The role of leadership in building self-sustaining, effective teams

Leaders can also be developed to help build teams that can operate independently and flexibly without the need for regular outside intervention or micromanagement. If teams are self-sustaining, leaders can have more time to focus on other areas of the business. But they must be willing to empower others.

What is the role of the leader in building effective teams?

Leaders play a key role in shaping an organization’s culture and defining its strategies and objectives. They will also decide if a team or teams are necessary to complete a certain project. If a team is needed, a leader’s role may then include:

• Setting the team’s purpose and direction
• Engaging team members
• Establishing trust and psychological safety.

Set the purpose and direction

Research shows effective teams have:

• A shared purpose and direction
• Defined boundaries
• Authority to manage the team’s work processes

In setting a team’s purpose, a leader must explain why that team exists. What is it that only this team can do? They may also be responsible for:

• Team goal setting
• Structuring the team and matching skills to goals
• Defining boundaries (who is on the team and what their roles are) and clarifying these with the team
• Defining behavioral norms and clarifying these with the team
• Holding the team accountable for behavioral norms
• Creating an environment that facilitates high performance, such as empowering the team to manage their own work processes

When a team is clear on its purpose, its boundaries and how it will function day-to-day, leaders may monitor teams to learn if there are any skills gaps or challenges around alignment or team dynamics that could undermine performance. Even the most successful teams can lose their sense of purpose and see performance levels drop. The leader’s role is to identify this and strengthen purpose.

Engage team members

A new global report has found that:

• Only 23% of employees are engaged at work and feel connected to their organization
• 59% are disengaged and therefore less productive and are at risk of ‘quiet quitting’
• 18% are ‘actively disengaged’, lack trust in leaders and are not invested in helping their organization achieve its goals.

This is a wake-up call for organizations but also an opportunity for leaders to improve engagement by bringing greater clarity to teams through a purpose-driven culture.

Leaders have an important role to play in employee engagement. Research shows teams with engaging leaders perform better on both an individual and team level. These leaders proactively champion employee growth and development, encourage team members to make decisions, and create an environment where teams feel confident to speak on matters that concern them, and to learn from their mistakes. In short, leaders can better engage teams by building trust and psychological safety.

Establish trust and psychological safety

Hybrid and remote working can make it harder to build the trust and psychological safety that underpin employee satisfaction, engagement and high performance. A psychologically safe environment supports effective collaboration and communication, which builds trust.

Trust and psychological safety are important to enable teams to receive feedback productively and learn from mistakes. This allows the team to constantly shape and refine how it functions and operates, making it more adaptable and effective in the longer-term. Leaders can build psychological safety by:

• Being involved in team conversations
• Speaking publicly about when they, the leader, have made mistakes and how they have learned from those mistakes
• Supporting others to talk about and learn from their mistakes
• Encouraging members to share their thoughts, concerns and challenges
• Clarifying what behaviors are and are not acceptable within the team

Leaders who listen, share experiences and feedback, promote open discussion, demonstrate empathy and position themselves as collaborators are best placed to establish trust between leader and team, and between team members.

The role of team members

The responsibility for developing high performance does not begin and end with leadership – team members have a vital role to play. For example, members are responsible for looking beyond their individual roles and viewing the team and its goals through a broader lens. Members must know what is expected of the team as a unit, be accountable, and be open and honest about their own challenges and weaknesses as this develops trust and psychological safety.

How leaders can empower teams to be self-sustaining

Leaders must be self-aware and acknowledge their own limitations and be willing and able to empower others. A diagnostic assessment can reveal mindsets and behaviors that negatively affect a leader’s ability to empower teams. Coaching can then support leaders to adapt behavior, grow psychological safety and maximize the team’s potential.

Praised for its success in empowering employees and teams, a high profile, multinational bank enables employees to make decisions faster using better data and delegates more decisions to mid-level employees. The bank’s flatter hierarchical structure, purpose-driven culture and removal of barriers helps teams to adapt and embrace agile working. Psychological safety is embedded. Regular ‘candid conversations’ with senior leaders allow teams to share concerns and air ideas, which supports transparency and trust.

To empower teams to be self-sustaining, leaders can:

• Build a purpose-driven culture: Surveys, one-on-one conversations and feedback sessions around culture can help leaders understand what teams need to be able to perform effectively in the longer term. Diagnostic assessments of leaders and teams can identify cultural barriers, habits and behaviors that impede self-sufficiency. The findings can be used to structure a framework that aligns with the organization’s strategic objectives. Individual and team coaching can support teams to embed habits and behaviors, providing a better foundation for autonomy.
• Push teams from the outset to drive effectiveness: Once a framework and methodology are in place and a team knows its purpose, leaders can step back and agree with teams how they can continue to build trust and psychological safety – these must be maintained for a team to be self-sustaining.
• Delegate decision-making and encourage a solution-first culture: Support teams to take decisions and recommend solutions to any obstacles they face before consulting leaders. Instead of providing direction outright, leaders can listen and keep an open dialogue with teams but, ultimately, only speak after everyone else has spoken.
• Support innovation without fear of failure: Schedule time for teams to test, and feedback on, new tech-enabled platforms and ways of working that could help them become more agile and innovative. If the team decides a new tool can help them achieve their goals more efficiently, they have the resources to adopt it.

It is likely we will see more self-managed teams in future, where the effective use of shared technologies will be crucial for success.

For more information on how LHH can support the development of high performing teams in your organization please contact info.ch@lhh.com or +41 58 233 60 00.