Leadership Success – Tapping Into the Potential of Your Team

As a leader, you are really judged on the results that you achieve. The chances are that you understand that to achieve optimum results you need to get the best from a team. So how can you tap into the potential of the team? Know where you excel If you are leading or managing people, you probably have great people skills. What other areas do you excel in? Without knowing where you excel and struggle, it is going to be difficult to know where you need people to complement you. Leadership Find out where others excel Most of the time, we only take the time to find out what makes people tick or what they do well at interviews. This means that we are in some ways in the dark about what it is that makes others tick and how to get the best from them. Make a point of finding out what each individual member of your team does excellently so that you can utilise that effectively in getting results. Recognise the benefits Even if you are the most committed, hardworking and determined leader around, you can only do so much in isolation. Think about a project as a great example. If there was only one person working on a project, how likely are you to get the project done and the results achieved quickly? “Highly unlikely” is your answer no doubt as you can only do one thing at a time. Similarly, if you have a group of people who are all the same, it is going to be difficult to get diversity of opinions or viewpoints to challenges or obstacles that arise. If you want to prosper as a leader or manager, you need to tap into the potential of your team. So what’s your first step? By Marissa Oldman