Is Your Leadership Strategy Helping Your Team Perform at Its Best?
Why Focusing Only on Leadership Can Leave Your Team Behind
Strong leadership matters, no question. But when you focus only on leadership, you miss what's happening on the ground. This creates real problems that hold your team back.
High-potential contributors may go unrecognized, slowing innovation and reducing engagement.
Teams can operate in silos, which limits collaboration and grinds decisions to a halt.
Recognition and rewards may not always reach the people driving results.
Organizations can become dependent on a few leaders, creating bottlenecks if those leaders leave or shift focus.
Team growth may lag when leadership success receives most of the attention.
Investing in team effectiveness helps work flow more smoothly, keeps goals clear, and ensures contributions are valued. This helps with aligning leaders and teams to achieve results efficiently and helps professionals develop influence in their roles.
I see this all the time with the leaders I work with. If this sounds familiar, it's worth stepping back to look at how your team actually works together.
The Power of Shared Leadership
Research in organizational psychology shows that shared leadership (where team members take responsibility for guiding and influencing one another, rather than waiting for direction from the top) leads to better team performance, higher engagement, and long-term viability. Everyone contributes, including those who are usually overlooked. It also frees managers to focus on strategy rather than getting stuck in day-to-day bottlenecks.
When you shift from focusing purely on leaders to balancing leadership with team effectiveness, things change. Results improve. Your high performers get the development they need. This approach works especially well when teams are going through change or when people are at a career crossroads and need to validate that they are in the right team.
Five Steps to Strengthen Team Effectiveness to Retain Your High-Performing Employees
Small changes in how teams communicate, collaborate, and recognize contributions can have a big impact on performance, engagement, and employee retention. I have provided five practical steps below that teams and leaders can adopt to help high-performing professionals and leaders work more effectively while supporting team members who may otherwise feel undervalued.
Celebrate both individual and team wins. Make sure people know their work matters.
Create space for honest conversations about what’s not working, and fix it fast.
Engage the team in setting goals and expectations to align efforts with organizational priorities.
Build psychological safety by making reflection a habit, so people actually feel safe speaking up.
Spread leadership across the team so accountability and collaboration become everyone’s job.
Balancing Leadership and Team Effectiveness for Lasting Results
When you focus on both leadership and team effectiveness, everyone wins. Contributors get recognized. Collaboration flows. Goals are clear, and leaders create real growth opportunities for everyone on the team.
If this resonates with you, let’s talk. Schedule a free 15-minute discovery call, and we’ll explore strategies to balance leadership with team effectiveness and deliver real results for your organization.
For additional information, you can view the full article on Chief Learning Officer.
