If a leader is the backbone of an organization, a good team is what holds that backbone in place. Without a great leadership team, leaders become redundant and are not able to achieve their goals. A team not only supports the leader’s endeavors but also gives them the confidence to carry out difficult tasks. Keeping that in mind, here is how you can design a great leadership team using 10 easy steps. 

How to Build a Great Leadership Team?

A great leadership team will make your company grow and will sustain growth, even in times of crisis. Moreover, it adds to a company’s good reputation and makes an organization stand out. Here is how you can design a great leadership team in 10 steps. 

• Determine what is important for your company
• Define goals for your team
• Hire people that have the right pre-requisites
• Communicate your priorities to your team
• Develop guidelines to keep the team on track
• Create incentives and rewards to motivate your team
• Use evaluating mechanisms to validate emerging leaders
• Take ownership of your team’s behavior
• Be the leader you want others to be 
• Give it time

1. Determine What Is Important for Your Company

Before building a team that can support you unconditionally, you need to first determine what personal and professional traits you are looking for. This will help you determine the right fit for your company. 

Take good communication skills for instance. Although most employees should have this essential leadership trait, it is especially important for multinational companies dealing across borders. So before you hire anyone, make a list of every trait that is important for your company’s progress. 

2. Define the Goals for Your Team

The next step is to list down all the goals you want this new team to achieve. Divide these goals into the short-term and long-term. The short-term goals can be something like a 4% growth or increased online presence. The long-term goals can be an expansion of the company and the creation of new departments. 

By setting realistic and achievable goals, you are creating positive incentives for your leadership team. Moreover, you are ensuring that the team is not bombarded with extremely unrealistic expectations. 

3. Hire People That Have the Right Pre-requisites

Once you have determined what is important for you and all the goals you want your leadership team to achieve in the future, all that is left is hiring the people who can align with your vision. But this is no easy task. Most people make hiring decisions based on an individual’s past experiences. 

However, when you are hiring for a great leadership team, you need individuals who show potential and the ability to adapt to a diverse range of situations. You want individuals who have integrity and high morals. On top of that, you want individuals who are willing to learn and give in their all to the company. 

Also read: How to identify emerging leaders using the 15-trait Criteria?

4. Communicate Your Prioritizes to Your Team

It is one thing to know what you want and what is important to you; but an entirely different thing to effectively communicate all this to your team. After hiring or selecting people for your leadership team, call a meeting and gather everyone together. 

Make sure you conduct some basic ice-breaking sessions so that everyone can get comfortable with each other. Next, allow your team members to share their views on what they expect from the company. Listen like a leader when your team is sharing their opinions. Next, convey your own opinions to the team. This will help enhance the bonding between you and your team. 

5. Develop Guidelines to Keep the Team on Track

You do not just want a team that can get you the right results; you also want a team that can fulfill your vision and stays true to the mission of the company. From the initial days, make sure to create proper guidelines for the behavior of your team. 

Create equitable and non-discriminatory policies and give everyone strict orders to follow these guidelines. Also, create Standard Operating Procedures so your team knows what to do. Next, create a code of conduct for how the team needs to behave with each other outside the office. All these things ensure that your team is not distracted from their main goal. 

6. Create Incentives and Rewards to Motivate Your Team

A good salary structure is the bare minimum incentive to keep the team motivated. Most people do not excel out of the goodness of their hearts; they need incentives. To keep your team motivated, you can create incentives for additional bonuses and rewards. 

Apart from monetary benefits, you can create special recognition awards that are awarded to the best team members each month. Additionally, you can incentivize them with promotion opportunities. All this will help them give their best to the company. 

7. Use Evaluating Mechanisms to Validate Emerging Leaders

As the head of a great leadership team, you may not be able to assess the pros and cons of each candidate. There is a chance that some individuals are cunning and pretend to do more work when you are around. To remove subjectivity from your decision-making, you need objective methods to assess individuals. 

Use blind surveys, covert observation, or random check-ups to see which individuals are creating the most value in the team. Next, find ways to appreciate their efforts, either verbally or through other, more tangible means. When people feel validated for their efforts, they end up working with much more energy.

8. Take Ownership of Your Team’s Behavior

It is unfair for you to expect that your leadership team will never falter. Regardless of how much you train them, they are bound to make mistakes. That is the only way they will learn. When your team members make mistakes, make sure to give them second chances. 

Moreover, make sure that they trust your leadership enough to know that you have their back. Give them confidence so they can come to you with issues. Moreover, take ownership of your team’s behavior so they can respect you and know that they do not want to let you down in the future. 

Also Read: How to sustain trust in leadership in the times of crisis?

9. Be the Leader You Want Others to Be

Whether you are heading a new team or heading a team of potential leaders, make sure you set the right example. If you want your team to be modest, humble, confident, moral, and have integrity, make sure you have all these traits in your personality first. 

Leaders tend to demand the best characteristics from their team without realizing that it is often the leader that sets the bar high for others. 

10. Give It Time

Sometimes, you have a great leadership team in front of you but you give up on it too soon. You do not give people enough time to channel their energies and prove themselves. You expect them to do things perfectly right away without realizing that practice makes perfect. 

If you want to design a great leadership team, make sure that you are giving the time and a couple of chances to prove themselves. Give them the confidence to shine during a crisis. All this helps boost their morale and make them work harder for your validation. 

Why Is It Important to Create a Great Leadership Team?

1. Increased Employee Engagement

Employees feel validated when they become part of a greater purpose and a leadership team with a clear-cut goal. Rather than mindlessly looking for their place within the organization, they feel more involved and feel a greater sense of ownership towards the company. This helps increase employee engagement within the organization. 

2. Develops Trust in Leadership

When leaders follow the steps mentioned above and communicate the vision and goals of the company, it gives the team confidence that their leader is the right fit. Moreover, leaders who create incentives and rewards and keep their team motivated end up gaining greater trust in leadership. Their team values them and reveres them for their constant effort. 

3. Improves Conflict Resolution

A team that is carefully selected and goes through several stages proves to be the right fit for the organization. But more importantly, it proves to be an effective team that knows how and when to deal with conflicts. The group of people hold greater wisdom and understanding and thus can channel through their differences easily. This creates greater bonding within the team. 

4. Enhances Shared Ownership

Compared to individual employees within an organization, leadership does much better. Since it functions as a single unit, it ensures sharing credit when it achieves victory. Moreover, a team knows that mistakes may be made by one individual, but the blame should never be placed on one member of the team. This is why a great leadership team sticks together during both good and bad times. 

5. Improves Decision-Making

A great leadership team follows the democratic leadership style-where decisions are made collectively and with the consent of all individuals. This gives employees the confidence to freely share their ideas and concerns. Moreover, this ensures that the decision is taken after a thorough discussion and is hence foolproof. 

Also Read: Why leaders make bad decisions? Untangling the mystery. 

Learn How to Create a Great Leadership Team With the Best Diplomats

Before building a strong leadership team, you need to be a leader that can channel the energies of others and propel them in the right direction. Self-knowledge and self-training are key to building a great team, and Best Diplomats can help you with that. 

Through its many unique courses happening in Dubai, Istanbul, New York, and other states, you can get the right guidance and skills needed to move forward. Additionally, Best Diplomats invites prominent leaders who can motivate and encourage you to do your best in the field. 

Conclusion

A great leadership team can do wonders for your company. From helping you scale and grow to ensuring you can sustain growth during a crisis, a great leadership team can do it all for you. However, designing a great leadership team requires persistence and resilience. You need to hire the right people, give them the right conditions and then give everything time to fulfill their potential. 

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