My personal experience with Team Leadership has been along the continuum from that of Super to Nightmare. The difference is attributable to how the team members were committed to the process. Like any relationship, Team Leadership, has to clearly define upfront what roles the members will assume and there has to be enforcement for the team to achieve success. The Northouse chapter reading makes this case with the Hill Model for Team Leadership figure and the Mc Grath Critical Leadership Functions matrix.
The challenge for a Team is everyone has to understand what the mission is and what they are being asked to contribute. I have witnessed individuals take advantage of others in a Team environment. I have seen individuals really go the extra mile, do really heavy lifting, but not be serving the Team intent with their hard work.
Collaboration and Communication define the best Teams. I have enjoyed working on Teams that took baby steps as a way to approach problem solving. By this, I mean the work was incrementally challenging. If work was not broken down into specific tasks with enforced deadlines, it became difficult to work together. The reason was egos and trust were contained with the incremental process. Whatever can go wrong may go wrong and going slow and easy mitigates the need for a state of urgency brought about by crisis management. Every time I worked on any Team I learned more about myself and of others.
Another important lesson I learned is to enforce deadlines. You have to be accountable to the Team. Finally, Northouse offers a great Leadership Instrument in the Team Leadership chapter reading.
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I agree that in a task oriented team, there needs to still be that person or persons that keeps everyone on task. I have been doing a lot of reading with regards to this as I research for the Quality Enhancement Plan of the school that I teach at. Convieniently, we are researching the topic of teamwork.
What is mostly said is that clear expectations need to be set and there needs to be a system of checks and balances within the team in order for work to progress and for everyone to feel the need to pull their weight.
Deadlines are a good thing - provided, as a leader, you give reasonable deadlines and periodically check in on the progress or to find out if there are problems. Early in my career, I made the mistake of issuing deadlines and leaving it at that. Enforcing deadlines involves a lot of "upfront" work.
I enjoyed reading your post this week. I have not had so many experiences working in groups. Your post has showed me different things that I need to be prepared for when working in groups.
I will use the term baby steps when dealing with groups. For me I like to plan everything, but the baby steps approach may be a better approach.
Nice post!!! A great team leader is someone who is very intelligent but yet very humble. They do not seek to push their ideas on the group, instead they try to draw as much information and ideas from the people around them. http://www.blanchardinternational.co.in/
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