Cultivating a teamwork environment

Cultivating a teamwork environment begins with building trust and relationships, and being the kind of leader teams want to follow. Every leader can take actionable steps to lead teams better and encourage greater teamwork.

The best leaders share the following characteristics — no matter their leadership style or personality.

Strong communicator

Being a leader is inherently about people. Yes, there are KPIs and products to deliver, but you don’t lead KPIs: You lead people.

With that in mind, perhaps no characteristic is as valuable to a leader as effective communication skills. Every single day, you’ll be communicating: to motivate, instruct, correct, and a hundred other things.

If you’re a positional leader (or leading from a non-leadership role) who lacks confidence in this area, consider investing in training or practices that will help you improve and gain confidence.

Emotional intelligence

Speaking of working with people: Leaders must be able to understand and adjust to the emotions of others, including nonverbal and contextual signals.

Great leaders go beyond merely identifying emotions in others — they have the soft skills to help others manage their way through strong emotional responses and to push teams and individuals toward the right outcomes.

This is emotional intelligence — a crucial skill for anyone who works with others, especially leaders, and it’s essential when leading a team through the five stages of team development. You’ll use these skills throughout, most of all in the “storming” stage.

Analytical

Strong leaders also tend to demonstrate strong analytical skills. An analytical leader can take stock of a situation, consider possible paths and likely outcomes, and chart the course most likely to succeed.

This skill set provides value no matter your role, and it becomes increasingly valuable the more authority a person has.

Training and development

A great leader doesn’t just help their team members to do their current jobs. Great leaders help them identify room for advancement to develop their skills and progress their careers.

Support your team by giving them the resources they need to excel and reach the next level.