Team Leadership

image:gmixer.com
culled from:Leadershiparticles.com

A lack of leadership is often seen as a roadblock to a team's performance. As Stewart and Manz (1995, p.748) writes, “More specifically, work team management or supervision is often identified as a primary reason why self-management teams fail to properly develop and yield improvements in productivity, quality, and quality of life for for American workers.”

Rather than focusing on ineffective teams, Larson and LaFasto (1989) looked in the opposite direction by interviewing excellent teams to gain insights as to what enables them to function to a high degree. They came away with the following conclusions:

    A clear elevating goal — they have a vision
    Results driven structure — visions have a business goal
    Competent team members with right number and mix
    Unified commitment — they are a team, not a group
    A collaborative climate — aligned towards a common purpose
    High standards of excellence — they have group norms
    Principled leadership — the central driver of excellence
    External support — they have adequate resources

Team Leadership Model

While there are several Team Leadership models, Hill's Team model is perhaps one of the better known ones as it provides the leader or a designated team member with a mental road map to help diagnose team problems, and then take appropriate action to correct team problems (Northouse, 2007). This Team Leadership model is built on a number of research projects:

Hill's Team Leadership Model
Team Leadership Model

The Four Layers or Steps in the Team Leadership Model

1. Top layer: Effective team performance begins with leader’s mental model of the situation and then determining if the situation requires Action or just Monitoring?

2. Second Layer: Is it at an Internal or External leadership level?

3.Third layer: Is it Task, Relational, or an Environmental intervention? Select a function depending on the type of intervention. See the next section for explanation of Function Interventions.

4. Bottom layer: Correctly performing the above three steps creates high Performance through Development and Maintenance functions.
Team Leadership Function Interventions


Internal Task Functions

    Focus on goals by clarifying and/or getting agreement
    Restructure plans, processes, roles, etc. in order to gain desired results (process improvement)
    Guide the decision-making process so that better information is obtained, coordination is better, focusing on issues, etc.
    Train members through both formal and informal means
    Assess performance an confront when necessary

Internal Relationship Functions

    Coach team members
    Use more collaborative methods to involve all team members (this survey includes questions to determine if the environment is collaborative)
    Manage conflict
    Build commitment and esprit de corps through the use of ethos leadership
    Satisfy team members' needs
    Model what you expect from your team members

External Environmental Functions

    Network to increase influence and gather information
    Advocate by representing your team so that it shows them at their best
    Get support for your team by gathering resources and recognition for your team
    Buffer the team from environmental distractions
    Assess the environment through surveys and other performance indicators to determine its impact on the organization
    Share information with the team