Chapter 14: Team Leadership – Flashcards

• Reliance on team is becoming important because of increasingly complex tasks, globalization, and flattening of organizational structures • A team is a type of organizational group that is composed of members who are interdependent, have common goals, and must coordinate their activities to accomplish these goals • Examples: senior executive teams, project management teams, task forces, work units, standing committees, quality teams and improvement teams • The study of organizational teams has focused on strategies for maintaining a competitive advantage • Adapt to constant and rapid changes • Effective organizational teams lead to many desirable outcomes such as: • Greater productivity • More effective use of resources • Better decisions and problem solving • Better quality products and service • Greater innovation and creativity • Organizational culture needs to support member involvement to be successful • Teamwork is an example of lateral decision making as opposed to the traditional vertical decision making organizations use (based on rank or position) • The dynamic and fluid power shifting in teams has been referred to as heterarchy • Theories of leadership such as situational and transformational can be applied in a team setting • Effective team leadership facilitates team success and helps teams to avoid failure

Team processes demand the attention and focus of all members of the team • Team leadership functions can be performed by the formal team leader and/or shared by team members • This occurs when members of the team take on leadership behaviours to influence the team and to maximize team effectiveness • Referred to as team leadership capacity • Does involve risk and takes courage for the one outside of the formal leader position to take charge • Have less conflict, more consensus, more trust, and more consistency • Virtual teams especially benefit from shared leadership

• The Hill Model for Team Leadership • Based on the functional leadership claim that the leader's job is to monitor the team and take whatever action is necessary to ensure team effectiveness • Effective team performance begins with how the leader sees the situation that the team is experiencing (leader's mental model) • The mental model reflects components of problem confronting and the environmental and organization contingencies that define the larger context of the team • A good team leader needs to be behaviourally flexible and have a wide repertoire of actions or skills to meet the team's diverse needs • When the leader's behaviour matches the complexity of the situation, he/she is behaving with requisite variety • Effective team leaders can diagnose correctly and choose the right action • Leadership behaviour is seen as team-based problem solving, where the leader attempts to achieve team goals by analyzing the internal and external situation and then selecting/implementing appropriate behaviours

• Focuses on team excellence or the desired outcomes of teamwork • 2 critical functions of team effectiveness are: • Performance (task accomplishment) • Development (team maintenance) • Performance refers to the quality of the outcomes of the team's work (Did the team accomplish its goals and objectives in a quality manner?) • Development refers to the cohesiveness of the team and the ability of team members to satisfy their own needs while working effectively with others • Hackman has named 6 enabling conditions that lead to

1. Is it a real team? 2. Does it have a compelling purpose? 3. Does it have the right people? 4. Are the norms of the conduct clear? 5. Is there support from the organizational context? 6. Is there team-focused coaching?

. Clear, evaluating goal 2. Results-driven structure 3. Competent team members 4. Unified commitment 5. Collaborative climate 6. Standards of excellence 7. External support and recognition 8. Principled leadership

• The major decisions the team's leadership needs to make when determining whether and how to intervene to improve team functioning • The first of these decisions is whether it is most appropriate to continue to observe and monitor the team or to intervene and take action • The second decision is to choose whether a task or a relational intervention is needed (does the team need help) • The final decision is whether to intervene at the internal level (within the team itself) or at the external level (in the team's environment)

Decision 1 - Should I Monitor the team or take action? • Information search (to understand the current state of the team's functioning) and structuring (information must be analyzed, organized and interpreted) • Groups go through developmental stages of forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning • Three phases of group life and the leadership needed at each: 1. Motivational coaching (at start) 2. Consultative coaching (at midpoint) 3. Educational coaching (at end) Decision 2 - Should I intervene to meet task or relational needs? • Whether the team needs helps in dealing with relational issues or task issues • 2 critical functions: task (getting the job done, making decisions, solving problems) and maintenance (developing a positive climate, solving interpersonal problems, satisfying members' needs, developing cohesion) • Task functions are intertwined with relational functions Decision 3 - Should I intervene externally or internally? • If there is a conflict between members of the team it is best to intervene internally to maintain the tam and improve interpersonal relationships • If the team goals are unclear then internal task intervention is needed to focus on goals • If the organizational environment is not providing proper support to the team to do its job, external intervention will help focusing on obtaining external support for the team

The leader might choose to intervene in one of the following task areas: • Goal focusing (clarifying, gaining agreement) • Structuring for results (planning, visioning, organizing, clarifying roles, delegating) • Facilitating decision making (informing, controlling, coordinating, mediating, synthesizing, focusing on issues) • Training team members in task skills (educating, developing) • Maintaining standards of excellence (assessing team and individual performance, confronting inadequate performance)

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

Networking and forming alliances in environment (gathering information, increasing influence) • Advocating and representing team to environment • Negotiating upward to secure necessary resources, support and recognition • Buffering team member from environmental distractions • Assessing environmental indicators of team's effectiveness (surveys, evaluations, performance indicators) • Sharing relevant environmental information with team

Designed to focus on the real-life organizational work group and the leadership needed therein • Provides a cognitive guide that helps leaders to design and maintain effective teams, especially when performance is below standards • Takes into account the changing role of leaders and followers (shared leadership) • Can help in selection of team leaders and team members

• A team might need to modify the model to include skills that are relevant to its effectiveness • Complex and does not provide on-the-spot answers to specific problems facing the team leader • Many teams have shared leadership necessitating that everyone who provides team leadership has a wide range of team-oriented skills

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leadership

To monitor or take action.

Negating remedial action

Executive action/external