Team leaders carry many responsibilities. They craft team infrastructure, develop individual contributors and provide vision. As you can imagine, individuals who assume these pivotal roles possess some common traits that enable them to excel and ultimately boost team output.

Ethical

In March, Harvard Business Review asked almost 200 business leaders at over 30 organizations around the world to rank the most important leadership competencies. More than 60 percent of respondents ranked high ethical and moral standards number one. Considering today’s mercurial business climate, in which organizations constantly rejig their operations to adjust to industry shifts, this makes complete sense. Everyday employees and executives want leaders with values – individuals who stick to their principles, especially when times are tough.

Effective team leaders are ethical and value-driven, treating individual contributors – no matter their rank or seniority – with fairness and guiding them toward a common, honest goal.

“Effective team leaders are ethical, treating individual contributors with fairness.”

Communicative

Despite the development of sophisticated communication tools, some leaders still struggle to have transparent interactions with their employees. Of course, effective leaders don’t normally have this particular problem, as they constantly communicate with their teams and offer ample feedback and praise. The reasoning behind this behavior is simple: more information usually leads to better outcomes.

Leaders are responsible for facilitating team-wide knowledge sharing. That includes everything from giving tough-to-take performance feedback to doling out important project updates.

Decisive

In many cases, leaders must make snap decisions with little information. In these moments, they must harness their expertise and, with confidence, decide on a course of action. Effective team leaders embrace such challenges and show little fear when making split-second choices that may have an immense impact on team output, Fast Company reported.

Are their individuals within your organization who have these qualities but require additional development? Team Assess can help! We offer a variety of training solutions for potential team leadership. Contact us today!