What is the role of a team leader?

I was writing my exam last week, and in an exam I was asked this question. “What is the role of a team leader?”.  I was supposed to answer it in a few short sentences. 

The moment I read this question I almost froze. nothing was coming to my mind, and I thought to myself, why is it happening? 

why can’t I write an answer even though I have been leading a team for quite a few years now ? And I would say that I am not bad at it. 

After a bit of thinking, I realized, its not that I don’t know the answer. Its just that I can not summarise it in a few sentences. 

Anyways, I did end up writing the answer. 

But it made me think about What do I know and how much do I not know about the things that I assume I am good at? 

There is a term which is called “imposter syndrome”. It happens to some people who are good at doing something. Basically when a person constantly thinks that he is not good enough at what he does, or that he is an imposter hiding among people and people have not identified him yet. 

I have first hand experience with this. No matter how good of a job I do. I never get the level of confidence that I should have. Anywhere I go or anything good that happens to me, I think that I do not deserve it. and I am not qualified enough to belong there. or not good enough to be among those people. 

I don’t feel it all the time. its just that there comes a few moments where I feel like an “imposter”. 

There is another phenomenon called “beginner’s luck” and as the name suggests,  Its applicable when a person gets more success than his hard work, when he is starting something.  I don’t know how much that applies to me. But sometimes I do feel that surely I have a little bit of beginner’s luck. 

To sum it up, I now understand more than ever this statement. 

“The more you know about something, the more you realize how much you don’t know about it”