How to Lead Your Team

About the Program

In the words of sports great Casey Stengel, “It’s easy to find good players; getting them to play together is the hard part.” For most people, working in teams doesn’t come naturally, whether in sports or in business. In business organizations, the difficulty is compounded by the fact that, traditionally, employees have been rewarded for their individual contribution to the organization.

As more organizations have shifted to the team model, and more and more work gets done by teams—whether cross functional, cross regional, or global—the ability to lead a team effectively and efficiently is at a premium. But becoming a high-performance team leader doesn’t come about naturally, at least not for most managers. Nor is the traditional route to team leadership—technical proficiency and functional expertise—an adequate training ground for learning how to work through others to get results. It is an acquired capability, one that involves mastery of the key elements necessary for team leadership and success. “How to Lead Your Team” is designed to transfer that capability.

We begin by examining why great business teams outperform others and the pivotal role that great team leaders play in shaping a group of individuals into a goal-driven, aligned entity focused on achieving team wins.

We introduce the “Guttman Team Development Wheel” and review the four stages of team development, along with the specific strategies that team leaders must adopt to manage players through each of the stages, ultimately taking the team to Stage 4: High Performance.

During this highly experiential session, participants will take a close, introspective look at their own leadership behaviors, examine how they may be inadvertently sabotaging team performance, and then be introduced to—and practice using—the tools needed to plot a path toward the highest level of team performance.

Who Should Attend

This program is recommended for seasoned team leaders intent on significantly improving their track record and the performance of their team, as well as for those who are in line to assume a team-leadership role in the near future. Leaders of subteams and others who play an informal leadership role on a team will also benefit. All levels of management, from first-line supervisors to senior executives, will find the content relevant.

Learning Objectives

By the end of “How to Lead Your Team,” participants will have learned:

• The elements that are necessary to create successful teams and successful leaders of teams.

• Their current strengths and challenges as a team leader; behaviors they currently engage in and “stories” they tell themselves that have kept them from leading maximally.

• What is expected of them as a leader and what they should expect of their team members.

• How to lead successfully from Day One: structure the team correctly, create a team identity, establish relationships, protocols, etc.

• How to plot a path to get their team from Stage 1 to Stage 4 on the Team Development Wheel.

• What support they need to give to individual team members as they move through the stages.

• What vehicles they can create to move their team forward, such as developing protocols for holding meetings, resolving conflict, and making decisions.

• How to give and receive feedback.


Learning Format

Throughout the session, concept briefings are alternated with discussions of key learning points and simulation exercises, as participants begin to apply the concepts to their team-leadership responsibilities. Group feedback and analysis of exercise results help participants understand their current leadership behavior and what they need to do to become more effective.

Program Duration

Two days
Note: A one-day version of this program is also available, depending on individual client needs.