Chapter 10: High-Performing Team Leadership

Since teams are now so prevalent in all organizations, leaders need to know how to build and how to manage them to achieve high performance. Most people have experienced successful as well as unsuccessful teams. This chapter will guide leaders through the communication challenges involved in leading a team.

Building an effective team raises both organizational and individual leadership issues. In deciding to use teams across our organization, we will want to look closely at the culture and compensation structure to see if they both support teamwork.

Teams tend to begin their work more effectively if leaders take the time to hold an official launch: Creating the Team Charter, Using Action and Work Plans, Delivering the Results, and Learning from the Team Experience.

Managing the People Side of Teams: teams bring together the best talent available to solve a problem. Team members will get to know each other through day-to-day interactions while working together, the team members can shorten the learning curve by discussing the following information at the first team meeting: Position and responsibilities, Team experiences, Expectations, Personality, and Cultural differences.

Teams need to know how to manage conflict in their overall team activities.

Type of Team Conflict: Analytical, Task, Interpersonal, and Roles.

Approaches to Handling Team Conflict: One on One, Facilitation, and Team.

Virtual teams require special effort, and it should not be taken for granted that people who are effective in traditional teams will also work well in a virtual team setting:  Defining Virtual Teams, Identifying Advantages and Challenges of Virtual Teams, and Addressing the Challenges of Virtual Teams.

This chapter has discussed the best approach to ensuring that all team activities run smoothly so that team achieves its objectives. It has provided team leaders and team facilitators tools to help them build and manage a team. With the right approach, a team can work through the challenges, achieve high performance, and outperform other groups and individuals.