Nothing defines a leader more than his or her team and the way it conducts itself. While leaders do of course, set their own agendas, and very often with a distinctive personal ‘edge’, their teams are a wider embodiment of what they aim to do and how they aim to achieve it.

So how as a leader you create a team – what you want it to focus on, what particular mix of skills you want in it, how it operates together as a team and separately as a group of leadership ambassadors – is absolutely critical. This may not be immediately achievable; many of us take on existing teams and it takes us a while both to establish what type of team we want and therefore what changes we want to make to the team we have inherited.

Once the team is formed, how as leaders we manage our teams becomes then just as critical: what behaviours we expect, what formal and informal rules we follow, and how we work collectively to achieve both outstanding team and personal performance.

Much of this is achieved by leaders who understand the role they play. How through regular 121s they are able to monitor performance and ensure that key actions and plans remain aligned to core agreed strategic objectives. How through such regular, personal encounters they are able to set a tone which over time will pervade the entire organisation. Much more still is achieved by leaders who have the humility, too, to recognise that they are just one of many; that a core element of their role is to be the orchestrator of a vast array of talent, all of it more skilled on its own than them.

Managing a team then with this blend of decisive, up-front leadership and down-to-earth humility is a balance few achieve but worth its weight in gold.