Leadership skills - building a team

Part of having good leadership skills is the ability to build a productive team around you. With a solid group of people, you can achieve your objectives, working with individuals you trust and have the skills to succeed. Ultimately, you want people who have the loyalty and belief to follow you, wherever you go strategically. A lot has been written about leadership skills. These are what we see as the key things to consider:

Sharing your vision with your team is essential; you want them all on board, unified and focused.

It’s important to have trust between you and your team. You need to be able to trust them to do their job and they need to be able to know they can trust you to support and lead them.

Being a good communicator is the cornerstone to good leadership skills. Clear and regular communication is vital for success.

When you achieve results, remember it’s a team that has succeeded. If you take all the credit for a team achievement, you’ll risk losing their trust and respect, so make a point of recognising and rewarding your team’s efforts.

Ensuring there’s a training programme for each member of your team demonstrates you’re thinking about their skills needs and investing in their future.

From time to time; take your team out to a restaurant or an away-day activity. It’s a good way to get to know each other in a more relaxed atmosphere. Remembering people’s birthdays and celebrating the birth of their children will earn you respect and show that you care about them as individuals

Finally, the key thing of course is to make sure you hire the right people. When hiring, it’s wise to judge character as well as skills, which can often, be trained.

Building a great team takes time and energy. If you can manage to fulfil the above, you’ll go a long way to developing strong team that will ensure your career will flourish.

Make sure you hire the right leaders; upload a job spec to a Michael Page consultant.