LEADERSHIP ACTIONS – LDRS 500- Unit 5-LA 2
Actions a team leader should take when coordinating a group project in an organization.
Spears (2010) examined a set of ten characteristics found in Greenleaf’s writing that are of crucial impotence on servant leadership. They are Listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community. These ten characteristics contribute in a meaningful way to servant leadership practice. Servant leadership “seeks to involve others in decision making, is strongly based in ethical and caring behavior, and enhances the growth of workers while improving the caring and quality of organizational life” (Spears, 2010, p.25).
A team leader who plays the role of servant leadership in the organization considered as a member of a collaborative project team. This individual or group of individuals in the team are responsible for planning, executing and promoting the activities that project undertakes and communicating these activities effectively. In considering servant leadership actions, there are three actions were identified by Northouse (2016) as Internal task leadership action, Internal relational leadership actions, and external environmental leadership actions (p. 291). Leaders need to recognize and identify what is getting in the way of the team’s goal accomplishment and choose the appropriate strategy that reveals the necessary actions.
The internal task leadership action- leaders, consider diagnosing the situation when dealing with a “team performance problem.” Diagnosing the situation requires team leader who is approaching a servant leadership, to engage the group activities and listen to them respectively and attentively with empathy to understand the situation and help to transform to a better position to achieve an attainable goal.
There is a list of elements team leader to consider in task-orientation (Page & Wong, 2000, p.84; Northouse, 2016, p.296) are :
-Goal focusing and share vision with team (clarifying and gaining agreement)
-Structuring results accordingly to meet the attainable goal (planning, visioning, organizing, clarifying roles, delegating)
-facilitating decision making (informing, controlling, coordinating, mediating, synthesizing, focusing on issues)
-training team members in task skills (education and training)
-leading to achieve the attainable goal.
-maintaining standards of excellence (assessing team and individual performance, confronting inadequate performance)
Team-leaders who have the interest in servant leadership approach, they invest in their members’ growth; and influence career developments through “modeling, team building, and open decision-making” (Page & Wong, 2000, p.72). Servant leadership awareness helps to understand the situation in monitoring the team’s performance. In other words, choosing an intervention to educate the team or train them, clarify the goals and obtain agreement on these goals as part of the interaction and to a certain extent, setting a standard for inadequate performance to improve and get the job done. Structuring results by sharing a vision, “enabling, ennobling, and empowering” (Page & Wong, 2000, p.74). This approach resonates team leader with the workers around them to work for the attainment of that vision.
The internal relational leadership action- Leaders, needs to implement skills to improve team members’ interpersonal skills and intrateam relationships as explained by Northouse (2016, p.297) through:
-Coaching team members in interpersonal skills
-Collaborating (including, involving)
– Managing conflict and power issues (avoiding confrontation, questioning ideas)
-Building commitments (being optimistic, innovating, envisioning, socializing, rewarding, recognizing)
-Satisfying individuals needs (trusting, supporting, advocating)
-modeling ethical and principled practices (fair, consistent, normative).
Team-leaders who want to pursue servant leadership approach choose to intervene the conflict to manage the situation and resolve power issues. The intervention starts by coaching the team members appropriate behavior, build commitments and unity; which in regard provides “healing to self and others” (spears, 2010; Page & Wong, 2000) in the team-relationship. Team-leaders ability to foresee the outcomes of the situation by “understanding the lessons from the past and realities of the present” (spears 2010; Page & Wong, 2000) may contribute to a decision for the future. Servant leadership approach deemed to convince others and build consensus and effective team-relationship within groups (spears 2010; Page & Wong, 2000).
Part of being a team leader is to support your team, advocate them, and provide them with resources to manage the undesired outcome.
The external environmental leadership action– Leaders might need to take actions to protect their team and to enhance their team effectiveness by monitoring their environment closely. However; team leaders support their team when they connect them to the external environment. Northouse (2016) suggested the following functions:
-Networking and forming alliance in the environment (gathering information, increasing influence)
-Advocating and representing the team to an environment
-Negotiating upward to secure necessary resources, support, and recognition for the team)
-Buffering team members from environmental distractions
-Assessing environmental indicators of team’s effectiveness (survey, evaluations, performance indicators)
-Sharing relevant environmental information with the team (p. 298).
An effective team leader who wishes to use servant leadership approach may need to advocate and represent their team to the external environment. They bring team’s effort to the upper -level of management to be appreciated and rewarded. Their intrinsic value is deeply committed to the growth of each individual in the team and within his or her organization. This awareness leads to build community among those who work within a given institution (Spears, 2010). Team-leaders in servant leadership approach, they invest in their members’ growth; and influence career developments through “modeling, team building, and open decision-making” (Page & Wong, 2000, p.72). Regarding environment, leaders should be able to realize the importance of the environment surrounding their team, so they can know how their members are treated, the team members accountability in decision making, development of a new ides, and how power and information flow, therefore they are committed to the task through modeling and building a positive environment to support their team.
The fundamental assertion of the functional perspective is that leader is to do whatever is necessary to take care of unmet needs of the group (Northouse, 2016). Effective team leadership focuses on both task and relational issues/problems as a high level of task productivity, combined with superior intrateam relationships, leads to best team performance and development.
My question is: Do you think all these characteristics have to be applied in one situation? if it’s not what is the most needed ones?
Resources:
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice, Seventh Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ISBN 971452203409 (Chapter 14 Team Leadership)
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, Larry C. (2010) Character and Servant Leadership: Ten Characteristics of Effective,Caring Leaders. The Journal of Virtues & Leadership, Vol. 1 Iss. 1, 2010, 25-30.