5 SKILLS YOU NEED AS A TEAM LEADER
Changes in career are sometimes unexpected: you are promoted to a team leader role, or you may have found an interesting job advertisement for a leadership position. Now, you need to ask yourself if you are up to the challenge. Your personality has a significant influence on whether you, as a senior manager, lead your team to success. With the right attitude and willingness to learn, only then will you bring the necessary requirements. Do you have what it takes to succeed as a team leader? And how do you specifically prepare for it?
Consultant
As a team manager, you provide advice, support your team and clarify content and methodological issues.
Negotiating Partner
You are responsible for ensuring that your team receives the necessary funds and that you have suitable staff available for your projects.
Conflict Manager
You will have to identify issues and help your team members resolve them.
Coordinator
You organize the work processes, monitor the budget and are responsible for meeting deadlines.
Moderator
You will have to use the right moderation techniques, ensuring everyone in the team has the same goal.
These 5 tasks await you as a team leader
Team managers are responsible for ensuring that the work in the group works well and that the goals set are achieved. Senior managers provide their team with the necessary information, determine the framework conditions, train their staff and are contact persons for questions and problems. Depending on the project and the requirements, team leaders work closely with their staff or let those involved act on their own responsibility. They take over the control role and observe the process in order to intervene when needed. An important task is the moderation of the team. The executive encourages discussions that lead to new approaches and ideas. If there are specific requirements, the senior manager will moderate the teamwork and steer the discussions in the right direction. The management of the team involves the support of individual employees. Team managers motivate their teammates, solve relationship problems within the group and provide their help in conflicts.
Be Prepared
Taking over the leadership of a team requires good preparation. This will be your added value: By leading your team, you will gain new expertise, new perspectives and new opportunities – because headhunters often look for candidates who already have leadership experience. (Keep in mind that Senior managers bring in organization, whatever their size, a range of personal requirements: first and foremost, self-confidence, assertiveness and social intelligence).
The requirement profile for team leaders is demanding and includes specialist skills as well as soft skills. Headhunters report that many employers pay attention to the qualification. A relevant further education in group and team management offers an optimal preparation for the assumption of personnel responsibility.
Find your management style
Your leadership style is one of the key success factors for teamwork: Motivated teams with high-availability perform much better and make fewer mistakes than others. There are enough bad bosses or unprepared leaders around here. You really have to understand how your behavior affects the outcomes of the team, and then hone your management style in that perspective. How to effectively lead your team can be learned. It is also important that you work on your own person and still remain authentic. It’s about you by the end.
Plan the next steps
Are you ready for the career jump? Follow the advice of Headhunters and prepare well for your new challenge. Take advantage of opportunities in your professional life and gain initial experience in leadership. Most companies prefer to recruit an executive from within their own ranks. Talk to the HR department and find out what training opportunities are available for dedicated employees to meet the demands of team leaders.
