The Team Leader's Role and Responsibilities

Upon accepting the responsibility of leading a leadership team, the new leader must carry out several critical actions.

Define Team Processes - The team leader must define the processes the leadership team will follow to maximize the contributions of each team member.

• Trust Building Processes - The team leader establishes open communications that insure each team member is fully engaged in the leadership team's processes.  This includes processes that allow each team member to share their inherent core values and behavioral styles as a basis for developing a platform of mutual trust upon which the leadership team will stand together.
  
• Work Processes - The leadership team's planned work processes, including their meeting processes, must be defined and include the processes of debate, problem solving, individual commitments, personal accountability, and barrier resolution.

Selecting Team Members - The team leader must rapidly define the qualifications of prospective leadership team members so they can be identified and engaged on a timely basis.  Desired team member characteristics should be defined and matched to each candidate's inherent behavioral styles and core values.  We employ assessment tools to facilitate this matching process.

 

Focusing the Team - The team leader must assemble the leadership team and guide them through a series of meetings to brainstorm, debate, and create the following.

• Team Mission - A leadership team that crafts their own mission statement will have greater ownership of the team's overall goals.  The mission statement will define 1) their customers and stakeholders, 2) the deliverables they will produce, and 3) the values they will follow. 
• Period Goals - A leadership team that breaks their overall team goals into date-driven milestone goals will be forced to think through the commitments the team members must each make to reach overall team goals.
• Strategies - The most effective leadership teams take the time during the planning phase to identify and explore  strategies that can achieve their team's goals.  This process must lead to a full understanding of how to most effectively utilize team resources to achieve team goals.
• Action Plans - As the strategies become clear, the leadership team must develop action plans that detail the specific actions individual team members must carry out to reach the team's goals.  The careful construction of these plans will insure the full capabilities and commitments of individuals are brought to bear on the accomplishment of the team's goals.

Sponsoring Team Members' Teams- The members of most executive and senior leadership teams are also the leaders of other leadership teams.  The leader of an executive team or a senior leadership team, in addition to being that team's leader, will usually become the sponsor of the leadershop teams lead by the members of his or her team. 

 

Team Leader's Focus and Loyalty.  Each team leader must develop an attitude and commitment to establish in their mind that their number one leadership team is the one they belong to, not the one they lead.  Their commitment to their peer team leaders and their leader (most likely the sponsor of the leadership team they lead) must be to do the job of fully engaging the team they have committed to lead and deliver the expected results.

The above must be carried out during early days of a leadership team's existence.  In crisis situations, these process can be accomplished in less than two weeks under the guidance of a skilled team leader.

We are prepared to help and support those board members and executives who must rapidly form executive and leadershp teams in times of greater urgency to deliver the results their stakeholders expect.  These assignments are designed to provide the leadership team's sponsor and its leader with an actionable blueprint of tasks they must take to create powerful and dynamic leadership teams that deliver sustainable results.

Please do not hesitate to contact us by email or by phone to discuss your situation and need to form and/or focus leadership teams that must deliver the results essential to your organization's success in these economic times.