I guess, as you will see, I still have this thing about The Team rolling around in my head. In last week’s blog, I just shared some general observations about being on and part of a team. In this post and over the next couple weeks, I wanted to get a little more specific about what make a successful team.
John Maxwell said, “Everything rises and falls on leadership” in his great book on leadership, “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership“. His statement is true whether it is in a church, the board room of a great corporate entity, an office setting, or athletic teams. Leaders of any of these teams must have a “the buck stops here” mentality toward the performance of the team they attempting to lead. You the leader must OWN the results of your team. In fact whether you have that attitude or not, people will still evaluate your skills as a leader based on your results. So of course the question becomes, what makes a good leader of people? How can you get closer to achieving results that would cause your TEAM to be successful? Here are just a few of my observations from own experiences of being a leader and working under the leadership of others:
- Good leaders surround themselves with good people. You will only be as successful as the people you surround yourself with as you attempt to lead others.
- Good leaders learn the art of delegation. Delegation means you trust those in your circle of leadership. Without this element, success will be a fleeting pursuit. Good leaders don’t attempt to do it all, but rather just make sure things get done.
- Good leaders will always surround themselves with people smarter than they are in certain areas. You don’t have to know it all and be the smartest guy/gal in the room, but to be successful, you just need to be smart enough to harness the intelligence of other people. Once this is done the only thing left is to back up and allow them to do their thing!
- Good leaders understand every team member is important and has a role to play in the success of the team.
- Good leaders enjoy planning for success and then watching others enjoy the results of success.
- Good leaders seek input from others on the team. Buy-in from others will usually result when the leadership at least ask the opinions of other leaders/participants on the team. By the way, as a leader never be afraid to say yes to another person’s idea on the team no matter what place they hold on the team.
- This last one is obvious. A good leader will always have followers. If perceive yourself to be a leader, but yet no one is following there are on of two things wrong. #1 You just are not a leader at this point in your life #2 You may not be fostering a spirit of “it’s about the Team”, but rather giving the perception, “It’s about me”. People will not follow ME leaders!
Rejoice!
Keith