Team Leadership

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Team Leadership

• Chapter 9

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Team Leadership

• Team composed of members who are interdependent,
  who share common goals, and who must coordinate
  their activities to accomplish these goals.

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Team Leadership

• With the increase in organizational work teams
  and their expanding role in the complex and
  rapidly changing organizational structuresIt is
  essential to understand the role of leadership
  within these teams to ensure team success and to
  avoid team failure.

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Team Leadership

• The use of organizational teamsto lead to
  greater productivity, more effective use of
  resources, better decisions and problem solving,
  better-quality products and services, and
  increased innovation and creativity.
• Work team management or supervisiona primary
  reason to properly develop and yield improvements
  in productivity, quality, and quality of life.

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Team Leadership

• 1940-1950slittle emphasis on practical problems
  of real-life groups (temporary, laboratory-type
  groups).
• Researchers are attempting to determine the
  relationships between leadership, team
  excellence, and the organizational setting.
• Much of the current researchfocuses on the
  practical problems of ongoing work teams and how
  to make them more effective.

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Critical Functions of Team Leadership

• To help the group accomplish its task (task
  function)team performance
• To keep the group maintained and functioning
  (relational maintenance function)team
  development
• Both functions are interrelated.

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Critical Functions of Team Leadership

• Task or team performance functions include
  getting the job done, making decisions, solving
  problems, adapting to changes, making plans, and
  achieving goals.

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Critical Functions of Team Leadership

• Maintenance or team development functions include
  developing a positive climate, solving
  interpersonal problems, satisfying members
  needs, and developing cohesion.

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Critical Functions of Team Leadership

• In addition to dealing with and balancing the
  task and relational needs of the team, the leader
  also has to help the group to adapt to the
  external environment as well.

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Critical Functions of Team Leadership

• Effective team leaders need to learn to analyze
  and balance the internal and external demands of
  the group and react appropriately by changing or
  remaining consistent.

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Critical Functions of Team Leadership

• What functions does a leader have to perform to
  help a group be more effective?
• McGrath (1964) formulated a modelgroup
  effectiveness (leadership function), analysis of
  the situation both internally and externally, and
  the leader should take an immediate action or not.

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Critical Functions of Team Leadership

• Two dimensions of leadership behavior
• (a) monitoring vs. taking action
• (b) internal group vs. external group

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The three decisions

• What type of intervention should be used
  (monitoring/action taking)?
• At what level should the intervention be targeted
  (internal/external)?
• What leadership function should be implemented to
  improve group functioning?

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Leader Mediation Decisions

• The first decision confronting leadership is
  whether monitoring or action taking is the most
  appropriate for the issue at hand.
• The second strategic decision is to determine
  what level of process needs leadership attention
  (internaltask/relational or externalenvironment
  team leadership).
• The third decision for leadership is to determine
  the most appropriate function or skill to be
  performed in the intervention.

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Hackman Walton (1986) indicated that leaders
need to monitor

• (a) performance conditions (goals, structure,
  resources),
• (b) performance processes (effort, knowledge,
  strategies, and
• (c) outcome states (satisfaction, performance)

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Critical Functions of Team Leadership

• As a leaderdiagnose, analyze, or forecast
  problems (monitoring) or take immediate action to
  solve a problem that we observe (taking action).
• As a leaderfocus on the problem within the group
  (internal) or problems outside the group
  (external).

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Internal Task Leadership Functions

• Goal focusing (clarifying, gaining agreement)
• Structuring for results (planning, organizing,
  clarifying roles, delegating)
• Facilitating decision making (informing,
  controlling, coordinating, mediating,
  synthesizing, issue focusing)
• Training team members in task skills (educating,
  developing)
• Maintaining standards of excellence (assessing
  team and individual performance, confronting
  inadequate performance)

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Internal Relational Leadership Functions

• Coaching team members in interpersonal skills
• Collaborating (including, involving)
• Managing conflict and power issues (avoiding
  confrontation, questioning ideas)
• Building commitment and team work (being
  optimistic, innovating, envisioning, socializing,
  rewarding, recognizing)
• Satisfying individual member needs (trusting,
  supporting, advocating)
• Modeling ethical and principled practices (fair,
  consistent, normative)

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External Environmental Leadership Functions

• Networking and forming alliances in environment
  (gather information, increase influence)
• Advocating and representing team to environment
• Negotiating upward to secure necessary resources,
  support, and recognition for team
• Buffering of team members from environmental
  distractions
• Assessing environment indicators of teams
  effectiveness (surveys, evaluations, performance
  indicators)
• Sharing relevant environmental information with
  team

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Hackman Walton (1986)

• Two dimensions result four types of group
  leadership functions
• 1. Diagnosing group deficiencies
  (monitoring/internal)
• 2. Taking remedial action to correct deficiencies
  (executive action/internal)
• 3. Forecasting impending environmental changes
  (monitoring/external)
• 4. Taking preventive action in response to
  environmental changes (executive action/external)

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Team Effectiveness

• Team performance (task accomplishment)
• Team development (maintenance of team)

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The team leadership Model

• The team leadership model provides a tool for
  understanding the very complex phenomenon of team
  leadership with its mediation decisions, its
  critical functions, and its focus on outcomes of
  team excellence.
• The leaders function or job is to monitor the
  team and then to take whatever action is
  necessary to ensure team effectiveness.

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Critical Functions of Team Leadership

• Leadership behavior would be seen as team-based
  problem solving in which the leader attempts to
  achieve team goals by analyzing the internal and
  external situation and then selecting and
  implementing the appropriate behaviors to ensure
  team effectiveness.

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Team Leadership

• Leadership is not a role but an ongoing process
  to continually gather information, reduce
  equivocality, provide structure, and overcome
  barriers.
• All members of the group can engage in this
  process and collectively help the group adapt to
  changing conditions.

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Team Leadership

• Team leaders must learn to be open and objective
  in understanding and diagnosing team problems and
  skillful in selecting the most appropriate
  actions to help achieve team goals.

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The Leaders Ability

• Barge (1996)networking (the obtaining of
  relevant information) data splitting (the
  interpretation of this information).
• The ability to facilitate decision making
  (task/team performance) the ability to manage
  interpersonal relations (maintenance/team
  development).

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The Leaders Ability

• Fleishman et al. (1991)information search
  (search out information to explain the current
  state of the teams functioning) structuring
  (analyzed and organized the information so that
  the leader can decide how to act).

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Conditions of Group Effectiveness

• Clear, engaging direction
• An enabling performance situation
• A group structure that fosters competent task
  
• work
• An organizational context that supports and
• reinforces excellence
• Available, expert coaching and process
• assistance
• Adequate material resources

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Characteristics of Team Excellence

• Clear, elevation goal
• Results-driven structure
• Competent team members
• Unified commitment
• Collaborative climate
• Standards of excellence
• Principled leadership
• External support

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Strengths of Team Leadership

• To help make decisions about the current state of
  their teams and what specific actions they need
  to take to improve the teams functioning.
• To provide a cognitive map to identify group
  needs and offer practical suggestions to the
  leader to take appropriate corrective actions.
• To help the leader make sense of the complexity
  of groups and offers practical suggestions based
  on theory and research as to what actions to take
  to make the group more effective.

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Strengths of Team Leadership

• Its focus on real-life organizational teams and
  their effectiveness
• Its emphasize the functions of leadership that
  can be shared and distributed within the work
  group.
• Its help in selecting leaders and team members
  with the appropriate diagnostic and action-taking
  skills.

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Criticisms of Team Leadership

• The entire model is not completely supported or
  tested.
• The model is complex and does not provide easy
  answers to difficult decisions for the leader.