LEADERSHIP AND TEAM BUILDING

Leadership and Team Building



Leadership and Team Building

The purpose of this note is to address my friend who has recently promoted to a vice team leader level at Mazda Motor Corporation. I would like to suggest him different approaches and styles for effective leadership that will help him achieve tremendous growth in his personal and professional life. Certainly, leadership is one of the tenets of corporate governance that we've added more adjectives (transformational, transactional, situational, relational, emotional, ethical, responsible, service, participative, inspirational trainer, charismatic, visionary ...), and which become more diverse readings. Perhaps we should question their meaning in the new economy, considering the profile of new followers: knowledge workers. They arise, in fact, new models of leadership, though perhaps still think, largely on workers of the industrial age. I hope these minor strategies will be a positive assistance for you in your career. First of all it is one of the main responsibilities of a team leader is to create an environment which allows, and supports team members to realize and develop their abilities and skills and to realize their potentials. This should be, at the same time, help to maximize the resources, and the organizational efficiency. This requires leadership, which uses Martin Chemers' definition, “it is the process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task” (Chemers, 1997, pp. 5).

It is about the ability of one person (the leader) to set down a number of new, but interconnected, and coherently thought out, approaches, directions or visions, which a group can follow in order to achieve typical organization goals. This means that a leader should be a role model, that is to say he or she should be the first to lead in the directions which he/she expects his or her team to be heading. It is also, as mentioned above, about enhancing the organizational efficacy and increasing resources. As Ken Ogbonnia explains, 'effective leadership is the ability to integrate, and maximize available resources within the internal and external environment for the attainment of organizational or societal goals' (pp.18).

This very brief overview indicates that there are different theories of leadership and these theories distinguish themselves from each other by emphasizing various specific aspects of leadership: some emphasize the role model, others point out the importance of reward structures, while others resources and efficacy. Also, one can criticize each of these for omitting different aspects. Also, leadership as a concept has been criticized by critical thinkers such as Chomsky (1999) for encouraging a culture of subordination and producing people who need to be told what they need to do (pp. 7). Too much emphasis on systems efficacy and rationalization can also increases dehumanization as discussed in classical and modern social theory. We must therefore, not forget that at the end of the day we are dealing with human beings, whose integrity and autonomy should be recognized and ...