Characteristics of an Effective Team Leader

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According to Lipnack and Stamps, “Virtual teams can be successful only if people cooperatively manage the coordination involved in membership and leadership,” meaning that managers must give up the ideas of power and control, and replace them with service leadership. In the old days, the people who held onto the knowledge, data, and so on held the power in an organization. Today, the people who readily disseminate information, connect people with each other, and facilitate hold the real power in an organization. True leaders empower their teams by their behaviors (for examples of how these characteristics look when a manager is under pressure, watch Star Trek — no, really). True leaders perform the following actions:

-  Remove roadblocks. -  Act as an advocate for the team with upper management.

-  Facilitate open, honest communication.

-  Model behaviors that they want from the team.

-  Act instead of react.

-  Facilitate decision making and discussions with team.

-  Recognize the strengths of each team member and focus those strengths to the benefit of the team.

-  See the big picture and communicate each member’s role in that context.

-  Encourage independent thinking and trust their team to make good decisions.

-  Gather team members with complementary skill sets and draw from the strengths of each member.

-  Share leadership appropriately with other team members. These characteristics are particularly important on virtual teams. Virtual team members must operate with a certain amount of autonomy because they might be separated by several time zones, resulting in a delay in feedback. It is often easier to “beg forgiveness” than it is to ask permission when the team leader or supervisor is six time zones away. Leaders and managers must trust that their teams are acting in the best interest of the project and the company, and should listen carefully to strenuous objections. For example, one of the reasons cited in the accident report for the Columbia space shuttle disaster was that upper management did not take seriously the concerns expressed by several project engineers when the foam hit the shuttle. As teams work together, often informal roles develop. One person might be really good at planning social functions, while another person might have an aptitude for troubleshooting. Smart team leaders and managers take advantage of these diverse skills by delegating these tasks to the people who enjoy doing them and who are good at them. Doing so enriches everyone’s experiences and builds ownership. Lipnack and Stamps described the following virtual team leader roles, originated by Reuben Harris:

-  Coordinator

-  Designer

-  Disseminator

-  Tech-net manager

-  Socio-net manager

-  Executive champion In a virtual team, each of these roles might be played by a different person, or one person might play several of the roles, depending on the size and complexity of the team.