Are You Really Leading a Team?

In this episode of The Leader’s Kitbag, I challenge the common assumption that every group of direct reports is automatically a ‘team’.

Spoiler alert: they’re often not.

Drawing on three key characteristics, shared goals, interdependence, and mutual accountability, I offer a simple framework to help you identify whether you’re truly leading a team or just a group of individuals working in proximity.

Recognising the distinction is more than semantics; it has a real impact on how we lead, motivate, and structure our people. Get this right, and you’ll be leading with clarity and purpose.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The 3 defining features of a true team
• How to spot if you’re leading a group, not a team
• Why mislabelling workgroups as “teams” drives the wrong leadership behaviours

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Podcast Transcript

Are You Really Leading a Team?

If you’re in any sort of leadership or management position, here’s a question for you. 

Are you leading a true team…or are you leading something else? 

While this might seem like an abstract question, it has real, practical implications for those of us in leadership and management positions. 

So, in today’s episode of The Leaders Kitbag, I’m going to help you understand what it is you’re leading, and why it matters more than you might think. 

The word ‘team’ is the go-to collective noun for a group of people in any business or organisation. 

It’s used as the catch-all term…but that can create confusion and drive the wrong behaviours and actions for us as leaders. 

A real team has three main defining features 

• Shared goals 

• Interdependence 

• Mutual accountability. 

Let’s look at each of those in just a little more detail. 

A shared goal is just that. 

A goal that everyone in the team is invested in and working towards. 

If you therefore have a group of salespeople, who each have their own individual targets that are clearly defined, with no overlap and no bonus scheme in place for hitting a collective revenue figure, you may not have a ‘sales team’. 

In genuine teams, there is interdependence. 

At its simplest, my ability to deliver on my objectives or on elements of the team’s work depends on you doing your part. 

I literally cannot succeed on my own. In a work group, however, people often work more independently

And finally, there’s mutual accountability. 

In a real team – certainly in a high-performing team – there is a high degree of mutual accountability. 

This is characterised by a situation where the onus isn’t all on the leader to drive results, maintain standards or come up with all the ideas. 

So, you can use these three areas to help decide if you’re leading a real team or not. 

The alternatives could be a work group or even a collection of individuals.