Leadership Models For Teams

Effective Leadership Models for a Successful Team

If you search for the meaning of the word “Leadership” on the internet, you’ll get countless definitions all around the web. This means that leadership has a lot of flavours. This is where different leadership models come into play. They act as guidelines on how to lead and manage a team or a group effectively. They provide insights and pragmatic advice that we can implement in various situations.

Good leadership skills are essential in all aspects of our social life. Having the ability to lead effectively is having the ability to produce great results. Acquiring leadership skills will drastically improve not just your ability to handle a team but also your ability to handle people that you deal with in different situations. Below are leadership models packed with practical advice to sharpen your leadership skills.

1. The Emphatic Leader: Feel to Understand

According to many leadership theories, having empathy and role-modeling empathic behaviour is a vital part of leadership. Empathy enables leaders to effectively communicate with their team that they care about their needs and achievements (Bass, 1985). Great leaders are influenced by this important part of emotional intelligence.

• The desire to be understood is as significant as the need for approval. These innate desires both elicit a pleasant sense of satisfaction once fulfilled. When you gratify these innate desires, you can expect the best from your team.
• Understand your team before you impose your own standards. Assess their strengths and weaknesses to find ways to bring out their “greatness.” Effective leaders always find the hidden golden nuggets and strengths in every member of the team.
• Genuinely try to understand them.

2. The Relationship Theory: The Healthy Team

A team is like the skeletal system. The relationship of the leader and the team member is similar to a joint. Once a joint is being dismantled or damaged, it will impair and limit the function of the whole. A positive relationship between the leader and the team member is a requirement in producing great results, as a whole.

• Look for ways to build rapport with your members to promote camaraderie. Compliment them, take a moment of your day and see what is happening in their world and give them the recognition they need for their work.
• Having a healthy relationship with your team will make work life more positive and fun. This will supercharge everyone’s creativity and productivity.
• Implement the negativity sandwich. Negativity sandwich is a style of giving negative feedback where you start with a set of positive comments before you jump in to your constructive criticism, then end it with positive remarks.
• Contemplate the ideas that you elicit from your members. Sometimes, the best possible solution to a problem can be in a form of two or more ideas combined.
• Focus on proactive cooperation. Prevent unnecessary conflicts and refrain from giving in to anger. Master your emotions. How your members feel about you greatly affects the quality of their work.

3. The Situational Theory: Every Situation is Unique

The Situational Leadership Theory encourages leaders to be versatile and flexible in order to approach different situations as efficiently as possible. Every situation is unique and different; and there is a need for leaders to act accordingly. Below are the four aspects of Situational Leadership:

• Directing
  This is the most basic level of leadership. This pertains to the act of providing step-by-step instructions on how to do a certain task. This leadership is simply more like telling your teammates what to do and establishing a standard for the result. This approach ranks low on “relationship behavior” (i.e the level of connection you have with them) and high on “task behavior” (i.e the amount of time and effort you will spend giving instructions and telling people what to do)

• Coaching
  It is also known as selling. In this leadership style, you will technically pitch an idea to your teammates to get them understand the process and the task. This leadership approach does not only focus on the task, but also on your connection with your teammates. In this case, you see potential that needs to be harnessed in order to bloom successfully.

• Supporting
  This leadership approach is strongly related to coaching. Perhaps, this should come after coaching. It is suitable when your teammates are already competent and highly-skilled but need a small amount of guidance or supervision. Your aim here is to create alignment. This involves a series of fine-tuning and ensuring there is a healthy feedback loop.

• Delegating
  This stage is where your teammates are competent, motivated, and empowered enough in such a way that they require only minimal guidance. This allows you to focus on bigger things rather than centering on the details of every task. This leadership style us hands-off, which means you’re not primarily involved in the decision-making process and your teammates take full responsibility in doing tasks.

4. The Well-Rounded Leader Model

It was formulated by an Australian consulting firm Leadership Mastery. This model suggests that leadership is developed by starting with self-awareness. It revolves around improving and concentrating primarily on these areas: Technical, Business, and People

• Technical Skills/Commercial Skills
  Technical skills are the foundation of our career. As a leader, you need to evolve and take your skill set into a whole-new level. In the corporate world, you must focus on acquiring new knowledge, skills, and ideas that greatly support the goal of your team. For instance, this could involve sharpening your skills in anticipating upcoming trends in the market or developing an eagle-eye for the transition of the needs and wants of the marketplace to develop a marketing campaign or strategy.

• Business/Management Skills
  Developing good management skills starts with learning to manage ourselves effectively. This includes learning and implementing new productivity hacks, improving time-management strategies from time-to-time, and exploring new ways to get things done faster. This area requires you to possess a rock-solid discipline and a healthy sense of rigour. After that, you can shift your awareness to upgrading your ability to create and manage the systems and processes that lead your team to success.

• People/Interpersonal Skills
  A good professional relationship is a result of a good social relationship. This comes with epitomizing good leadership characteristics and building rapport with your team. Thrive to acquire good social skills because how you treat your teammates affects the results of your team. One word or phrase may cut-down the level of productivity of the whole team. Be mindful of your words and actions, make sure you stimulate motivation. Fill your workplace with inspiration and empowerment.

Team success is parallel to the quality of your leadership. The above leadership models are springboards to help you reach a whole new level of effective leadership.

“Leadership is not a title or a destination. It’s about impact, influence, and inspiration.” - Robin Sharma