Updated on 20 Apr 2020 | 4 Min Read
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Depending on the organizational workflow of any business, team leader roles and responsibilities may vary. Performance and work goal completion rate of any team leader plays a vital role in the increased productivity and success of the whole team.

In this article, we shall discuss the typical job roles and other duties that come along with a Team Lead job position. The following are also some explained examples to share some traits and qualities found in successful team leaders.

Here are the five essential team leader responsibilities:

  • Coaching new/existing members of the team
  • Developing team strengths while improving on shortcomings
  • Identifying team goals and evaluating overall team growth
  • Resolving Conflicts
  • Organizing Team Dynamics

1. Coaching new/existing members of the team

One of the most effective ways to excel as a Team leader is to regularly guide/coach team members towards achieving more goals and developing the necessary skills to perform in a result-oriented fashion. A team with a coaching-style Team Leader is always welcomed in companies.

For example, Erik's Team Leader (Sales), Leo, always plans weekly face-to-face meetings with each team member. Now, Leo realizes that Erik has been facing some difficulties past 3 weeks and is not able to function properly. Leo sits down with Erik to discuss his sales plans. Now, suddenly Leo finds a mistake that can be avoided. This is an example of how coach-style leadership can help the overall productivity of a team.

2. Developing team strengths while improving on shortcomings

To make a team run seamlessly, team leader roles include assessing the strengths and weaknesses of team members. By determining the comfort zone and strengths of each member, you as a Team Leader can assign tasks to members which they are best at.

For Example, Tanya is in charge of planning and overlooking the proposal for a newly acquired project. Now, Tanya has to overlook budgeting, project summary and scope of growth for client meetings. Tanya's team consists of Adam and Jennifer who are good at Proposal Writing and Budgeting respectively. So, Tanya delegates the budgeting work to Jennfier while assigning the task of Proposal Writing to Adam.

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3. Identifying team goals and evaluating overall team growth

Success is always not easy to quantify. It is one of the Team Leader duties to do so. First, you need to asses what does the organization means by success. Then, you are supposed to plan a roadmap for the whole process of work while dividing it into smaller achievable goals. These goals should be well defined and work should be assigned properly to prevent miscommunication and overall loss of productivity and time. Setting team goals and evaluating them periodically can help teams to work in a more transparent and efficient manner.

For example, to improve/enhance skills of Quality Testing Engineers, Rahul's organization has decided to train new employees through officially recognized courses to help them enhance their work. Here, the main aim is skils development. So, Rahul identified the growth of employees through the training program and divided the process into goals based on skills developed. Rahul identified current team strength and then decided on which course to start for each team member so that their skills complement each other while the organization benefits the most out of this skill development process.

4. Resolving Conflicts

Diverse team members, different personalities, work traits are helpful for an organization to grow along all horizons. But, this can also be a reason for major conflict within the team. There may be some disagreement between members on how to move ahead on a specific task, or maybe, the conflict is totally unrelated to office work. This is one of the team leader job responsibilities to ensure that even if there are conflicts, it should not hamper growth.

For example, Shivam was feeling if the workload assigned is not fair. Their Team Leader, Jack, who was not present in the work distribution due to another work commitment, heard about his issue. He came back to his team the next day and set up a Team Conference. During the meeting, Jack realized that in fact Shivam had been telling the truth and he was facing more workload as compared to his other team members. The total work was then again assessed and assigned to team members evenly.

5. Organizing Team Dynamics

The organization of a team is a necessary aspect when multiple teams are working towards a shared goal/project. Team Leaders should be focused on assigning individual tasks, team tasks, inter-teams communications and proper documentation for enhanced clarity in work and accessible. If you are looking for Interview questions on Team Leader position then you can visit here. This will help you to crack your future interviews.

Example: Dino uses his organizational skills when managing his team. There is ample communication between his team members before any sales meeting. During the meeting, Dino closely follows insights and action plans devised by other team members of the organization to align his team dynamics properly for planning a good course of action.