Category: Unit 5

According to Northouse (2019), numerous research data show that leader should clearly show the goal for team members for the team effectiveness (p. 376). Page and Wong (2000) state vision and direction must be conceptualized by the leader and given to the followers to embrace and have a concrete image of the purpose, vision, and outcome of the organizational group project, and then the leader invests in and serves the team members to accomplish the mission (p.8). All through entire the process, the key action which a leader must take for a group project is to clear the goal and give a vision of small steps to achieve the goal to steer the team to the right direction. For that, foresight, and conceptualization are the important skills among the ten essential traits of servant leadership defined by Spears. Spears(2010) states conceptualization is “the ability to look at a problem or an organization beyond day-to-day realities” and foresight is “ the ability to foresee the likely outcome of a situation” (p. 28). Unfortunately, leaders can sometimes get involved in the day-to-day operations though, to judge the present situation logically and flexible beyond the day-to-day work is an essential task for leaders. The goal and steps might change depends on difficulties which the team faces, leaders should remain sensitive to aware the change and adjust the small steps towards the goal.

Northouse(2019) also suggests “Teams that can manage conflict, collaborate well together, and build commitment will have good relationships.”(p. 384) which refer to team development, the other factor of team effectiveness. For that, leaders will use awareness, listening, empathy, healing and persuasion skills. First, a team leader has to recognize the situation carefully, interpret what is becoming wrong and decide what kind of action should be performed or just observe(Northouse, 2019, 384). If a leader thinks arguing in the group is a problem, the leader should listen to the team members “what’s wrong”. Listening is one of the most important skills for leaders, which refer to their communication and decision-making skills(Spears, 2010).
When leaders listen, they should be empathetic listeners and heal them. Servant leadership is strong at healing one’s self and one’s relationship to others(Spears, 2010). Our mood and motivation influenced by relationship issues. Relationship issues can reduce team productivity. Leaders should take actions to make the teams accomplish both team performance and development.

References
Northouse. (2019) Team leadership. In Leadership. Thousand Oaks. CA: SAGE Publications
Page, D., & Wong, T. P. (2000). A conceptual framework for measuring servant leadership. The human factor in shaping the course of history and development, 69-110.
Spears, L. C. (2010). Character and servant leadership: Ten characteristics of effective, caring leaders. Journal of Virtues & Leadership, 1(1), 25-30.

Northouse (2019) states the two critical functions of team effectiveness are performance (task accomplishment) and development (team maintenance) (p. 375). “Performance”, shows how much the team can get the job done and “development” shows how the team keep their cohesiveness. For demonstrating these functions of team excellent effectiveness, Hackman (2012) suggested the team should have compelling purpose, right people, real team, clear norms of conduct, supportive organizational context, and team-focused coaching. Larson and LaFasto (1989) demonstrate there are eight universal characteristics related to team excellence. 1. Clear, elevating goal, 2. Results-driven structure, 3. Competent team members 4. Unified commitment, 5. Collaborative climate, 6. Standards of excellence 7. External support and recognition 8. Principal Leadership.

This theory reminds me of the story when I had to build a new medical team in my hospital. When I was work as a chief plastic surgeon, I needed to build a new medical team for limb salvage, which is the new concept of helping diabetic people who face on the situation of risk of amputation to preserve their own feet. For limb salvage, we need to organize a medical team which consist of a lot of medical members from many backgrounds who will help diagnosis, examination, nutrition control, take care of patient’s condition, rehabilitation and so on. This concept and treatment were quite new and unfamiliar for most of the people working in the hospital. First what I did was giving a big meeting whose target was all the people working in the hospital. I found some sponsors and prepared some free food and beverage which attracted people. At the meeting, I gave a lecture about limb salvage followed by a presentation about the importance to do limb salvage, the advantage for the hospital with doing limb salvage, what kind of and how many people will I need to make a new medical team. The reason which I did this meeting with everybody was that I knew a new medical team would need support in many ways from outside of the team. (External support and recognition) Also, this meeting was very efficient to build a new team in many ways. As I stated what kinds of members I needed for the team, what is the goal for the team in the presentation, some of the medical staffs who were willing to help me with passion came to me to offer to be in the team (Competent team members), also we could share the same clear goal at the same time from the beginning. (Clear, Elevating goal).

As Larson and LaFasto defined principled leadership as the eighth component of characteristics of team excellence, team effectiveness is influenced by a leader positively and negatively.  Zaccaro et al. state “leadership is the central driver of team effectiveness” and influence the team through four steps: cognitive, motivational, affective, and coordination (Northouse, 2019). Among these four processes, I always carefully worked for coordination of my medical team. In the medical team, each team members has different backgrounds such as a nurse, a physical therapy, a cardiologist, a radiologist, a dietitian and so on. Each member works for the same patient, the same goal which is getting the patient better, but the small goal for each of the members according to their profession is totally different. So, it is easy to cause conflict between members. I tried to facilitate and connect each paramedical staff knowledge and roles towards the same goal and made the team work more efficiently.