Conceptual And Theoretical Analysis Of Team Leadership For Organizational Success

Importance of Leadership in Organizations

Write a Literature Review on Team Leadership.

The leadership is defined as the contextual functions that have the clear linking with the leadership approaches of the leaders. According to Day et al. (2014), an effective leader has the clear influence on the followers to achieve the desired goals. It is necessary to select the appropriate method of leading an organization. The effective team performance is facilitated by the involvement of the several fundamental characteristics (Gurdjian, Halbeisen and Lane 2014). It is essential to develop the successful integration of the individual action. The suitable leadership process helps in building such team strength that helps in achieving the pre-determined goals. The literature study is focusing on establishing the conceptual analysis of the team leadership by developing the appropriate leadership qualities. The theoretical analysis would be provided to understand the suitable leadership styles for organizational success.

Concept of Leadership

According to Norris (2017), leadership is the process of social influence in which the leader generally seeks the voluntary participation of the other subordinates for achieving the desired goals. A leader can be conceptualized as the person who influences or delegates others to act more efficiently to achieve any specific objective (Paustian-Underdahl, Walker and Woehr 2014). In current world, the global business scenario is rapidly changing due to which the functionalities are becoming more complex within the organization. Therefore, it is essential to involve more efficient and skilled leaders to deal with the emerging complexities. It is important for a skilled leader to maintain the effective relationships with the team members to perform the organizational functionalities or to divide the works for completing any project within the stipulated time. Edelman van Knippenberg (2017) mentioned that the leadership quality is generally conceptualized as the personal quality and it evolves with time. On the contrary, Dabke (2016) argued that leadership is not just a personal quality, but a series of action that is structured for leading towards achieving a particular result. The coordination between the leaders and the followers is essential for developing a motivated organizational scenario. The further study would explore the conceptual and theoretical analysis of the team leadership that has the remarkable contribution in achieving the organizational goals.

Team Leadership

An effective leader understands the nature of leadership in terms of applying it to the leadership team. Wang, Waldman and Zhang (2014) opined that the success or loss of the team depends on the appropriate leadership traits and decisions. The team leadership not only focuses on the leaders or the followers, it represents the cohesiveness maintained among the team members while performing the functionalities. It is to be indicated that the senior leaders need to master the competencies to lead a team towards the successive way. In fact, in case of the team leaderships, the leaders go beyond the basic leadership competencies (Hoch and Kozlowski 2014). A team leadership is developed by consisting two or more people while are interrelated to each other and within the defined roles for achieving the common goals. For an example, The Iconic, one of the most growing retail brands of Australia was facing challenges in retaining the employees due to lack of proper leadership skill and quality. In this situation, the project leader, Bacon has rendered the concept of team leadership. The work group divisions help in minimizing the complexity level and ensure the successful outcomes. The team leadership is mostly required in a dynamic work culture where the high efficiency performance level is essential (Hoch and Morgeson 2014). The team leadership model describes the leadership traits in a significant way.

Team Leadership Model

The Team Leadership Model of Hill

The team leadership model describes the capacity of achieving the team effectiveness. The term ‘leadership’ generates the ideas about the capacity of a leader (Sommer, Howell and Hadley 2016). The model offers the insights to the efficient leaders who are willing to share their leadership roles with the other team members (Alavi and McCormick 2016). These leaders need to address the leadership issues and identify the alternatives for resolving these specific issues. In such context, it is essential for these leaders to utilize the adequate resources and capabilities and deal with the external challenges as well as opportunities. As opined by Lafasto and Larson (2013), the team leadership model deals with the behavioral flexibility, efficient problem resolving skills, and application of the appropriate intervention.

Figure 1: Team Leadership Model

(Source: Lafasto and Larson 2013)

Business operation head of Woolworths, Dickens in a business review has opined that by using the concept of Hill the organization has decided to focus on providing effective training and development session to organizational leaders for being accustomed with the current trend of market. The above team leadership model describes that the leadership decisions sometimes may affect the effectiveness of the team quite clearly. However, the leaders need to take the decision whether the actions are to be undertaken or not. The components related to the team leadership model are discussed further:

In order to direct the organizations towards achieving the objectives, the leaders need to undertake some of the unbiased decisions. For example, the leaders should determine the proper schedule for monitoring the organizational functionalities or develop the innovative work procedures (Chen et al. 2016). In fact, it is also essential to concentrate on the required intervention that can ensure the ethical and cohesive work functions. In such context, the leaders need to gather the extensive knowledge to develop the appropriate leadership actions to understand the deal with such situations. The probable leadership actions are described further:

The leadership action depends on the team performance and development. The leaders take such actions by concentrating on both the internal or external factors. These actions are generally developed in accordance with the outcome of the team activities. As shown in the model, the internal leadership actions include the task and relational actions and the external action includes the environmental welfare (Lafasto and Larson 2013). The team leaders can customize these actions in order to improve their leadership experiences while working with the team. The leaders need to pay the concentration on the appropriate intervention that is to be utilized at the right moment. The internal tasks performed by the leaders are as follows:

• The efficient leader needs to be completely focused on the appropriate goals for the organizational success.
• It is the responsibility of the leader to formulate the appropriate structure in order to achieve the goals.
• The effective leadership trait helps in developing the process that can make the decision making method much easier.
• The efficient leaders provide the suitable and necessary training sessions to the employees by conducting the educational or developmental seminars (D’Innocenzo, Mathieu and Kukenberger 2016).
• The leaders are responsible enough in setting and maintaining the appropriate standards for the associated individuals and increase the level of the team performance.

Internal and External Leadership Actions for Effective Team Performance and Development

These are the basic tasks that the leaders need to undertake within the organizations. In the relational actions, the leaders need to include following aspects:

• The leaders need to provide the adequate and beneficial coaching to the team members for improving their interpersonal skills (Mathieu et al. 2015).
• They need to encourage the effective collaboration and cohesiveness among the team members.
• They need to manage the conflict for allowing the intellectual conflicts and resolve the personal conflicts. The emergence of the intellectual conflicts helps in developing the innovative procedures of performing the organizational functionalities.
• It is essential for the efficient leaders to enhance the team commitments.
• The efficient leaders need to always concentrate on satisfying the supports and trust that are necessary for the team members (Sommer, Howell and Hadley 2016).
• A skilled leader needs to maintain the ethical parameter at the first place and need to be fair and consistent. This consistency would help the leaders to exercise the principled behavior.

These specific responsibilities are needed to be maintained by the efficient leader within an organization. Maintaining these internal responsibilities would be fruitful enough in leading towards achieving the pre-determined goals. Moreover, the associated employees will also gain the trust on their leaders to move ahead and achieve both the personal and professional goals.

            Apart from these internal actions, the leaders need to be much focused on some of the specific external actions as well. Certo (2015) defined that the external leadership actions contribute to protect the team from the external environment and keeping the team connected to the external environment simultaneously. The following practices are necessary for the leaders to develop the remarkable external actions:

• It is necessary for the leaders to establish the effective networking for developing the alliances and gain the proper access to the necessary information.
• The efficient leaders advocate for the team with those who create the negative impacts on environment.
• The negotiation process with the senior management is quite essential for the leaders to gain recognition, resources, and support.
• A skilled leader needs to protect the team members whenever there is any environmental diversion emerges in the external scenario.
• In order to lead the company towards the reputed direction, the leaders need to examine the external indicants of the effectiveness, such as surveys on customer satisfaction rates. This method is quite informative to the leaders to gather insights related to the customers’ demands and requirements (DuBois et al. 2015).
• It is essential to provide the team members the adequate external information for performing the tasks and leading the organization towards success.

However, during the difficult situations, the leaders always need to practice the appropriate communication with the senior management for resolving the emerging issues (Hill, Kang and Seo 2014). The senior management thus can communicate with the team if necessary or in time of needs. This initiative would be appreciated by the team members having the perception about the supports derived from the management.

The team effectiveness is built by depending on two major aspects, such as team development and team performance. Kayes and Yoon (2016) suggested that team performance refers to the effectiveness of the team performance that may lead to the accomplishments of the goals. On the other hand, the team development refers to the maintenance of the team efficiently to perform the tasks. The leaders need to assess the team effectiveness by following these specific questions stated below:

• Has the team structured the specific, clearly articulated or realizable goals?
• Does the team ensure the result-oriented structure?
• Is there the cohesiveness and unity maintained among the team members?
• Are the team members efficient enough to perform the organizational functionalities?
• Are the members committed towards accomplishment of the organizational goals?
• Are there the excellence standards present to guide them?
• Are the employees receiving any external supports for the team recognition purposes?
• Is the adopted leadership style effective enough for the team?

These questions fall under the basic criteria for assessing the team effectiveness. An efficient team leader always focuses on the formal and informal ways of observing the workforce to analyze these specific areas. In addition to this, the team leaders ought to take the actions for correcting the weakness or the concerned areas mentioned in the above list.

Team leadership models describe the efficiency of the leaders to manage the entire team and leading them towards accomplishing the organizational goals. It is also essential to concentrate on the required intervention that can ensure the ethical and cohesive work functions. In such context, the leaders need to gather the extensive knowledge to develop the appropriate leadership actions to understand the deal with such situations. It has been observed that the leaders often deal with many uncertainties in which they have to be skilled enough to deal with every situation. The following real business scenario would develop the knowledge related to the application of team leadership model in a crisis situation.

Assessing Team Effectiveness

The Chilean Mine Case

In the year of 2010, world experienced the first of the 33 Chilean Miners that were emerged from the transport tube. The technological advancements and a greater team leadership skill helped in rescuing the miners in such extreme condition (Scandura and Sharif 2013). Chilean mine team was appreciated remarkably for the efficiency in the work procedures prior to this accident. Luis Urzua, the efficient team leader of this team maintained the cohesiveness and directed in the right direction for the business success. There was a store room containing two tanks of oxygen and limited water and food. The extensive research on this case stud highlights that the leader used to maintain the democratic leadership style during the decision-making process. However, after this incident took place, it was quite difficult for the company to sustain the position. During such time, Luis Urzua maintained the appreciable control of the team in spite of dealing with the difficult situation. He started sharing the vision and used many ceremonies and rituals. His gestures worked as the motivating factor to gather the reliability of the associated staffs. His democratic leadership style helped him in building the effective team leadership by managing both the internal and external actions. The continuous monitoring and team assessment lead the company towards establishing the entity once again. The application of the appropriate team leadership model helped the company to gather more trust even after such disruptive situation.

Analysis of the Leadership Style in this case scenario

The analysis of the case study determines the situational effects on the organization. According to Anderson and Sun (2017), during such crisis situation, the leadership role requires to be adaptive and characterized by the supports, competence, priorities, structures, coordination, role clarity, focus, maintenance of cohesion, and sense of humor. The leadership functions provide the monitoring, appropriate strategic direction, and the hands-on treatment of the team members. It is important for a skilled leader to maintain the effective relationships with the team members to perform the organizational functionalities or to divide the works for completing any project within the scheduled time. As opined by Jin, Meng and Berger (2017), the team leadership not only focuses on the leaders or the followers, it represents the cohesiveness maintained among the team members while performing the functionalities. It is to be indicated that the senior leaders need to master the competencies to lead a team towards the successive way. Service Section Leader of ASDA, Clark in a business review has stated that participative form of leadership style for making collective decision in reaching the business goal. In fact, in case of the team leaderships, the leaders go beyond the basic leadership competencies. In this case, it is noticed that the members were allowed to suggest their ideas during any decision-making process (Gurdjian, Halbeisen and Lane 2014). In addition to this, the leader even conducted the team assessment to identify the gaps and structured the entire scenario according to the circumstances. The team leadership model is thus appropriately applied in this case scenario.

Real Business Example: Chilean Mine Team Leader

Leadership Qualities

It is said, “Great leaders are born, not made”. The leadership efficiency is innate to some extent. However, the effective leaders need to adopt several qualities for directing the team towards the right direction. The following leadership traits or qualities are essential for the leaders.

• Self-Assessment

A skilled leader needs to assess the personal strength and weakness along with the recognizable shortcomings. Understanding the weakness would help a leader to delegate to others who have the clear abilities of achieving the common goals. Working on the weak areas and making improvements would be helpful enough in developing the remarkable leadership qualities.

• Clear Perception

The effective leaders always have the clear perception about the circumstances they have been experiencing for quite a long time. They establish the clear and honest level of communication with the peers or the teams. This communicational transparency helps the leaders to understand the perception of others. The clear conversation and receiving feedback would be helpful enough in observing the body language and behavior. The leader thus has the efficiency level of perceiving others’ concerns.

• Communication

Every skilled leader needs to be communicative towards the other team members to make them feel more reliable and engaged. The communicational transparency creates the motivational factors that help the employees to become more committed towards the organizational functionalities (Gurdjian, Halbeisen and Lane 2014). In fact, they can easily present their concern to the leaders that develop the better work culture.

• Team Motivation

The team motivation is the primary responsibility of an efficient leader. It is necessary for an effective leader to inspire others to improve the work culture and business functionalities (Hill, Kang and Seo 2014). The appropriate team motivation would be helpful enough in achieving the determined goals and leading the team members towards the right direction. Project manager of JB-Hi-Fi, Smith intends to implement numerous activities such as RNR policy, fun activities within team in quest of rending team motivation.   

• Taking the risks

The risks in the business are the common challenges faced by the efficient leaders. The leaders need to accept such challenges and take the risk of dealing with the people in spite of such uncertainties. Assessing the risk is thus quite necessary for dealing with difficult situation and developing the suitable decision.

• Team Building

Gurdjian, Halbeisen and Lane (2014) mentioned that a great leader shows the most commendable trait by putting together the strong teams that focus on achieving the common goals. On the contrary, the dysfunctional teams can also lead towards the failure accordingly.

These leadership qualities are essential to become a great leader. In fact, the team leadership process is influenced by such leadership traits that eventually lead the company towards right direction. The leaders go beyond the basic leadership competencies. The continuous monitoring and team assessment lead the company towards establishing the entity once again. The application of the appropriate team leadership model helped the company to gather more trust even after such disruptive situation (DuBois et al. 2015). The leadership functions provide the monitoring, appropriate strategic direction, and the hands-on treatment of the team members. It is important for a skilled leader to maintain the effective relationships with the team members to perform the organizational functionalities A team leadership is developed by consisting two or more people while are interrelated to each other and within the defined roles for achieving the common goals. The work group divisions help in minimizing the complexity level and ensure the successful outcomes.

Leadership styles

In the work environment, the leaders experience different types of situations that become quite considerable concern for the long run. Different leaders thus take the diverse nature of leadership style, which helps them to make the suitable decisions for the organizational success. There are five different types of leadership styles that the leaders can adopt for accomplishing organizational goals.

• Laissez-faire leaders generally give the authority to the associated workers to perform their responsibility. This leadership style lacks the direct supervision and it fails to provide the repeated and regular feedback of the employees (Hill, Kang and Seo 2014). Highly experienced employees are capable of working under such leadership style whereas the new employees fail to improve their skills.
• Autocratic Leaders make the decisions without seeking help of any other associate within the workplace. These leaders take the complete authority of structuring the business decisions and functionalities (Sommer, Howell and Hadley 2016). No one has the capability of challenging the decisions made by the autocratic leaders. Countries like North Korea maintain such leadership styles within the business organizations. This style may create the internal conflicts among the associates or sometimes produce the good results as well.
• Participative or Democratic leaders value the input of the associated members in terms of undertaking any organizational decision (DuBois et al. 2015). They gather the advices of the associated team members and come to the conclusion after observing the suggestions. This leadership style helps in creating the motivational scenario and produces the innovative ideas of dealing with the different situational activities.
• Transactional leadership style determines the distribution of rewards or punishment by judging the performance parameter of the associated employees within an organization. The performance result of the team members decide which of the suitable actions the leaders need to take. This process is quite effective in providing the employees proper training and accomplish the goals.
• Transformational leadership style depicts the maintenance of the high level of communication from the management for achieving the pre-determined goals. These leaders motivate the employees and increase the productivity.

These leadership styles are quite effective in terms of developing the leadership traits of the great leaders. It is essential for the leaders to concentrate on the bigger picture to ensure the high profitability of the company.

Gaps in the Literature

The literature study provides the insightful ideas about the effectiveness of team leadership and the commendable leadership traits that the leaders need to adopt. However, the literature study fails to describe the theoretical observation in terms of rapidly changing scenario. The literature describes the overall business scenario and does not provide the description of any particular industry. Hence, it can be stated that the literature study is quite limited.

Summary

The literature study is focusing on establishing the conceptual analysis of the team leadership by developing the appropriate leadership qualities. The theoretical analysis would be provided to understand the suitable leadership styles for organizational success. The development of the team leadership model provides the insights regarding the team effectiveness and team assessment that the leaders need to take into account. The leaders take such actions by concentrating on both the internal or external factors. These actions are generally developed in accordance with the outcome of the team activities. In addition to this, this model also provides the idea about the internal and external actions that are needed to be taken into consideration while making any organizational decision. Furthermore, the literature study analyses the effective leadership traits and leadership qualities that have the considerable impacts on the employee motivation

References

Alavi, S.B. and McCormick, J., 2016. Implications of proxy efficacy for studies of team leadership in organizational settings. European Psychologist.

Anderson, M.H. and Sun, P.Y., 2017. Reviewing leadership styles: Overlaps and the need for a new ‘full?range’theory. International Journal of Management Reviews, 19(1), pp.76-96.

Cederblom, T., 2014. Strengthening a team leadership approach to the multi-site church model. Assemblies of God Theological Seminary.

Certo, S., 2015. Supervision: Concepts and skill-building. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Chen, W., McCollum, M., Bradley, E. and Chen, D.T., 2016. Shared team leadership training through pre?clerkship team?based learning. Medical education, 50(11), pp.1148-1149.

D’Innocenzo, L., Mathieu, J.E. and Kukenberger, M.R., 2016. A meta-analysis of different forms of shared leadership–team performance relations. Journal of Management, 42(7), pp.1964-1991.

Dabke, D., 2016. Impact of leader’s emotional intelligence and transformational behavior on perceived leadership effectiveness: A multiple source view. Business Perspectives and Research, 4(1), pp.27-40.

Day, D.V., Fleenor, J.W., Atwater, L.E., Sturm, R.E. and McKee, R.A., 2014. Advances in leader and leadership development: A review of 25years of research and theory. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), pp.63-82.

DuBois, M., Hanlon, J., Koch, J., Nyatuga, B. and Kerr, N., 2015. Leadership styles of effective project managers: Techniques and traits to lead high performance teams. Journal of Economic Development, Management, IT, Finance, and Marketing, 7(1), p.30.

Edelman, P.J. and van Knippenberg, D., 2017. Training leader emotion regulation and leadership effectiveness. Journal of Business and Psychology, 32(6), pp.747-757.

Gurdjian, P., Halbeisen, T. and Lane, K., 2014. Why leadership-development programs fail. McKinsey Quarterly, 1(1), pp.121-126.

Hill, N.S., Kang, J.H. and Seo, M.G., 2014. The interactive effect of leader–member exchange and electronic communication on employee psychological empowerment and work outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(4), pp.772-783.

Hoch, J.E. and Kozlowski, S.W., 2014. Leading virtual teams: Hierarchical leadership, structural supports, and shared team leadership. Journal of applied psychology, 99(3), p.390.

Hoch, J.E. and Morgeson, F.P., 2014, January. Vertical and shared leadership processes: Exploring team leadership dynamics. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2014, No. 1, p. 16977). Academy of Management.

Jin, Y., Meng, J. and Berger, B., 2017. The Influence of Communication Leadership Qualities on Effective Crisis Preparedness Strategy Implementation: Insights from a Global Study. Communication Management Review, 2(01), pp.8-29.

Kayes, D.C. and Yoon, J., 2016. The breakdown and rebuilding of learning during organizational crisis, disaster, and failure. Organizational Dynamics, 45(2), pp.71-79.

Lafasto, F, and Larson, C. 2013. Team leadership . 6th ed. Sage Publicaion. available from: https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/47444_chp_12.pdf [accessed on] 17th January, 2018.

Mathieu, J.E., Kukenberger, M.R., D’innocenzo, L. and Reilly, G., 2015. Modeling reciprocal team cohesion–performance relationships, as impacted by shared leadership and members’ competence. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(3), p.713.

Norris, S.E., 2017. What Motivates an Individual to Lead and Engage in Leadership Development?. In Encyclopedia of Strategic Leadership and Management (pp. 696-706). IGI Global.

Paustian-Underdahl, S.C., Walker, L.S. and Woehr, D.J., 2014. Gender and perceptions of leadership effectiveness: A meta-analysis of contextual moderators. Journal of applied psychology, 99(6), p.1129.

Scandura, Terri A. and Sharif, Monica M., 2013, “Team leadership: The Chilean Mine Case”. Management Faculty Articles and Papers. 13

Sommer, S.A., Howell, J.M. and Hadley, C.N., 2016. Keeping positive and building strength: The role of affect and team leadership in developing resilience during an organizational crisis. Group & Organization Management, 41(2), pp.172-202.

Sommer, S.A., Howell, J.M. and Hadley, C.N., 2016. Keeping positive and building strength: The role of affect and team leadership in developing resilience during an organizational crisis. Group & Organization Management, 41(2), pp.172-202.

Wang, D., Waldman, D.A. and Zhang, Z., 2014. A meta-analysis of shared leadership and team effectiveness.