Project roles

Team of Leaders: driving success through collaboration and strategy

Being a leader is more than just giving orders. It is the art of building success through active listening, effective support and finding common ground. What if there are more than one leader? Find out how a team of leaders works.

In this article, you will learn: What makes a team of leaders different from traditional management How leadership responsibility can be shared across the company Why shared leadership boosts flexibility and motivation How leadership teams overcome conflicts and build trust How leaders align strategy with day-to-day execution

Sport and effective strategic project management have surprisingly much in common. Both processes are based on detailed planning and effective resource management. They require close teamwork and consistent pursuit of a clearly defined goal within a set timeframe. Phil Jackson, a basketball icon, summed it up perfectly: “The strength of a team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” In a business context, this quote perfectly confirms and illustrates the power and synergy that comes from the concept of a team of leaders. The successful application of this mindset is key to project team management: 12 tips for a project manager, which recognizes that empowering individual members is the quickest path to achieving collective project excellence and synergy.

What is a team of leaders?

A team of leaders is a flexible approach to management that breaks with traditional hierarchy. Instead of having one boss who decides everything, the company assumes that every employee, regardless of their position, can develop leadership skills and take responsibility for their projects. How does this work in practice?

• Everyone is a leader: leadership is distributed throughout the company, rather than concentrated at the top.
• Joint development: the company focuses on training and strengthening the leadership skills of its employees to encourage them to take initiative.
• Motivation instead of orders: instead of authoritarian management, leaders inspire and engage the team.
• Fluid composition: the decision-making group is dynamic and changes depending on which project is currently the most important. The person who brings the most value at a given moment becomes the leader.

In short: it is a concept that distributes responsibility within the company, making it more flexible and agile.

Why every successful company needs a strong team of leaders?

It is a concept for a company where everyone can be a leader, not just the CEO. This approach is essential for success for three simple reasons. Firstly, when responsibility is distributed, decisions are made immediately because the person closest to the problem (and most knowledgeable about it) can act right away, without waiting for approval from above. This makes the company flexible and able to respond quickly to market changes. Second, it strengthens employee motivation: by giving people the opportunity to develop and take initiative, the company builds strong commitment. Thirdly, it guarantees the company’s security for the future: continuous training of leaders at various levels creates a so-called reserve bench. Even if a decision-maker leaves, the company already has people ready to replace them, which guarantees the continuity of the organisation’s operations.

Common challenges faced by a team of leaders and how to overcome them?

In a team of leaders, although there is a great deal of freedom, the biggest challenge is conflicts and differences of opinion – after all, it is a group of strong personalities! When leaders fight over resources or have different ideas about strategy, decision-making can easily become paralysed. How can these problems be overcome?

• It is necessary to introduce overarching decision-making criteria. Arguing is healthy, provided that everyone knows that the decision must be made in the interest of common goals.
• When leaders do not trust each other, they begin to control others, which destroys flexibility. It is necessary to invest in relationships and create an atmosphere of mutual trust in which we criticise the idea, not the person.
• To avoid working in silos, it is important to ensure that every project supports the company’s overall vision (organisational silos is a metaphor describing a situation in which different departments, teams or units within a company work in isolation, without effective communication and cooperation between them).

Tools that boost the effectiveness of a team of leaders

The purpose of using tools in the work of leaders is to maintain order and make good decisions efficiently. Bosses use special programmes to create lists of topics for meetings to avoid wasting time and get straight to the point. To control the company’s situation, they use visual charts and dashboards that instantly show the most important data, instead of reading long reports. To ensure that the entire company is working towards the same goal, leaders use systems (such as FlexiProject) to measure progress and plan. In addition, all important decisions and plans are kept in one digital place, and training and feedback platforms help leaders themselves to continuously develop. In short, technology helps bosses turn ideas into concrete and measurable action plans.

A team leaders and communication

The leadership team plays a vital role in communication, acting as a bridge between strategy and the day-to-day work of the organisation. Leaders not only ensure the efficient flow of information, including project roles within the company, but also actively build engagement across the company, regardless of the management model used. This communication should be two-way and developmental in nature, rather than controlling. The primary task of a leader is to ensure that employees not only absorb the content of the message, but also understand its broader context and strategic significance.

Conclusion: the strategic importance of leadership teams and collaborative leadership

Imagine a company as a ship. The leadership team decides which port to sail to (Where?). But who is responsible for manoeuvring, maintaining speed and carrying out repairs effectively, even in the fiercest storm (How will we do it?)? This is the essential role of the leadership team, whose importance and structure I have outlined in a separate article. This is where project team management becomes crucial. It is thanks to their coordination and operational implementation that the strategic vision becomes a reality. This ideal cooperation ensures that your company is stable, dynamically developing and, most importantly, “unsinkable” in the face of turbulent market changes. The efficiency of this implementation directly demonstrates how clearly defined project roles support successful delivery.

Manage projects effectively at the strategic level and support the necessary synergy between the navigator (strategic leadership) and the crew (implementation team). You can use FlexiProject – a tool that ensures a smooth connection between your strategic vision and everyday project implementation. Achieve this essential alignment between “where we are going” and “how we are getting there” with the comprehensive instructions found in the team collaboration with FlexiProject user guide.