Leading teams in difficult times

Is your team under pressure? Neil Twogood gives 10 tips to help you provide more effective leadership. It’s a paradox of teamwork that in stressful or challenging situations - when there’s the utmost need to collaborate - the team members will often stop behaving like a team. Instead, they’ll start to behave as a group of individuals. You see this in sport. When the going gets tough, instead of passing the ball and working as a team, the ‘star players’ will desperately take risks and try to make something happen by themselves. Far from being productive, this can actually make things worse. The same applies to teams in business. When team members are clear about what they’re doing - and they’re rationally and emotionally committed to the team cause - then engagement will be high. But in difficult times, the task becomes more of a focus. The team members stop delegating, they try to take more responsibility on themselves, they over-assert their position and sometimes they confront or compete with each other to prove their value. Needless to say, the usual result is a nosedive in performance. Practical points for leaders In these difficult times, here are 10 tips that can help you ensure that your team maintains its ability to perform: