The “Invisible Work” of Team Leaders

Abstract

When evaluating what makes team leaders effective in their work, one of the largest factors is how they make other people feel. It is their capacity to help other people feel in certain ways that motivate those others to want to work on their team and coordinate their efforts to achieve shared goals. Productively influencing how other people feel to work with and for you begins with “invisible” capacities that are difficult for others to observe within you, but which are significantly influential in driving your interaction with others. Without making these invisible capacities more explicit for aspiring team managers, it is almost impossible to intentionally improve upon them. This chapter focuses on describing seven fundamental “invisible” capacities and why they are so essential for success as a team manager:

We end the chapter describing the confidence sweet spot necessary for managers to find as a mindset for consciously assessing their skills in each of those seven areas and working to improve upon them.