Intranet Journal
The online resource for intranet professionals
Communication
Communication within the team will make or break you. I have had the distinct displeasure of being stuck on a team where people cannot and do not communicate. I can tell you it is like serving a life sentence in purgatory. In this situation no matter how hard one person may try and no matter how effectively they communicate, it can never be enough to overcome the unwillingness and inability of the leaders to communicate effectively.
Alas, though, we are building a successful team in this article so you, as team leader, will be eager, willing, and able to communicate with your team. Keys to successful team communication include:
Making Decisions
Involve the team in the decision making process. Honor people by including them and respecting their views and opinions. Each day every one of your team members will have to make decisions. Encourage them to be independent as much as possible, while feeling free to seek your input and advice when needed. Empowerment goes a long way toward having a positive experience. If someone makes a wrong decision, do not beat him or her up. We all make wrong decisions now and then. That is life. Most likely, unless you are in a real life or death situation, a wrong decision will not kill anyone. Keep that in mind and maintain your perspective!
In all teams there will be situations where either no one will make a decision or it is really not appropriate to empower the masses. In these cases, you must step up to the plate and make the decision. If you respect your people and save these authoritative moments for only the times where it is necessary to move the team forward, you will be much more successful in earning the respect of the people on your team.
Handling Conflict and Disagreement
Conflict and disagreement are inevitable. Even the best run and most compatible teams have run into these obstacles occasionally. The measure of success is how you handle them. Do not back away from conflict, but do not engage yourself emotionally in it either. In moments of conflict you must first honor the individuals involved and then seek to solve the problem at hand. If need be, diffuse a particularly heated situation by creating the necessary time, space, and perspective for people to regain composure.
If you have fostered an environment of trust within your team, you will be able to encourage team members to resolve differences on their own. If need be, facilitate the process in a professional manner. All conflict and emotional upset stems not from the actual problem at hand but from the emotion and feelings individuals assign to the problem at hand. That is, their reaction to the problem and what they make that mean.
Bottom Line: People first, then things (I paraphrase and steal some of financial guru Suze Orman's philosophy here). If you handle the people successfully, the problem will just become another item that requires a decision.
Tooting the Horn
As team leader, you are in a unique position to do much horn tooting. Toot your own horn, toot the collective team's horn, and honor individual accomplishments whenever possible. Oftentimes, as the leader, you will have more access to the customers and managers than your team. As a result, people may associate the project's success solely with your efforts. Although this is good in terms of tooting your own horn, a good team leader brings the contributions of all team members to the forefront. That is, tooting the collective horn of the whole team. Lastly, for outstanding individual contributions, recognize those people and toot their horn by mentioning their name to your superiors and customers and giving credit where credit is due. People need to feel their contributions are valued.
Doing this will not only gain you the respect of your team members, it will also make you feel good to be able to make a difference. This is one way you as a team leader can truly make a difference in the lives' of others in the course of your daily job (and you thought being in Intranet Development couldn't make the world a better place!).
Measuring Success
Quite obviously, there are the typical project deliverables on which your team's success will be measured. These deliverables typically include the usual delivering what's required, on time, within budget, etc., etc., etc. However, I believe there is one deliverable even more important than these even though no one will ever give you a bonus, raise or promotion for it. That deliverable is:
the growth of the individual team members as people.
The ability of you and your team members to grow and learn in a positive, enjoyable environment is the #1 deliverable of your project team even though no one will ever admit to or reward you for that.