Is Leadership an Individual Responsibility or a Type of Teamwork?

Most leadership advice puts all the weight on one person. The result: leaders under constant pressure, teams underused.

After 28 years of working with teams, I see the same pattern — organisations invest heavily in developing individual leaders while ignoring the team around them. The fix is not more leadership training. The fix is treating leadership as a team effort.

Trust Is a Decision, Not a Feeling

Trust does not grow by waiting. Trust is a decision — and after that decision, it becomes a practice of learning how to trust each team member in a specific way.

A leader who builds trust within the team — both in themselves and between team members — makes everything else easier. Open communication means people say what they think. Not because the culture poster says so, but because nothing bad happens when they do.

I coached a team recently where trust began to rebuild only after people saw that a critical disagreement did not end in punishment. There was a moment of silence and discomfort — nobody enjoys criticism. But that moment produced a better decision. And trust rose to a level it had not reached in months of polite meetings.

Trust does not grow by waiting — it is a decision. Read Trust Is a Decision. Everything Else Follows.

This is what psychological safety looks like in practice. Not comfort. Not agreement. The ability to disagree, survive it, and come out with something stronger.

Trust-Building Is Not the Leader's Job Alone

Here is where most models break down. They treat trust as the leader's responsibility. It is not. Leadership, at its heart, is a specific type of teamwork. Every team member contributes to the trust environment — or erodes it.

Even when people disagree with a new direction — and some will — they can still work toward the shared goal rather than against it. Holding different viewpoints while still collaborating takes courage, openness, and honest communication. That is not a leadership skill. That is a team skill.

Recognise Strengths — Especially the Hidden Ones

A good leader sees what people are good at — even when the people themselves cannot name it. In many cultures, self-praise is uncomfortable. People downplay their own strengths or genuinely do not recognise them. A leader who sees those strengths and positions people where they naturally excel removes friction, reduces frustration, and raises performance without adding pressure.

I know this from my own work, where my strongest collaborator sees the world in the opposite way I do. Twenty years in, and I still need her perspective more than my own.

When Leaders Don't Share the Same Values, Teams Pay the Price

In larger organisations, the challenge multiplies. If five department heads sit at the same table and only two of them build trust and develop strengths, the negative effect spreads into every team. It does not matter how competent the other three are technically. If leaders cannot agree on how they lead together, expecting their teams to perform is unrealistic.

Shared leadership values are not optional at the top. They are structural. Without them, individual efforts cancel each other out.

From Principle to Practice

Belbin Team Roles make behavioural strengths visible across teams. The method combines self-perception with observer feedback — what you think about yourself and what your colleagues actually see. That gap between self-view and observer view is where the most useful insights sit.

For the full framework, read Belbin Team Roles: The Practitioner's Guide to What Teams Actually Need. Not sure whether a behavioural or personality assessment is right for your team? Read Behavioural Assessment vs. Personality Tests

When a leader can match work to the strengths of their people — and stop assigning tasks in areas of weakness — both motivation and performance rise. Not because anyone was told to try harder. Because the work finally fits the person doing it.

The Question Worth Asking

Leadership is not a solo act. It is a culture built on trust, clarity, and shared responsibility — where every team member knows their own strengths, understands what they contribute, and has the courage to speak honestly.

If you lead a team, here is one question worth sitting with: how do you get the best from every team member in a way that fits them, keeps them motivated, and does not burn them out?

The answer is never "work harder." The answer usually starts with "see them more clearly."

Solo leadership is not a strength — it is a failure of the system around it. The leaders who scale are the ones who stop being indispensable. See your own profile →, then map who in your team does what you cannot. That map is where shared leadership begins.

Photo by Mats Soomre · #MomentsBySoomre · moments.soomre.com