TEAM WORK

Team Work

Team Work

Introduction

Leadership, whether positive or negative, clearly fills a significant role in determining health, happiness, and fulfilment. There are a number of definitions of leadership. Brown (2009) stated that leadership is taken as an interaction between persons in which one presents information of a sort and in such a manner that the other becomes convinced that his outcomes (benefits/costs ratio) will be improved if he behaves in the manner suggested or desired.Kouzes and Posner (1995) defined leadership as “the art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations”. True leadership raises both leader and followers to “higher levels of motivation and morality”. Successful leaders have certain abilities and traits that attract and guide their followers (Tosi, 2004, pp 497).

However, followers have their own set of preferred leadership traits that are formed by their experience within their surroundings or culture. The current business environment of rapid change and innovation has forced many organizations to evaluate how workplace practices and capabilities contribute to their effectiveness at various organizational levels. Leadership is an influential interaction process between leaders and team members that promotes the achievement of shared goals. The vast and multifaceted discipline of leadership study includes group leadership and the implications of the societal culture on leadership. Leadership can be categorized into power-influence, behavioural, trait, and situational approaches. The team leadership is a vast concept which includes within it, the roles, responsibilities, theories and models.

A team is managed by a leader who is described as an individual (or more than one individuals) who is (are) responsible for the direction, instruction, guidance or leadership provision to the team members for the purpose of achieving certain objectives or mutual goals. The team leader is accountable to the project manager for his performance and is also responsible to guide, support and inspire the followers in order to reach the goals in an effective and efficient manner. There is a great variation regarding the roles and responsibilities of a team leader, but in normally include the roles of ensuring teamwork and team building (Sharfman, 2006, pp 45).

Discussion

Implicit Leadership Theory

Implicit leadership theory suggests that followers hold a preference for certain leadership traits from their leaders and are based on personal characteristics and attributes. Leadership perceptions are used by perceivers to evaluate and accordingly differentiate leaders from non-leaders or effective from ineffective leaders. When an individual sees a leader that matches his or her concept of a leader, the leader is viewed as a “good leader”. Implicit leadership theory explores the covert conceptual structure of leadership. The theory assumes the existence of a conceptual structure regarding the definition of a leader and what a leader should be in the minds of people. One's experience with a leader, description, and evaluation of a leader are greatly influenced by one's implicit leadership theory. The implicit leadership theory asserts that individuals are attributed leadership qualities, and accepted as leaders, based on the degree of fit, or congruence, between the leader behaviours they enact and ...