Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader by Hill Linda A. & Lineback Kent

Author:Hill, Linda A. & Lineback, Kent [Hill, Linda A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781422163894
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2011-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

The Four Elements of Building and Sustaining a Real Team

What it takes to create and manage a team can be summarized in four tasks, each of which is explored in the four chapters of this section.

Chapter 8, Define the Future. Does your team know where it's going? Can you and your people describe the future you're trying to create? Above all, does your team have a compelling common purpose and specific, challenging goals focused on that purpose? By purpose we mean not the work your group has been given but the benefits it provides to others, the role it plays in the larger scheme of things, the reason it matters in the organization and the world.

Chapter 9, Be Clear About How Your Team Works. Besides purpose and goals, team members need clarity about who does what, how work gets done, and how people work together. Purpose, goals, and team culture—the values, assumptions, beliefs, and practices shared by all members—are what can make a group into a real team.

Chapter 10, Your Team Members Are Individuals Too. For all the emphasis on creating a team, you cannot ignore the individuals involved. Here we consider the basics of managing people—hiring, managing performance, developing—but always in the context of the team.

Chapter 11, Manage Through Your Daily Work. Virtually all management work comes down to what you do every day, day after day. This is where you create and manage your team. It's where you “do” management, where you actually practice your purpose and pursue your goals. Effective managers use the daily work—the fragmented, unplanned problems and opportunities that come at them every day—to make progress toward achieving their goals.

Many managers think of chapter 11, managing the daily work, as the heart of what they do because it focuses on their day-to-day activities. But the topics covered in all four chapters are part of creating and sustaining a productive team.

The burden of putting all these pieces in place and maintaining them in a tumultuous world falls on you. Most teams underperform. Too many forces, especially those we described in chapter 1 around the paradoxes, work to pull them apart. Management does make the difference.

Notice here that we're shifting our focus. Until now, in parts I and II, we've focused on the interpersonal aspects of management—exerting influence through your one-on-one relationships with others as a boss and a colleague. But here in part III, we go further because effective management requires more than personal interaction. It requires impersonal systems through which you influence others, including purpose, goals, roles, standard practices, values and expectations, feedback systems, and many more.

Effective teams are built around such systems, not on the interpersonal relationships between manager and members. Systems lift management from the mere supervision of moment-by-moment activity, allow bosses to manage large groups, and create the boundaries within which subordinates can act with autonomy. To create and manage a team, you must learn to develop and use such systems.

Systems provide an important benefit personal interaction cannot. They help you influence those on your team who report not to you directly but to one of your direct reports.

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