by Janet Lohmeyer

Created on: June 18, 2008   Last Updated: April 14, 2011

Effective leaders inspire confidence and performance in the people they lead. They succeed in casting a believable vision of the group's goals, and enlisting cooperation from each team member. They listen well, and are able to make each team member feel important and valuable part of the team. They are able to make team members want to do their best work for the team goals.

Ineffective leaders do the opposite. They undermine confidence in the people they lead, often resulting in poor or grudging performance from team members. They keep attention focused on details, and may even hide any group goals from the team, thereby eliminating a team spirit, or any sense of the importance of an individual's contribution. Members may be placed in unproductive competition with one another, each diverting valuable attention to beating someone else's effort rather than putting one's own best effort forward for the good of the team.

Effective leaders create within each team member a sense of belonging to the team, of sharing in important work, that their own contribution is valued and indispensable to the team. They are lavish and public with well-earned praise, and deflect credit they receive back to the team. When they must correct, they do so in private, once, and then seem to forget that correction was necessary. Effective leaders know how to build others up. The result is higher quality work done in a spirit of cooperation, of 'how can I help'?. Effective leaders are ones people want to work for, to do extra effort for, and who create an atmosphere of joy in their workplaces.

In contrast, ineffective leaders do the opposite. They spark divisiveness within the team, keep the goals hidden, make each team member overly cautious for fear of making mistakes and receiving reprimand, often public. These leaders take credit themselves for what the team has done, can be harsh in their criticisms, and may remind people of previous mistakes and errors when new ones are made. Ineffective leaders erode others' confidence, resulting in more frequent errors, a sense of hesitancy about taking action, and a negative atmosphere in the workplace.

Effective leaders focus on the others around them. Ineffective leaders focus on themselves.

Teams working for effective leaders get the job done well and like where they work, what they do, and who they work with and for. Teams working for ineffective leaders do not do as well, and often do not like where they work, or who they work with and for.

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