The Delicate Balance of Team Leadership

An excerpt from The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization Successful team leaders put team performance first. Their goal is team, not individual, achievement -- their own included. In working groups, where performance depends entirely on optimizing discrete individual contributions, the leadership task is, quite naturally, to promote and coordinate such contributions. But in teams, real teams, it is altogether different: to help clarify shared purpose, goals, and working approach; to help ensure a complementary mix of skills; to help define joint work products; and to help build a strong sense of mutual commitment and accountability. The leaders who do all this must also do a fair share and more of a team's real work themselves. But their additional responsibilities mean that, in whatever they do, they must be continuously aware of how their own actions can hinder the team -- and of how their patience and support can energize it. Theirs is the special challenge of striking just the right balance between doing things themselves and knowing when and how to let other people do them. Theirs is the double burden of motivating collective performance of a group while enabling the personal growth of each member. THINK FOR a moment about the most effective team leaders you have known, whether at work or in other parts of your life. Think about how they managed the delicate balancing act between doing and supporting. Chances are, they did not act as if -- nor believe that -- they themselves had all the answers. They did not insist on dominating discussions. They did not try to make all the key decisions. They certainly did not take all the credit. They knew that they could not succeed unless the team did -- and you knew that they knew. More than that, they knew the best way to promote team success was not to focus on individual efforts but on overall team performance. Their actions and their attitudes sent a single clear message: they were the shepherds -- no more and no less -- of mutual accountability. These attitudes, as well as the behaviors that flow from them, are neither difficult to learn nor hard to practise. Striking the right balance is possible. Most of us can do it. At various points in our lives, most of us have. The problem is that few of us practise such things automatically, especially in business contexts. This is because, in the managerial world, leadership has traditionally been synonymous with authority, and authority has traditionally been understood as the ability to command others, control subordinates, and make all the truly important decisions yourself. For those endowed with such a "divine right" of management, there is no acceptable alternative to having all the answers or making all the decisions. Anything less is evidence of not being in control, of not being successful. If only individuals can be heroes, then there is no point in subordinating personal ego to the needs of the group. Such attitudes about leadership may be tolerable -- perhaps even quite productive -- in the context of working groups. But they cripple potential team leaders. It is not that decisiveness and control are bad; all teams need both. Achieving true team performance levels, however, ultimately requires the team to be decisive, the team to be in control, and the team to be the hero. Holding the reins tightly to one's own chest is anything but divine. The balance point As part of their development, teams must learn to take risks involving conflict, trust, interdependence, and hard work. And that does not happen when the leader calls every shot and has the final say on every action. Nor when the leader "never makes a mistake." For a group to become a real team, the leader must give up some command and some control -- and take some real risks, too. But simply abandoning all responsibility for decisions does not work. The leader's challenge is more difficult than that. …