Skills to Become a Team

Skills to Become a Team Leader There are a few aspects of leadership that I consider to be of utmost importance. Leadership is the art of harnessing resources to achieve an objective. The setting of the objective is critical, since that will dictate not only the leadership style that will be adopted but will also dictate the way that the team is built.

In the process of building a team, one must understand the objectives that are to be accomplished, in order that the right components of the team are all in place. From there, I wish to develop three main skills in order to guide the team to its objectives. The first is supporting. Leadership must be able to not only guide the effort but lend the needed support to ensure that the team does not falter.

A skillful leader is able to listen and understand the needs of each member of the group, which allows the leader to offer each member the support they need to be their best (Buyers, 1999). Support is one of the key traits of a leader, particularly during the tough times. I wish to improve my key support skills -- praising the ideas of others, showing friendliness, and pointing out others' contributions. The second skill I wish to develop is confronting.

Leaders are ultimately responsible for the project, which also means that they are responsible for group discipline. Confrontation, however, need not be negative. Confrontation is not the same thing as conflict, and as such I wish to build my skills at constructive confrontation, such that issues are dealt with and problems worked out in a constructive, positive manner (Hoover & DiSilvestro, n.d.). Constructive confrontation allows for issues to be dealt with more quickly and for solutions to generate better outcomes.

I believe that in general I have been reticent in the past to address issues for fear of being misunderstood or generating negative sentiment in the team. However, I believe that combined with increased support and a higher energy level, I will be better able to deliver a more positive version of confrontation than I have in the past. The third skill I wish to develop is energizing.

Leaders are passionate people (Lock, 2007) and the greater the degree to which that passion exudes throughout the group, the more productive the team will be. Such positive energy leads to a wide range of desirable results. Not only does the team get more work done, but they are more willing to cooperate, respond better to the challenges that will inevitably occur along the way and the team believes in the leader more.

Energy is a powerful tool for a leader to harness, but that energy has to be genuine, something I feel that I may have lacked at times in the past. Thus, I want to build my skills at motivating others towards this greater effort and I wish to be more enthusiastic on a day-to-day basis. Part 2: With respect to supporting, I feel that I was very supportive of the team. In my estimation, there were no instances where members of the team did not feel empowered or their work undervalued.

Each member of the team received timely and positive feedback on their work. In addition, I made myself available to each team member so that they could voice any issues or concerns that they had. In doing this, I received a few team members and was able to offer my support, either in the form of a pep-talk, positive feedback or in the form of helping them to resolve a problem. I believe that at no point did a team member feel that they did not have my support.

I believe I performed adequately on the issue of confrontation. The project went relatively smoothly, so there were few instances where confrontation was required. However, the sense that I have with respect to my performance was that I was still somewhat weak on the issue of confrontation. My emphasis on support was driven in part by my desire to avoid having to deal with a confrontational issue. I did not, as a result, use constructive confrontation as often as it may have been warranted.

I also felt that my team may not have responded well to my version of constructive confrontation. I still lack experience in this area and consider it the weakness that I most need to work on. With regards to energizing, I feel that the team was quite energized. From the beginning, I conveyed tremendous enthusiasm for the project. This "roll-up-the-sleeves" attitude rubbed off on the team and the work went quite smoothly.

I fostered a positive atmosphere, such that whenever team members met they were smiling and feeling good about the work they were doing. The results were better than expected, in terms of the high level of teamwork, the rapid pace of work and the quality of results. I feel.