Being a Good Team Leader

Being a Good Team Leader

A team leader must master three elements:

1. They must know their team's deliverables and their timeline,
2. the qualifications required to achieve them,
3. and they must be able to respond to unforeseen events.

Deliverables and Timeline

Being a team leader is not about making decisions — it is about being clear on what needs to be delivered, at what quality, and by when.

Deciding is not leading. Leadership is first and foremost a matter of clarity and precision.

Qualifications

Training someone starts by showing them how it is done — people do not learn through explanation. They learn by watching and by doing. The leader knows the craft of their team.

Show as much as possible. Talk as little as possible.

Responding to Unforeseen Events

It is not about knowing everything — it is about recognizing common patterns and knowing the frameworks that bring the team to a manageable and sustainable footing.

How others perceive your leadership comes down to how you react in moments of stress and uncertainty. All credibility is lost the moment you freeze.

[!NOTE] The problem in the corporate world is that we are in a constant state of paralysis.

Brief & Debrief: What Sets a Leader Apart

The leader is often not the boss — they are the person people turn to.

When a manager gives an order — assigning a problem to someone who may not know how to solve it — often nothing happens.

A brief allows you to show the horizon rather than asking someone to execute one step at a time.

A brief contains:

1. What we want to achieve,
2. the plan to get there,
3. the obstacles,
4. the no-go zones.

The brief is essential for uncovering gaps in perception — it is a tool for listening. Without a brief, real conversations simply do not happen.

Getting Buy-In

"This Matters"

Being a leader means being the voice that carries this message and brings it back, again and again. "This matters."

Zone of Autonomy

The most demoralizing thing a leader can do is systematically correct a team member's work. Exercising control in the zone of autonomy is cruel — which is why clarifying no-go zones beforehand matters so much. When control is needed, it happens through problem-solving.

[!TIP] What autonomy is not Autonomy is not doing whatever you want — it is being able to make decisions.

Encouraging

Common in sports but rarely seen in the corporate world, the simple act of encouraging is what keeps a team going over the long term. Initial motivation will fade, and self-discipline is not yet in place. Encouragement bridges the gap. The hardest thing is keeping people on board.

The Fundamental Question on Priorities

What are your priorities? One-on-ones should be about nothing else.

Once priorities are clarified, listening, isolating the problem, and finding the next step all become easier.

The leader must not take over their team's actions. Asking about priorities means putting authority back where the information lives — it means inviting people to retain ownership of their own challenges.

Conclusion

Being a team leader means appreciating each person's work, being available, and enabling each person to own their craft. It is not about being charismatic, as Sarah Drasner reminds us — it is about being clear on what success looks like, being an expert in your domain, and showing, showing, showing. In a world where pretense and appearances take up ever more space, this kind of leadership is more discreet, but it is more sincere.

References

• Engineering Manager for the rest of us | Sarah Drasner

@youtube

• Why do we celebrate incompetent leaders? | Martin Gutmann | TEDxBerlin | TEDx Talks

This is a conference by Michael Ballé about management.