Five Team Leadership Skills to Elevate in Q4

I had a rewarding executive leadership coaching session last week with a VP Sales Leader who said they wanted to elevate their team leadership skill set over the next year. As we worked together, five essential team leadership skills emerged – and I’m excited to share them with you.

The Five Team Leadership Skills

As you review the leadership skills below, ask yourself: “How adept do I feel at each skill on a scale of 1-10?”

“As the team leader, you discern which problems to focus on and when, and how to engage your team in those efforts.”

1. Tactical vs. Strategic Discernment  
   Individual contributors live in the tactical realm. The evolution to strategic-level work requires delegating and letting go of most tactical work. The little tactical work that remains must directly serve your strategy. 
   Reflect: If you must do tactical work, how is it informing or influencing your strategy?

2. Project Management
   Managing expectations with your senior leaders and building appropriate lead times for your team is a crucial team leadership skill for generating high quality results.
   Reflect: Does your team see the busy periods vs. the more spacious times, or can you help them better visualize this ebb and flow? 

3. Space and Surveying
   A successful leader climbs to the nearest peak, looks over the landscape and communicates to their team what valleys and mountains lie ahead.

   Reflect: Do you have the space in your schedule to learn about and understand the “big picture” on behalf of your team?

4. Leadership Messaging
   Craft specific messages to strike the right tone. See if you can balance vulnerability with confidence as you remind your team what you’ve learned from past efforts as you work towards current goals.
   Reflect: What messages do you need to take the time to translate between system levels or functional teams?

5. Guiding Problem Solving
   Think of your team as a problem-solving entity with various issues to work on, ranging from primary organization-level mandates to secondary-level hurdles in order to achieve those mandates, as well as internal-to-the-team issues. As the team leader, you discern which problems to focus on and when, and how to engage your team in those efforts.
   Reflect: When is the right time and place to engage my team in problem-solving efforts?
   

Now that you’ve evaluated your leadership skills, what is one way you can elevate them during the final quarter of this year?