Effective team leadership results in a number of positive outcomes at the organizational and individual levels. Report on two such examples from your own professional experience, or use the Argosy University online library and the Internet to research two real-life examples of companies, which have successfully created a collaborative culture.
Based on your research and experience, in a minimum of 400 words, respond to the following points:
Tasks:
Submission Details:
By the due date assigned, post your response to the appropriate Discussion Area. Through the end of the module, review and comment on at least two peers’ responses.
Write your initial response in 300–500 words. Your response should be thorough and address all components of the discussion question in detail, include citations of all sources, where needed, according to the APA Style, and demonstrate accurate spelling, grammar, and punctuation
Do the following when responding to your peers:
Effective leaders anticipate and provide for team members’ requirements and strive to build excellence within the team. Additionally, to motivate team members, effective leaders consistently aim to excel, persistently pursue objectives, and constantly conduct dialogues with peers, competitors, and consultants.In this module, you will analyze the steps leaders take to define goals and objectives for the team, develop confidence within team members, enhance team skills and overall learning capacities, manage conflicts, and create opportunities for growth and improvement.Additionally, you will examine the roles leaders play in creating a collaborative culture and the impact of positive leadership on team outcomes.
A leader plays an essential role in team development; to guide a team effectively, a leader must facilitate group processes, which streamline workflow, minimize interpersonal conflict, and align with organizational skills.All teams have important goals to accomplish; however, outcomes must be clearly stated by the leader for teams to make significant progress. Every group that meets regularly has defined purposes; the extent to which those purposes are articulated often depends on the leader’s initiative.It is the specific responsibility of the leader to define objectives for the team. Without this specificity, team members often become frustrated and very soon might find themselves caught up with issues not necessarily relating to organizational outcomes. The clearer the leader makes the objectives, the more likely the team is to remain focused on goal attainment. In addition to defining outcomes clearly and purposefully, the leader bears the responsibility of persistently pursuing the team’s goals. The leader must consistently redefine goals, purposes, and objectives, and maintain appropriate momentum by encouraging team members to achieve goals.It is also the responsibility of the leader to develop confidence within team members; however, this feat is not necessarily achieved through words. Offering positive and affirming statements on a consistent basis is certainly very helpful; but giving an inexperienced team an easier challenge in the early stages of team development fosters confidence within the team. An effective leader understands that promoting confidence is important because it impacts the overarching development of the group. In addition to developing confidence, leaders must maintain a global perspective on all issues because it enhances team skills and learning capacities. As teams mature, grow, and evolve, members’ learning capacities should increase along with an expansion in their ability to handle complex and rigorous challenges. The leader must point out moments where learning has occurred and encourage teams to be reflective about processes they have followed so far, to improve, and increase future learning capacity.Leaders must also learn to manage conflicts and obstacles arising during learning and within the team development continuum. An effective team leader manages these obstacles and actually learns to use conflict as an opportunity to derive the best from alternative perspectives.Finally, effective team leaders continually create opportunities for growth and development. For example, in times when budgets are cut short, leaders might ask the team to use the supposed deficit as an opportunity to focus on priorities and perhaps seek additional funding sources or approach unrealized benefactors who might provide support. In this situation, a leader can actually help create positive momentum by redefining goals according to available resources and thereby make outcomes achievable for team members.
One of the major challenges for a team leader is to create a collaborative culture. In a collaborative culture, people openly discuss issues, respect differences, and work as a community to achieve institutional objectives. An organizational culture exists regardless of whether a leader’s approach to the culture is strategic or not; however, many scholars believe a leader’s only job is to create, support, and endorse a specific organizational culture.In teams or groups where leadership is not exerted, the culture evolves based on dominant leadership forces. If the group is lucky, the forces are positive, and consequently, the leader might also see positive team outcomes. However, very often—with the exception of specific attempts to manage a positive and collaborative organizational culture—the system sinks to the lowest common denominator; the denominator which is easily available often becomes the focal point. For example, it might be easier to work in isolation or focus on certain simple tasks rather than go through the effort of collaborating complex and ambiguous challenges within the organization. Effective team leaders, therefore, must learn to create a truly collaborative organizational culture.In a collaborative culture, team members view collaboration as a prerequisite to work. They perceive collaboration as a natural component of the organizational culture; collaboration must exist regardless of quality of leadership. Although a number of strategies exist for building a collaborative culture, the effective ones include leaders defining objectives, building team confidence, enhancing team skills, managing obstacles, and creating opportunities for growth and development. Creating a collaborative culture will entail developing open discussions, respectful community, and collaboration and growth.
Effective team leadership results in a number of positive outcomes at the organizational level; well-led teams are an inspiration to the entire organization. Small, focused, and determined groups of men and women are certainly capable of deep and significant change. This is especially true in an era which—because of the Internet—offers unprecedented capacities to collaborate and put forth work on a global platform in a manner that is inexpensive and authentic.On an individual level, positive team leadership has several implications for the leader and the led. Effective leadership allows team members to thoroughly explore their own talents and abilities. Additionally, modeling effective leaders might give team members an opportunity to develop their own skills. Obviously, leaders who establish motivated, empowered, and deeply interconnected teams contain the potential to make a significant impact on key organizational outcomes. This outcome is almost always gratifying, at the individual and at the organizational levels.Some of the implications of good team leadership are impact and inspiration, cross boundaries interaction, and potential growth.
In this module, you examined the role of the team leader; leadership is not necessarily defined by one person or position; strong team leadership relates to team members’ as well as the leader’s learning capacities and skills. Well-led teams establish mechanisms to delegate tasks throughout the team and allow each member a chance to lead at different times.Here are the key points covered in this module: