What is the biggest challenge of leading a team?

Carrienul
28 replies
Being a leader requires a lot of skills, including communication, time management, and set DDLs. So what is the biggest challenge when you are responsible for a project?

Replies

Olga Pavlova
To remember it is a job.
Carrienul
@olgapavlova Exactly! I cannot understand why they are so unwilling to do it better. It is their own work!!!
Keeping everyone happy
@timcha Communication. Always 100% communication. Making sure there's a shared vision, goals, all the way down to exact requirements. Then reporting on each at each layer of responsibility.
Carrienul
@timcha @travis_page Exactly! But I also have another concern, which is my words may hurt team members. Keeping everyone happy seems like an impossible mission...
@timcha @man_luo I'd argue that keeping people happy isn't the goal. Getting alignment, output, and making team members feel FULFILLED and PROUD of their work, is.
Mei
Aligning expectations. Hiring the kind of folks that are a good fit. Learning how to keep them happy for sustainable growth.
Carrienul
@thisismeihere I agree with the expectations. Team members always rely on leaders to find the "correct path" for the team. When it turns out that the result is not ideal, the leader is likely to lose members' trust.
Mei
Aligning expectations. Hiring the kind of folks that are a good fit.
Madalina B
Keeping everyone happy and motivated Managing conflicts in time, befoure they get out of proportion
Jack Davies
In my experience, one of the biggest challenges of leading a team is managing people's different personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. As a leader, you need to be able to recognize and harness each team member's unique talents, while also addressing any weaknesses or areas where they need improvement.
Ryan Martinez
As someone who has been trained to understand human language and provide helpful responses, I'd say that the biggest challenge of leading a team is managing the diverse personalities, skill sets, and expectations of each team member.
Aligning everyone towards a common goal.
Svitlana Palamarchuk
Spot on with the communication part! In my experience, one of the biggest challenges in leading a team is indeed setting up an efficient and transparent communication flow. It's like orchestrating a symphony where everyone needs to know their part and when to come in. It involves regular check-ins, clear delegation, setting expectations, and also fostering an environment where everyone feels heard and can contribute ideas.
MARIZSA
in my current role, navigating cultural differences has been a big challenge. my team is co-located in the US, Turkiye, Ireland, and India and each geo has different work styles, ethics, etc. what i have done to mitigate the challenge is setup 1-1's to get to know each member of the program team; talk to them personally - leave the work stuff aside, and develop a good working relationship.
Carrienul
@hi_marizsa In a cross-cultural team, there must be a lot more conflicts in communication and coordination. I believe your team will get terrific results with a patient and careful leader like you.
Parham Alimardanian
Encouraging team members to learn and grow
Igor Lysenko
I think the biggest problem in managing a team is the structure of working with a large staff. Some recruit small staff to make it easier to control.
Edgars
Leading a team is one of the most challenging tasks on the planet because you have to deal with people's emotions, which are never the same.
Carrienul
@edgarsgriga Not just emotions. But their goals and ways of solving problems are not the same as well.
Edgars
@man_luo I can't recall the person who said this. But he said: "If you can find people who can fit their vision and goals into your vision. The outcome will be like day and night in comparison.
Satyanarayan Prashar
I believe for a leader it is very important oscillate between RESULTS and RELATIONSHIP with team.
Elissa Craig
Balancing your wants and needs with your team's. Being a leader can leave little to no time for what you need to do to support your work. Learning to balance needs and self-manage while respecting EVERYONE'S time and energy (including yourself) can be very challenging.
Carrienul
@elissa_craig I usually find it hard to respect my own time and energy, and being a leader can be very frustrating sometimes.
Erkin Bek
In fact, I believe that in team management it is about giving tasks and seeing problems when the team fails (here you have to run to help), and in general not preventing them from doing their job. If you are the manager of that team then it is right and objective to give feedback (feedback that is not only related to whether he did the job or not, but also to look at other factors). For example our Intelogos.com AI performance management platform helps teams grow and the manager understand how well the employee is doing (as I mentioned above not only to see if they did the task, if they did well, if not, fire them). No, we look at many factors, how he worked, how much time he spent etc. You can also use our service for free, we would like to benefit our PH community.
Neha
Building and maintaining trust is biggest challenge I think so.