As an entrepreneur, your skills as a team leader are essential for today’s business, especially when the work usually is done by teams and their members. Before some time I write here on Entrepreneurship in a box about managerial skills, then about entrepreneurial skills, and now I want to cover something about team leader skills.
Many times entrepreneurs ask me about this question: What are the most critical team leader skills?
Because of that, I will try to answer this question here.
Today, any organizational form can’t run without strong teams. Strong teams become strong only if they have strong team leadership.
Strong team leadership you will have only if you have strong team leaders with strong team skills.
Let’s look at eight most crucial team leader skills for you as an entrepreneur.
Team Leader Skills #1: Visionary Skills
First skill as a part of required team leader skills that I want to cover here is visionary skills. We cannot expect to have powerful team leader without a strong vision for the future.
With this type opt skills, visionary team leader implements visionary leadership in their teams.
What does this mean?
They simply know how to communicate their vision to other team members, and in such a way their vision becomes a team’s vision.
Team Leader Skills #2: Human or interpersonal skills
We can’t talk about team leader skills without talking about the human side of team members, or better said interpersonal skills of the team leader.
This skill simply means that a team leader will know how to work with people. She is the team leader or leader of a group of people who form the team which job is to do something in the business.
Team leaders need to motivate their members if they want to finish their job in the best possible way.
But, what is important here is that they need to have at first better understanding of different behavioral styles of team members if they want to choose the best possible leadership reaction. The different behavioral style will require different team leader’s actions and reactions.
On the other side, the best team leaders also know how, when, and to whom to give praise in the team working environment.
Team Leader Skills #3: Listening Skills
Next, as a part of the most crucial team leader skills, I want to mention listening skills. You cannot expect to be the excellent team leader without knowledge and habit to listen to other people’s opinion.
Listening becomes one of the most important functions in today’s modern organizations.
Before concluding, a good team leader as a first listens to their team members, and after analysis of what she heard they conclude or decide.
Team Leader Skills #4: Creativity Skills
Because teams exist to solve problems and at the same time problems solving require a high level of creativity of all team members, a good team leader must have skills related to creativity.
They need to use their own creativity in solving problems, but also in encouraging other team members to be more creative when they work in team environment.
Creativity skills are an important part of an excellent team leader.
Team Leader Skills #5: Communication Skills
Teamwork is something that will need everyday communication between team members.
The leader is responsible to enable effective communication environment in their teams because without this, they can’t manage effectively the members of the team.
Today, everything is based on the good communication process.
Excellent communication skills will improve overall skills of a team leader.
Team Leader Skills #6: Organizational Skills
Team leader skills also need some type of organizational skills, because every team member will need to have their own responsibility and contribution to the work of the team.
How the process of the work can be organized to large extent will depend on the team leader’s organizational skills.
They will need to plan tasks, delegate tasks, control the work progress…
Team Leader Skills #7: Negotiation Skills
The next type of required team leader skills that I want to mention here is negotiation skills.
Teamwork will produce different proposals, different directions, and different actions. Something they will accept them immediately, but some of them will slow down further work of the team.
An excellent team leader will need to know how to negotiate and facilitate the process if she wants to succeed.
Team Leader Skills #8: Time Management Skills
Time management skills are also an important part of overall team leader skills because she will be inevitably faced with the need to manage the time of the team members.
Good time management skills will increase the overall productivity of a teamwork.
