Scott Christie, Head of Training and Integration at Strengthscope on why organisations need to invest in leadership and team development.

I’m sure you are on the same journey as Strengthscope – building AI literacy, building it into strategic plans and product development, finding the best ways to use it to drive efficiency and reduce time spent on repetitive admin style tasks.

Once we all have managed to embed agents and assistants into our everyday, we have more time on our hands – and one thing that AI can’t quite do yet is develop your own human-centric skills. So many articles are talking about the following key skills that everyone in the workforce needs to develop:

• Communication
• Collaboration
• Emotional intelligence
• Adaptability
• Creativit /problem-solving

AI can help with hyper-personalised suggestions (based on how good your prompts are), but these are theoretical until you get into a room (virtual or otherwise) and see the whites of someone else’s eyes, especially under pressure. This becomes particularly important for leaders to consider and develop alongside their teams.

So, beyond these wide-ranging topics, what are the most important behaviours and skills that leaders and teams need to develop to be most effective?

Our Team Effectiveness in the Workplace report reviewed data from 1,272 leaders and 1,588 team members over a period of 12 months – looking at strengths and productive habits for teams and leaders. We identified three key areas each where our data showed the best impact towards improving effectiveness.

Leaders – Vision, feedback and strengths

Develop and Articulate a Vision – Our advice to leaders is to spend time building a compelling strategy and most importantly, articulating it in a straightforward and inspiring way to stakeholders. This leadership habit around Sharing Vision and the team habit around Clarity were seen as the key drivers of effectiveness from raters. Continuing to provide simple, energising and realistic vision of success can ensure that your people have confidence in the direction of travel – and with ongoing waves of change within organisations, this needs constant review.

Leverage Feedback as a Leader – Gathering and acting on feedback from stakeholders is critical – not only for self-awareness, but also to achieve the clarity already mentioned. Leaders should communicate what actions they are taking based on this feedback to foster trust and alignment​. Our data showed a significant perception gap between leaders and their raters, so they should continue to solicit feedback to deepen their understanding of how to be more effective. Habits scores for both teams and leaders were also amongst the lowest rated across the board.

Recognise and Use Strengths Effectively – Leaders need to recognise their achievements and be less self-critical, as stakeholders often view them more favourably than they perceive themselves as mentioned. They should proactively use their strengths to deliver value and build confidence​ through authenticity. This also allows them to leverage the strengths and skills of the team(s) around them to give stretch opportunities in areas where leaders are not naturally energised or knowledgeable and develop talent management pipelines for succession planning.

Teams – Trust, Clarity and Looking Outside

Invest in Building Trust – Continue to encourage teams to build trusting relations by deepening their understanding of each other’s skills, strengths and performance risks. Encourage learning through project delivery and reviews, making it experiential and contextual, allowing for better embedding of new behaviours. Alongside this has to come continued investment in psychological safety.

Enhance clarity – If a leader can create a compelling, well-understood vision, the team then needs to find their way of delivering on it. However, things change far more rapidly these days, so we recommend that all teams keep their purpose, goals, plan and individual responsibilities under review, adjusting as required depending on context. Being conscious of upcoming change is also a key part of this and trying to look ahead rather than react to circumstances.

Look for ‘role model’ teams – It is easy – especially when there are significant flexible working options – to remain siloed in thinking and not look outside for inspiration on how to develop as a team. Our report assessed this on both an industry and function level and there were some interesting differences. For example, consider looking to Marketing teams if your team needs to develop greater trust. Seek out Finance teams if you want to build greater accountability. Find Manufacturing teams if you need to learn how to stay flexible in the face of change. And look for inspiration in Media / Communications, Sales and Marketing teams when it comes to sharing successes and seeking feedback.