4
Leading Teams
Drive, ability, and constitution come together to make leaders … the most successful are able to conjure visions through their words and infect others with their confidence … they inspire trust by showing they share people’s values and concerns … these qualities don’t just apply to the good guys: many of the greatest villains in history were charismatic. (Nicholson, 2000, p. 108).
Key Learning Points
- Creating a positive team environment
- The three central tasks of the team leader
- The skills of leading teams
- The skills of managing teams
- The skills of coaching team members
- The tripwires that confront team leaders
- How to develop team leadership skills
- Transformational versus transactional leadership
Team leaders influence coordination, creativity, knowledge sharing, problem management, actions, affective tone (positive or negative climate), efficacy, empowerment, potency and commitment to the team and the organization (Burke et al., 2006). Team leaders also affect the overall performance of the team (Ahearn et al., 2006; Chen et al., 2007). What the research reveals is that team leader functions distil down into task-focused activity and people-focused activity. Burke et al. (2006) showed that person-focused leadership – specifically transformational behaviour and consideration behaviour – correlated with team effectiveness significantly (0.34 and 0.25). Overall, it is important that leaders create a positive emotional environment for effective team working. ...
