Leadership

Leadership from within a team comes from many places and in many forms. In my own career, I have learned that leadership does not always come from management. For example, everyone on my current team, at some point, has held the role of team leader. It may have been for an entire quarter, it may have been for a month, or maybe it was just for one particular meeting, that someone stepped up to lead our team. I am going to identify three elements of leadership: knowing your own strengths and weaknesses, knowing the dynamics of your team, and the having the ability to effectively guide your team to a milestone. The purpose of this paper is to encourage team members who are not managers to be leaders by identifying these three elements.

In order to take the team in the right direction, a leader must first understand how they can help to accomplish that task. Sometimes it only takes a little bit of enthusiasm to guide a team through a task. Further more, you must know that you have the ability to guide the team. This knowledge usually comes from experience. As an example situation, your team is going to migrate to a new system for work. If you were previously a part of a team that used the new system, and no other team members have used it, this might be a good time to step up and be a leader. In the same situation, if everyone else on your team has used the new system, it might better for the team, to let another member take the lead. I know this seems like common sense, but a simple analysis like this can provide great, often overlooked benefit.

Each team is different. Some teams need more leadership than others. Some teams are full of leaders. In many cases there may even be some office politics involved. The important thing is that you are aware of the dynamics of the team. Sticking with our previous example, having the experience is not always the best criteria. What if your team loves the old system and doesn’t want to migrate to the new system. In this case the ability to persuade and manipulate are probably more important than experience. The dynamics of the team at a given point in time is large factor in deciding how to effectively lead the team to the next milestone.

Once you understand yourself and how you fit into the team, you have the information to best help your team. The leader isn’t always at the front of the pack. Sometimes, it takes leadership to drop back and help bring up the rear. There are many characteristics that make up a leader, integrity, trust, and a positive attitude to name a few. It is up to you to decide when to step up based on your knowledge of your self and the situation. Having the ability to guide your team to the next milestone, sometimes simply means just to be a team member.

Leadership comes and goes. It doesn’t take much to show leadership on any given day. You don’t have to have a title to be a leader. By evaluating your strengths and weaknesses, your team’s dynamics, and your abilities, you can help lead your team every day.