ABSTRACT
After a definition of team leadership, the first emphasis is what team leaders need to do. Basing on the idea of functional leadership - team leaders’ main focus is on the team’s concrete and actual needs - tasks of team leaders are reported. Team leadership needs to be adaptive: a team in a transition phase requires different support than in the action phase, a team with a lack of mutual trust requires something else than a team that feels overstrained. Besides the “what” (tasks), the “how” of good team leadership is relevant - what are the specific leadership styles or behavioural patterns of leading a team? Main dimensions of leadership behaviour are initiation of structure and consideration. Another topic of this chapter is: Who is leading - and to what extend can teams lead themselves, realizing shared leadership? To solve problems with team leadership interventions mainly focus on leadership development by using methods such as executive coaching, leadership training and multi-source feedback.
