What Are the Key Attributes That Make a Leader Successful in Managing Teams at Scale?

Rapid context switching between the global landscape and specific issues in hand can certainly help leaders manage teams at scale.

Not all editors are great writers.

Not every developer makes a great team leader or a technical project manager.

Most people excel at just one thing—strategy or implementation. For instance, hiring a marketing strategist for content writing or social media management may be less productive than hiring a purist writer with little to no understanding of the marketing landscape.

Great managers have often grown within an organization starting from a low-paid, intense job as a clerk or a regular employee. They have excelled at their duties, generated good results, and received several promotions until landing a senior management offer.

This is precisely the reason why most MBA graduates have a hard time finding a relevant job in the field. After all, theoretical project management doesn’t cover the actual day-to-day in a management role. Here are the prerequisites for a PMP certificate:

Bachelor’s degree or global equivalent

Minimum three years/36 months unique non-overlapping professional project management experience

4,500 hours spent leading and directing projects

35 contact hours of formal project management education

High school diploma, associate’s degree, or global equivalent

Minimum five years/60 months unique non-overlapping professional project management experience

7,500 hours spent leading and directing projects

35 contact hours of formal project management education

Successful managers leading large teams have to always bounce between day-to-day activities with different team members and the global organization’s responsibilities.

They need to plan the roadmap over the next 6 months in the morning and support a junior manager on their team with a specific project. They jump between coordinating project budgets and resource allocation and handling a regression or scope creep reported by a team member.

However, the true challenge, and perhaps the hallmark of your leadership, is ensuring these layers aren’t siloed but synergized. How? By cultivating adaptability. As you shift from mapping out a six-month roadmap to assisting a team member with an immediate concern, it’s your adaptability that ensures no detail is overlooked and no broader goal is sidetracked.

Being able to quickly switch between the “bigger picture” and “a problem in hand” is invaluable. Every minor change may have a massive impact on the entire organization. Syncing both aspects simultaneously is a key attribute when leading large teams within an organization.