Leadership Notes
Leadership Notes
Leadership Notes
TEAM SUCCESS
Capabilities of a great team:-
Trust
Openness
Respect for others
Cooperation
Commitment
Diversity of ideas
Accepting challenges
Purpose of teams:-
The purpose of creating teams is to provide a frame work that will increase the ability
of employees to participate in planning, problem solving and decision making to
better performance and goal achievement.
The team promotes:-
A better understanding of decisions.
More support and participation in implementation plans.
Increased contribution to problem solving and decision making.
Improved employee motivation.
Positive synergy
Satisfaction of social needs.
Organisational flexibility.
GROUP VS TEAM
GROUP: A collection of two or more interacting individuals who maintain stable
patterns of relationships, share common goals and perceive themselves as being a
group.
TEAM: A team is a small number of people with complementary skill who are
committed to a common purpose , performance , goals and approach for which they
hold themselves mutually accountable.
TEAM AND ITS TYPES:-
1. Permanent Teams.
This teams perform on a permanent basis and are not dissolved once the task is
completed.
2. Temporary Teams.
This type of teams loose their importance once the task is accomplished. Such teams
are usually formed for a shorter duration either to assist the permanent team or when
the organisation have excess work in association with the previous team.
3. Task force.
Such teams are formed for a special purpose of working On any specific project or
finding a solution to a very critical problem. The task force explores all the possible
reasons which led to a severe problem and tries to resolve it within given time.
4. Committee.
Committees are generally formed to a work on a particular assignment either
permanently or on a temporary basis. Individuals with common interest , more or less
from the same background , attitude come together on a common platform to form a
committee and work on any matter.
5. Organisatioanal /work force.
Such groups are formed in organizations where team members work together under
the expert guidance or leadership.
6. Self managed teams.
Self managed teams consists of individuals who work together for a common purpose
but without the supervision of any leader.
7. Cross functional teams.
In this type of team individuals from different areas come and work together for a
common objective to form a cross functional team.
8. Virtual teams.
Virtual teams consists of individuals who are separated by distance and connected
through computer. Here team members communicate with each other online
through internet.
TEAM DEVELOPMENT.
Team development creates a captivating atmosphere by encouraging cooperation,
team work, interdependence and by building trust among team members.
Phases of team development.
1. Forming :-
This stage involves a period of orientation and getting acquainted. Uncertainty is high
during this stage and people are looking for leadership and authority. Most
interactions are social as members get to know each other
2.Storming:-
This is the most difficult and critical stage to pass through. It is a period marked by
conflict and competition as individual personalities emerge . Team performance
actually may decrease in this stage because energy is put into unproductive activities.
3.Norming.
In this stage consensus and cooperation have been well established and the team is
mature , organized and well functioning. There is a clear and stable structure and
members are committed to team’s mission. The team is now focused on problem
solving and meeting team goals.
4.Adjourning.
In this stage most of the teams goal have been accomplished. The emphasis is on
wrapping up final task and documenting the efforts and results. As the work load
diminished, individual members may b re assigned to other teams and the team
disbands. There may be a regret as the team ends so a ceremonial acknowledgment of
the work and success of the team can be helpful .
TEAM BUILDING:-
Team building refers to the various activities undertaken to motivate the members and
increase the overall performance of the team.
Need of Team building.
Team building activities are utmost importance as they help in the overall
development of the team members and in turn improving the teams performance. It
also strengthens the bond among the employees and they feel motivated to work and
achieve the targets.
Team building exercises.
One must know his/her fellow team members well.
The team members must be compatible with each other .
Include ice breaking activities in the team.
Encourage many trust building exercises in the team.
Team members must trust each other for the maximum output.
Encourage activities where individuals come together as a single unit and work for
a common task.
TEAM PROCESS:
Team process refers how the team functions i.e how members work to carry out the mission and goals
of the team and whether the team and the members grow, develop and improve over time.
Process influence and is influenced by both team structure and context.
Interactions that occur among team members while performing the team task and
combine individual efforts into collective results.
Networking ability
Organisational awareness
Self regulation
Team leadership
Team work
TEAM COOPERATION AND COMPETITION.
Cooperation: It refers to the attempts of maximizing the collective outcomes.
Competition:
It refers to the attempts of maximizing the difference with others in rivalry for
supremacy or prize.
Cooperation and competition are often conceptualized as products of social
interdependence. Thus for both cooperation and competition there must be more than
one individual or entity involved and the individuals they must be able to influence
each other that is the change in one’s action causes a change in others outcomes.
So both cooperation and competition are major ingredient in team setting , where
Individuals are made socially interdependent with each other and team outcomes are
largely influenced by how team members interact with each other.
Teamcooperation in any organisation is always advantageous. It improves overall
employee performance and organizational productivity.
In a team each employee is responsible for success. It is a combination of strength
which can also lead to minimizing individual weaknesses. In this case the strength and
weakness of team members can enhance and complement each other.
Advantages:
Reduces the desire of employees
TEAM COMPETITION:
Team competition between team members can temporarily increase motivation and
improve performance.
Advantages:
It helps to discover how employees work under pressure.
It’s a true test of employee skills.
Brings out the common interest between employees.
Employees will get self confidence.
Team members can learn from their losses.
It will help the employees to get over the fear of competing and makes them want
to compete more.
It gives them recognition and motivation and can naturally reduce indifference and
laziness.
It can lead to employees taking on more responsibility.
Disadvantages:
Anxiety
Unnecessary rivalry between team members.
Poor team morale.
Can enhance bitterness.
Destroys self esteem and can increase disagreements.
Constant comparisons can be exhausting and de motivating.
It can sabatage collaboration and team work.
TEAM COMMUNICATION
Team communication is known as the interactions that the individuals in a team share
with one another. This includes things like emails, conversations ,body language and
non verbal communications.
Advantages:
Team communication is the foundation of team building.
Communication helps to ensure team success.
An intentional focus on team communication in organization can make it easier to
reach or exceed the projection.
Good communication is based on healthy relationships. So it’s important to build a
healthy relationship between the team members.
Work can sometimes be stressful, so identifying some ground rules for interacting
with team members is essential for success.
MODULE-2
BASIC ISSUES BEFORE TEAM.
TEAM CONFLICT MANAGEMENT
CONFLICT:-
Conflict happens when two or more people disagree and one of them decides to make
an issue of it.
TEAMCONFLICT:-
Team conflict is an interpersonal problem that occurs between two or more members
of a team and affects result of team work.
CAUSES OF CONFLICT:
Unfair or unequal treatment
Miscommunication
A lack of goals
Lack of feedback
Personality differences
Emotional abuse
Discrimination
IMPACT OF CONFLICT:
Conflicts may have both positive and negative effects on the team. It can help the
team operate better by exploring issues more fully but it can lead to emotional
problems that damage communication.
MANAGING TEAM CONFLICT :
Conflict management is needed for smooth functioning of the team. There are some
ways which can be followed for conflict management. They are:-
Clarify positions
Avoid partiality
Threats also stop behaviour. Legitimate power can be useful at changing behaviour as
well.
Using these sources of power comes along with problems, not the least of which is
that the person who is targeted by the negative power may end up disliking the
powerful person, because people feel forced to respond when using negative power.
On the other hand , positive power is when power is used in a way that makes
people want to be influenced. People trust those who are experts , work with those
who have information to share and are willing to share it , and want to perform for
those whom they respect.
So in positive power people respond much more positively when influenced.
The problem with the impact of power on the decision making process is that
powerful members can easily sway the group even though they are not always the
ones who have the most information or who can make the best decisions.
Power , whether resulting from legitimate authority or the impact of admiration can
easily affect the behaviour and decisions of team members.
For example, a powerful leader , strong member or high status person initiates the
discussion about decision alternative and then strongly advocated for it, a team is
likely to follow along with that member.
ADVANTAGES OF POWER:-
Using power properly certainly has its place in organizations.
Helps teams to monitor their performance
DISADVANTAGES OF POWER:-
Rigidity
Threat
Biasedness
Discrimination
Bad influence
Lack of independence and flexibility
Constant stress and anxiety
Dictating the specific values and norms of team
Can be demotivating and discouraging
SOCIAL INFLUENCE:-
Social influence refers to the way in which individuals change their behavior to meet
the demands of a social environment or standard.
When a team is socially influenced it performance faster than it would perform
without influence.
According to social impact theory , influence is a function of strength, immediacy
and number.
Social impact theory defines strength as the power of intensity of a given influence
attempt, immediacy as closeness in space and time and number as the number of
attempts or people.
Thus, influence attempts from a large number of powerful people are likely to be
successful.
DECISION MAKING:-
Quality decision making requires good initial problem solving and information
gathering and then using as much of that information as necessary to make the best
decision possible.
Decision making is a process where a final but best choice is made among the
alternatives available.
Team decision making , also known as collaborative decision making is a situation
faced where individuals collectively make choice from alternatives before them.
2. Majority Vote:-If majority of the members agree to the decision arrived at.
Implementation
and monitoring the decision.
ADVANTAGES:
Compared to an individual , the teams generally have a greater expertise ,
knowledge and skill base to make better decisions.
Large number of members provide more perspective of the problem.
With large number of members participation helps to reach quality decision.
DISADVANTAGES:
It’s a time consuming process.
Influencing members usually manipulate the team decision In a direction of their
interest and liking.
Some times decision made by the team members are simply a compromise between
the various views and options offered by the team members.
PROBLEM SOLVING:
Organisational challenges are many times disruptive to productivity. Team problem
solving is encouraged as teams tends to evaluate diverse solutions and action plans.
The core objective of the team are identifying the problem and developing the
solution.
There are three different views on problem solving processes. They are:-
Descriptive- This approach defines what people actually do when solving problems
and making decisions.
Prescriptive:-This recommend what people should do when solving problems.
Normative:-This approach is all about following the norms or guidelines to solve the
problems.
Unequal power distribution within the group might capitalize on the situation to force
ideas on the and undermine team effectiveness. This also makes difficult for low
power members to carry out necessary and important team task. Thus , members who
have greater power than others have a higher likelihood of swaying any final decision
with direct or indirect pressure.
2. POOR OR BIASED INFORMATION SHARING
Another process that can affect the problem solving process is poor or biased
information sharing. Information sharing among members is necessary for teams to
make an informed decision. Unfortunately, it turns out that teams are quite inefficient
information processors. Surprisingly research demonstrates that this problem with the
failure to share unique information probably occurs regardless of whether the team is
quite functional.
3. SOCIAL LOAFING:-
Social loafing is known as reduction in motivation and effort that occurs when 20
individuals work together at a team task. Generally any one who has worked in
multiple teams can cite at least one example of social loafing by one more team
member.
4. TEAM POLARIZATION:
Team polarization is another process which can be a cause for ineffective problem
solving. Team polarization was initially known of as the risley shift phenomenon
because researchers noted that people working in group or team tended to make riskier
decisions than they would have if they were working alone.
5. GROUP THINK :
Group think is the final common problem that may affect problem solving. Group
think is mode of thinking in which individual members of small cohesive group tend
to accept a view point or conclusion that represents a perceived group consensus.
TEAM LEADERS AND THEIR CHAHALLENGES:-
A teamleaderis someone who provides guidance, instruction, direction and leadership
to a group of individuals for the purpose of achieving a key result or group aligned
results.
CHALLENGES:-
Creating a common understanding of the situation.
Establishing the teams purpose.
Managing Team’s talent.
Handling different and difficult people.
Managing conflicts.
Teach team how to win.
Answerable to higher authority for team’s performance.
Handling pressure
Constantly motivating team members
Being respected and being liked.
TEAM DIVERSITY:-
Team diversity refers to the differences between individual members of a team that
can exist various dimensions like age, nationality, religious background, expertise,
gender , political opinions, task skills etc.
Different types of diversity includes Demographic and personality and functionality
differences and can have positive as well as negative effects on team outcomes.
Diversity can impact performance, team members satisfaction or innovative
capacity of a team.
According to the input –process-output model, team diversity is considered as an
input factor that has effects on processes as well as output of the team work.
TYPES OF DIVERSITY:
Demographicdiversity
Functional diversity
Personality diversity
Gender diversity
Expertise diversity
Cultural diversity
Age differences
Like wise, some of the organisational culture are very controlled, where positional
power is used on teams , which restrict teams dedication towards work.
Organisations with high cultural values respects individuals and teams ideas,
creativity and performance which helps the team to become creative , innovative and
productive
Where as some organisational culture believes in pure profit making and do not
give priorities to team creativity by which teams are unable to perform freely.
VIRTUAL TEAM:
A virtual team is also known as geographically dispersed team or a remote team, is a
group of people who interact through electronic communication.
Members of a virtual team are generally located in various geographical regions.
Since communication is not in person , trust and good communication are crucial to
the success of a virtual team.
TYPES OF VIRTUAL TEAM:-
NETWORKED TEAM :-
Networked teams are composed of cross functional members brought together to share
their expertise and knowledge on a specific issue. Membership is fluid in that new
members are added whenever necessary while existing members are removed when
their task is complete.
PARALLEL TEAM:-
Parallel teams are formed by members of the same organisation to develop
recommendation in a process or system. Parallel teams are generally formed for short
period of time and membership is constant and members will remain intact until task
is complete.
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT TEAM:-
Product development teams are composed of experts from different parts of the world
to perform a specifically outlined task.
PRODUCTION TEAMS:-
Production teams are formed from members of one role coming together to perform
regular and ongoing work. Members of production team are given clearly defined
roles and work independently. The individual output of each member are combined
together to give the end results.
SERVICE TEAMS :-
Service teams are formed by members from different time zones. Each member does
work independently but the work produced by each member is the continuation from
the previous member.
MANAGEMENT TEAMS:-
Management teams are formed by managers of same organisation who work from
different geographical regions.
ACTION TEAMS :-
Action teams are formed for a very short duration of time to respond to immediate
problems. Upon resolving the problem the team is adjourned.
ADVANTAGES OF VIRTUAL TEAM:
Lowers office costs.
Flexibility
Increased productivity
A 24 hour work day.
Greater availability of talent.
Organisational performance links to team performance and can be and can be used set
and prioritized to direct or re direct the team effort .
Training can be structured for trainees to learn individually. Training can focus on
individuals who are selected from their job situation.
Team training can be defined as training in which teams are used to increase
individual procedural knowledge.
Team training is different from team building, which takes place at the job site and
focuses on analysing teams work procedures and activities to improve teams
productivity.
When team training takes place in training site . It has four elements. They are :-
1. Inputs ( individual trainees or teams)
TYPES OF TRAINING:-
1. TEAM PROCESS TRAINING -It refer to activities and relationships within a
team. It includes communication, conflict resolution, time management and other
activities. Team process also refers to the gradual establishment of behavioural norms,
team objectives and bonding.
2. TASK TRAINING:-
When team members lacks the skills to accomplish the task , team experiences
frustration and conflict. Adequate task training can reduce this source of frustration in
earlier days.
3. COACHING:-Most of team members have difficulties when first apply the
principle they learn in the classroom. Coaching bridges this gap. A effective coach
helps the members to see where principal and techniques can apply. An effective
coach can guide the team through their early experiences and accelerate the learning.