Unit 5: Effective Team Leadership

The 2 Critical Functions of Effective Team Leadership

Google Images:  Walter Lee Elementary School

As defined by Northouse (2019),  team effectiveness focuses on how well  a team works together to accomplish defined goals.  There are 2 critical functions of team effectiveness;  performance and development. Performance focuses on how well the team has met their goals and completed their tasks. To be clear, just finishing a task does not equate to performing well, there has to be a high standard of quality in the work produced.  Development refers to how well the members of the team work together. Team members are not just working collectively to reach a common goal or complete a task, but they are also simultaneously balancing the need to successfully meet their own personal requirements (Northouse, p. 375).  Effective teams are essentially made up of people who are capable of working well together and who share the same high performance standards/expectations as they work to achieve tasks or common goals.

Larson & LaFasto (1989) define 8 characteristics of team excellence and effectiveness as shared by Northouse (2019). They are as follows:

1. Teams must have a clear goal outlined:  Without this, no-one would know what they were working towards.
2. Teams must have a results driven infra-structure: Team members need to know  what their specific role is, have clearly defined communication steps, and, know how each team member will have their individual performance assessed etc.,
3. Only competent members need apply: Team members need to actually know how to do the job for which they have been assigned. They also need to possess the personality skills to be able to get along well with others.  Northouse quotes Hackman (1990), when  he shares, “a common mistake in forming teams is to assume that people who have all the technical skills necessary to solve a problem also have the interpersonal skills necessary to collaborate effectively” (p. 377). Wow,  is this ever true! There are definitely people who are fully capable of completing a task on their own, but as soon as you throw another individual into the mix who offers different opinions or ways of doing things they become a nightmare to work with. There is an individual at my school who continually rubs co workers the wrong way because they lack the interpersonal skills to ensure that everyones individual needs are being met while working towards a common goal or task. This person is highly qualified and highly educated but completely lacks social awareness and therefore is not an effective team member.
4. Team members need to be unified in their commitment: Just because people work together in a group, does not make them a team!  In middle schools and high schools teachers are usually grouped together according to subject matter taught, however, this doesn’t mean that they are a solidified team where everyone is on the same page and in agreement. True teams are developed when members have built a “sense of unity” where all members are “involved in the process” (Northouse, p.377). The most effective teams that I have been a part of are ones where everyone has “bought in” and has a vested interest and say in the collective team goal.
5. Team members need a safe, collaborative working climate: To be truly effective, team members need to feel like their voice is heard and acknowledged. The best ideas are those that are hashed out in a safe environment where there is no judgement or criticism.  Every member is recognized for their unique contribution to the team.
6. There needs to be standards of excellence established: “The standards must be clear and concrete, and all team members must be required to perform to standard” (Larson & LaFasto, 1989) as quoted by Northouse (2019, p. 378).  This was something that I dealt with a lot as the Grade 8 Team Leader and Department Head at my last school. As a team, we discussed what certain standards of expectations we needed to have in order to resolve some issues that we were having with student behaviour. For example, we were experiencing a drug problem and students were transporting them in backpacks and dealing was occurring during lunchtime. As a team, we all agreed that we had to enforce the rule of no backpacks in the classroom or out on the field at lunch. We ran into a team issue when two members of our team chose to not follow through and continually allowed their students to have their backpacks when the rest of us were enforcing this expectation.  It had to be addressed and resolved in order for the team to be effective in reaching our goal. It wouldn’t work if only a few of us were doing what we had agreed upon.
7. Teams need external support and recognition: Resources are a necessity! Northouse (2019) sums this up perfectly,  “The best goals, team members, and commitment will not mean much if there is no money, equipment, or supplies for accomplishing the goals” (p.378).
8. 

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   There needs to be principled leadership! Northouse quotes Zacarro et al., (2001)  when he refers to leadership as being the “driver” of effective teamwork through 4 processes which are “cognitive, motivational, affective and coordination” (p.379). Cognitively, the leader needs to be able to identify and understand any problems that the team may encounter. The leader also needs to act like the team cheerleader and find ways to bring the team together and motivate them to produce high quality work. Being a principled leader means being able to come up with strategies to help deal with issues that crop up and affectively handle them. Leaders coordinate well, not just schedules and organizational matters but they also match peoples strengths and skills to tasks so that everyone not only has their needs met, but performance standards are also met.   This process of principled leadership affected me while working in the middle school because I had to try and be that leader.  I didn’t always fulfill that role well in the very beginning, especially affectively and motivationally! It was difficult and challenging trying to bring so many different people together; people  who were there initially solely out of grade grouping and not because they had chosen to be a part of the team. The first task was to recognize that this group was going to have issues because we weren’t yet a team and we needed to become one (somehow).  We all had different teaching styles, skill sets (some were more technically capable than interpersonally), experience levels (some were brand spanking new and others were close to retirement), levels of willingness to try new things and vast differences in personalities (some were extremely outspoken and others felt like they had no voice).  We had to define what we wanted our team to look like, what we stood for, what our vision was. We had to define what our common standards of excellence for our shared practice would look like for our pod teams as well as our group as a whole. We needed to figure out schedules, define roles for everyone on the team and outline how we would communicate effectively, especially how we would address problems if individual members failed to live up to the expectations of the group as a whole.  It was a huge learning curve for me. I initially balked at the discomfort of having to address inadequate performance because our meetings sometimes didn’t feel like the “safe, collaborative climate” they were supposed to be as some people would go on the attack (forgetting to be factual and non-judgemental) and we lost some ground that we would then have to rebuild. However, I began to realize that effective leaders are those that take the initiative to address issues in a respectful manner and who help provide strategies to deal with potential problems (preferably proactively and not reactively).

What have you as a group member (not necessarily the appointed leader) found to be the most challenging aspect of teamwork? What strategies did you find most helpful in dealing with those issues?

Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Sage Publications.