Team Building For Effective Leadership

A strong leader can be a teams greatest asset

, but an unskilled leader might be its downfall. Leadership is a potent quality, but its difficult to define as a concrete skill or personal asset. In many cases organizations just soft through their employees for someone who seems to be a "natural" leader. But according to Toronto team building specialists The Xpeerience Group this is definitely a mistake.

"Most leaders are made, not born," says Xpeerience Group manager Robert Ortali. Leadership requires a potent mix of practical knowledge related to tasks at hand and specific competencies in the team. If you just pick the most charismatic person, youll end up with a friendly leader with no real ability. Worst of all, leaders appointed because of their personality tend to be skilled at hiding failures. When their projects fall apart, you may be left holding the leash of a bad situation that doesnt show itself until its too late.

Ortali and the rest of the Xpeerience Group teach leadership skills as part of team development programs. Through direct experience, leaders learn a number of skills, including the following:

Avoiding Grandstanding: By helping every team member contribute to tasks, leaders embody the group as a whole. This is a powerful motivator for leaders, but some leaders take it too far, and take most of the credit for their teams successes. Most people have encountered bosses who claim responsibility for work they didnt really do, but even good, ethical leaders can make this mistake. If they only credit the team as a group, no individual member gets credit except for the leader he represents the whole team, after all. Team building games can correct this by requiring leaders to take stock of individual performance at the both the beginning and end of a task, reminding them whos really contributing.

Defining Roles Clearly: Team building games with individual task inventories also help leaders develop another team building skill: the ability to assign members to specific sections of a task so that everyone contributes to a common objective without confusion or redundant labour. Well defined roles also prevent leaders from overworking team members. This is very much a trial and error process, which is why fun team building games such as sports are ideal activities to develop these leadership skills. Leaders need to adjust roles after seeing the team in action role assignment isnt just for the start of the process.

Offering Honest Praise: Most leaders have heard that positive reinforcement is important to successful teamwork. Theyre willing to shower team members with praise . . . and are disappointed when this doesnt lead to real performance improvements. What happened? The fact is that theres a difference between empty compliments and genuine positive feedback. Employees can spot fake praise a mile away. It tells that individual that the boss doesnt know him or her and doesnt really care about whos doing what to meet organizational goals. Empty praise can be worse than no praise at all because it sends this negative message. Through detail-oriented team building games [ones that involve collecting factual information or performing complex tasks scavenger hunts and cooking are excellent examples] leaders learn to pay attention to individual contributions, not them, and single them out for honest compliments. This signals to the team that the leader is not only paying attention, but rewarding those who work the hardest.

In the safe environment of team building games, leaders can afford to make mistakes, become better leaders and help their teams succeed. Leaders are made, not born, and building them up to peak effectiveness should be a priority for any organization.

by: Chris Gill

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