LEADERSHIP ROLE IN TEAMS

Importance of Leadership on Team Performance & Effectiveness

Importance of Leadership on Team Performance & Effectiveness

Introduction

When groups join together with similar goals and objectives, interacting and influencing each other, and operating as a single social entity within an organization, are said to be “Teams” (Sundstrom 1999, p. 6-9). The definition aforementioned has a few insights about the teams. First of all, teams are there to achieve a goal that is common amongst all the members in the team. Secondly, teams collaborate and join together in order to achieve such goals and objectives. The members in the team have some sort of interdependence on each other. Later, members in a team tend to communicate and influence each other whilst the degree of influence changes with the tasks assigned to individuals. Lastly, a team operates only when individuals believe that collaboratively they are working as a single unit. With the passage of time, employers have understood that individuals are more productive whilst collaborating with each other in terms of teams and groups rather working in isolation. Estimation quotes that companies in Fortune 500, 80% of them have at least 50% of their employees employed in teams. In a study conducted by the Centre for Creative Leadership has concluded that about 83% of the respondents agree that teams in an organization are a key-ingredient for its success (West et. al 2009, pp. 249-267). Organizations using teams to attain goals are continuously reaping the benefits of them and tend to continue in the future as well. Teams' assists organizations in solving required tasks easily by providing a multitude of skills, knowledge & abilities, a research suggested (MacMillan 2001). Because teams provide more flexibility and a much higher adaptability to an organization as compared to this traditional departmental approach. Teams can be made quickly, initiate projects with more focus and then disband easily. DiscussionGroup vs. Team Terminologies are usually confusing. Many people use groups and teams simultaneously, however they are very much different in their core meanings. Teams are defined a priori. Groups are where two or more individuals that communicate, collaborate and coordinate with each other unifying for a common goal with some degree of interdependency one each other (Robbins et, al 2012, p. 346).The basic differences between group and teams are listed below:

Work Teams

Work Groups

The role of leadership is shared.

Only one individual usually undertakes leadership role.

Team members are accountable to self and other teams.

Work groups are usually self-accountable only.

They are purpose-specific or task-oriented.

Purpose of groups is usually the same as organizational goals.

Tasks are completed collectively.

Every group member does its work on individual basis.

Open-ended discussions and collaborative approaches are usual meetings trait.

Efficiency is what meetings are characterized by.

Performance is measured directly through work output.

Performance is measured indirectly by evaluating its impact on others.

Tasks are provided and members collaborate to complete them.

Group leader assumes the role of designing tasks and assigns them to individuals in the group.

Table 1.0: Differences between work group and teams (Katzenbach 2005, ...