Lead the Team You Have, Not the One You Imagine

Dr. Sara Reed
May 15
4 min read

In decades of being a leader and then moving into growing leaders, one common challenge I have seen is the leader who leads as if everyone already knows their part in the leader’s vision of a team.

Often without any explicit communication or expectations.

Leaders start assuming things will be done the way they want. It can be everything from how people communicate to how they escalate problems.

Assumptions are usually dangerous -- and even more so when you haven't done the work of leadership.

Leaders assume the players on the team all know each other's strengths and weaknesses. They may assume they know certain people well enough not to spend time with them. They may assume they know enough.

Leaders assume the team knows how to solve problems in functional ways.

Leaders assume the team knows how to handle conflict in healthy ways.

Leaders who don’t want to do the hard work of providing feedback to either help some people get onboard, or the harder work of removing people who choose to behave in ways that do not move the team forward.

Whatever it is …

Big Idea (almost upfront): Effective leadership means guiding your actual team—not an idealized version of it.

Sometimes developing a group of people into a team can mean dramatic shifts … sometimes it is minor tweaks. Sometimes, team agreements can add clarity. Sometimes organizational structures need to be reconsidered.

But to lead a team you don’t actually have is to live in fiction, not the real world. And it doesn't help you or the people you lead.

I have had the opportunity to lead some of the best teams, and I have often needed to help teams reshape norms and behaviors. One of the first things I learned about leadership was Bruce Tuckman's stages of team development. One of my favorite aspects of this model is the reminder that storming is part of developing a team -- learning how to grapple with that reality of teams has been important when personally leading teams and coaching others. I also like to remind people that most any change can kick a team back into a different stage -- a new team member might mean new storms or norms. New location of working - likely some storming and norming. As leaders, we get to help make this happen in a productive way. While serving in the U.S. Air Force, there was also some form of change happening, so I learned the practice of stepping back and assessing where I might need to change my approach because the people I was leading were in a new and different spot.

Visual graphic of Bruce Tuckman's 5 Stages of Team Development

Having done the work of creating, recreating, and rearranging teams for a few decades now, I have learned a few tools that have helped me when considering teams. (Because the work of leading teams is an ongoing effort.)

Building Teams:

Curiosity is the most essential tool.

Get to know your players and the context.

What are their strengths? How do they talk about others?
What experiences do people have with teams?
How do they function? As islands that come together, or do they come together along the way?
What history might I need to learn?
Who talks to each other? Where is the spiderweb of communication? (e.g. where can you assume communication will happen fast; where might it not?)

Notice: Observe how your team members work together and how they might not.

A few things I have learned to watch and see.

Do they compete?
How do they handle disagreements and conflict? (And if there aren’t any, someone is hiding something.)
How do new ideas come up? Who speaks and who doesn’t?
How do they handle stress - individually and collectively?
How do they talk about each other?
How is feedback handled? (Straightforward, gossip, or not at all?)

While resources tell you to do this for 30-60 days, it often takes longer to get past the facade stage of a team that can be predominant at the beginning. (Let's be honest, everyone is on their best behavior at the beginning of a new boss’s tenure.)

This tool can be even more critical if you are someone who might have been promoted from within because you come with preconceived notions and likely ideas of what might need to be “fixed,” but your viewpoint changes from a new seat, so it’s even more important as an internal candidate.

Co-create the team's future

The fun part comes next. (Actually, it can all be fun if you keep curiosity and an asset mindset about the people around you._ After gaining credibility in the new role, observing and talking to people, you have the chance to:

Give clear expectations
Provide realistic examples (especially if you have seen potential situations you think could have been handled differently)
Prepare the team for change
Do the work when there are team members who are not behaving in alignment with the team future they want to create.

Keep at it; team development is an ongoing effort

I love it when a team I'm part of gets to the "humming" stage—they show up for each other, provide feedback, take care of each other, and are willing to step in and support each other. I have also learned that building and cultivating an environment for team success is an ongoing leadership effort.

Note: This process can still happen in turnaround and startup environments—just faster and even more importantly- if scaling or downsizing efforts exist.

Questions to consider: