The 5 Characteristics of Optimized Leadership Teams

Leadership teams work well together when they have certain characteristics.

Optimized leadership teams share a set of characteristics that help to define them at a fundamental level and explain their success. Here are some top characteristics of optimized leadership teams.

1. Adaptability

The ability to adapt quickly to changes in market conditions, working conditions, and other circumstances is essential for organizational leadership in today’s marketplace where change is constant and inevitable. Adaptable leadership teams listen to customers to determine changes in their needs and are able to pivot quickly when changes become evident.

2. Strong relational dynamics

The way a team of leaders relates to each other can trickle down through the ranks. When leaders relate well, they not only function better, but they model healthy functioning to everyone else in the company. Your company can avoid a lot of mistrust, anger, and fear as well as the negative impacts of those dysfunctional dynamics on your other employees.

3. A sense of purpose

A sense of purpose can give leadership teams structure and help them focus better on what they need to do to succeed. Purpose works best when it is not just focused on the bottom line and profitability, but on serving customers, filling a need, or working in alignment with the company’s mission and vision. A lack of purpose leads to chaos in the leadership structure and interferes with progress.

Leadership teams that develop trust and accountability are more successful.

4. Trust

Leadership teams need to have a sense of trust between members or they won’t be able to work effectively together to manage employees. Trust helps teams avoid being siloed, where each person may not know what others are doing and doesn’t feel free to share information without the potential of sabotage. One way to build trust is by being transparent. Working through issues and problems can’t happen without trust and transparency.

5. Accountability

In high-performing leadership teams, every member takes responsibility for tasks assigned to them and they hold each other to the standard that has been set. Accountability for the entire team’s success is shared by all members, and leaders also help each other to meet shared goals when they are able to do so. The credit for successes–and failures–is also shared among team members instead of one person claiming credit for the entire result.

When leadership teams have these characteristics, they can handle even the most difficult circumstances with grace and determination. Identifying leaders with the right traits and characteristics can help your leadership team reach higher and do more to make your company successful, as well as help individual employees develop leadership qualities that could make them into the leaders of tomorrow.

Assessments are one way to identify leadership characteristics for an effective team. Leadership potential can sometimes hide behind other more obvious characteristics, but assessments are more objective and less biased than human judgment.

Let Narish International assessments build higher-performing teams for you today.