sure every voice is heard, even the unpopular voices, and creating from everything that shows up.

How does Team Leadership work?
“Teams rely on intense, collaborative work to accomplish a specific goal or task that could not be accomplished as well by an individual or a work group. An effective team increases the productivity, satisfaction, and growth of each of its team members, the team itself, and the rest of the organization.” — Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith.
Team leadership is a combination of team member’s leadership and system process. It’s not a pure 1+1+1=3 but 1+1+1>3. It is an integration. team is more than a collection of individuals. A team is a selection of people put together for a common purpose with identifiable goals, clear roles and accountability for results.
Internally team leadership comes from clear job allocation, clear process and procedures, clear game rules, these are hardware pieces and foundation of team leadership. For software pieces, like people engagement, driving high performance and helping low performers without abandon, proactive supporting each other, etc., all these (not limited) support team leadership like pillars of the house – team performance.
Externally team leadership works with other 13 team performance strengths, those 14 TPIs interact seamlessly to drive high performance. For example, good team leadership can maintain good trust and camaraderie within the team, easy for team to align goals and strategies, manage resource, and team will proactively embrace change and be accountable to effectively make decision, good leadership bring respect, good communication and constructive interaction to team. On the contrary, good trust and camaraderie, optimism, constructive interaction helps to build good team leadership. Team members achieve self-development and engage in team performance and as a result the team leadership gain growth.

Application in Team Coaching
For application, coach discloses the result of ‘Team Leadership’ in layer 2. It is a good opportunity for a coaching conversation. Coach should normalize where they are and read the energetic field and report on it. Coach could ask open ended questions, “What’s it like to be at this score for team leadership? Where do you see this showing up? How does a team like this behave? Where would you like to be on Team Leadership and what would that look like?”
If the score of team leadership is low, ask team to think about an ideal team they were on and how that team would behave on team leadership. Notice if the system goes to judgement or defensiveness. Where they are is simply where they are. It doesn’t mean anything about them personally. It’s important to remove any tendency to judge.
On the other hand, coach can ask team to think about the linkage between low team leadership and other low score factors. They might impact each other and interact strongly. Some examples about team leadership coaching is as following,
Activities and discussion questions for Team Leadership:
• Review with the team critical situations or turning points and investigate the role of leadership. Who was leading at that time? What was the value of that contribution?
• What are ways that new team members take on the role of leadership within a team they have just joined?
• Look for signs of leadership within the team. Different people taking on a role of leadership from an area of expertise and experience rather than title. How is leadership empowered on this team?