As a leader, one must take into account experience and knowledge of team members. For team members with a good deal of knowledge and experience, you can delegate to these people, giving them tasks and leave them to get them accomplished. With inexperienced team members, you should use the telling technique, telling these member what needs to get done and how to accomplish their tasks. With people in between, a selling technique usually works. I base this mostly on my experience in the military, 38 years and holding 4 company level commands and working on various levels of staff. With my current position as a Quality Manager I supervise 2 top notch inspectors, one more senior and the other just started. As a leader, planning and communicating are the key to success!

As best as it is posable to do, leaders should understand the dynamics of the organization in which they work in, they should also determine the strengths, weaknesses, and maturity level of the members of the team they lead. This would assist the leader in determining the level of engagement to employ to each team member, and to understand the resource(s) that is needed for the team to be successful.
This would go a far way in both building a quality culture and developing high performing teams

@Luigi Sille
I work for a small company as the Quality Manager/ASQ CQE/NDT RL III; MT, PT, RT. I started out in the finishing department. 11 years later I am a member of top management. Since entering the leadership position it has been my experience as Larry stated, that we as leaders must assess our team members strengths and weaknesses and act accordingly. I am also a strong believer in building up junior team members. As I have continued to learn and grow in my position, it is my goal to bring up the next person to better not only the company but themselves as well. The more that I can pass on my knowledge to the next person the more I can concentrate on my own growth and delegate responsibilities to others.

I think if more leaders practiced this philosophy, we would see more businesses thrive and become exciting places to work. I have worked for people who refused to pass on knowledge. I was never sure of the reason if it was ego, job insecurity, or if it was just that the person wasnt as talented as they thought themselves to be. Whatever the reason was I feel that it didnt only stunt my growth and the growth of my coworkers but it stunted the growth of the “leader” and the company as a whole. To me that is very sad.

@Luigi Sille I agree--we MUST change the way we Lead. I believe in teaming which is a bit different from teamwork, in that it requires a little more structure. In teaming, you would use a Team Charter (not the same as a Project Charter), you would identify the roles and responsibilities of the team, the outcomes expected, and at the end of each meeting, the team would evaluate itself. Teaming limits the amount of time a team can meet. For example, no more than 6 times, for no more than 1.5 minutes each time. The Charter delineates the purpose of the team, the roles (e.g.,Team Leader, Scribe, Timekeeper, etc.), and the dates the team would meet. There would be a Sponsor of the team who would meet with the team to kick it off and give the ‘charge’, then they would remove themselves from the teaming process, unless a problem surfaces. The Team Leader facilitates the team, but is not a committee chair because the team is not a committee. The team would identify the problem, determine if they are a project (something new) or a process (already exists, but needs improvement) team. As to who should be on the team? Volunteers are good, people who have direct influence of the related initiative, and of course, having people with certain talents is perfect. I use the Gallup StrengthsFinder Assessment results to help in the selection of team members. Just wrote an article about this process that got published recently in the Dental Entrepreneur Women Magazine. If anybody is interested, just send me an email, and I will send you a copy of a Charter, a Chart of Roles and Responsibilities of the Team, and a simple tool to evaluate the effectiveness of the team's meetings. That's my $2.79!