Team leadership and psychodynamic approaches in organizational practice

Leadership

Team Leadership Analysis

The launch of any new product is a highly collaborative, team-centric activity that requires the orchestration of efforts across many different departments. Leading a product introduction requires use of many of the skills and concepts of the Team leadership Model. The intent of this analysis is to use the concepts of the Team leadership Model, applying them to a product introduction, illustrates through example how key concepts and frameworks could be used for alleviating significant conflict between engineering and marketing. Based on this assessment it can be seen how powerful the Team Leadership Model is as a foundation managing team complexity and conflict when constraints of a project make shared sacrifices essential for team advancement.

Analysis of the Product Introduction Using Team Leadership Analysis

Creating a balance between the task, relational and environmental factors of a team is critical for overall team effectiveness to be optimized. In the case of a new product introduction, the task factors include entirely different perspectives and mindsets of priorities. The ability of a team leader to intermediate priorities across project teams and still accomplish a strategic goal is evidence of transformational leadership (Eisenbeiss, 1438). Marketing and engineering have significantly different priorities on a daily basis, yet during a new product introduction, both must combine priorities to ensure the product is successful.

The conflicts of these two teams is significant, as engineering wants to invest every extra hour in adding new features or functions, even changing the appearance of the product. Marketing is interested in getting the product entirely defined and ready to be sold. Both teams want closure on product designs, yet the concept of just what closure is varies significantly between each. Internal team functions of task and relational requirements must be balanced to the environmental factors of team leadership for any team to achieve tis objectives

(Bucic, Robinson, Ramburuth, 238). This focus on balance within the internal team was key to solving the inherent conflicts between departments. Both had a very clear goal of what a successful new product launch was, and both were highly committed, which is the relational part of the Team Leadership Model. The external factor of time being so critical, with the product introduction date announced to shareholders and the CEO guaranteeing the date, put immense pressure on everyone in the company to meet it. Only through the use of transformational leadership strategies including participative decision making and share vision of final outcomes, two best practices of the Team Leadership Model (Vandewaerde, 419) did the project succeed in meeting its deadline.

Another aspect of the product introduction was the need fro training distributors and dealers on the new products. Again the conflict between engineering and marketing began, and the point of contention was just how much to tell distributors, dealers and channel partners about what the product could and could not do. The product had been purpose-built for specific tasks, and as a computer peripheral, had been designed for relatively light use for printing and imaging. Engineering felt it could fit into markets including material handling and warehousing. Marketing felt this market was exceptionally small compared to the mainstream printing and imaging market. As the conflict traversed both internal and external teams, the project manager, using many aspects of the Team Leadership Model, had the engineering and marketing teams set up test, or beta sites, to evaluate the printer in these market areas. This leadership strategy made the marketability a shared goal, and also made the actual performance of the printer in this environment immediately known. Using this technique, the project leader had galvanized both teams to a common goal and created a higher level of team effectiveness by seeking to balance task, relational and environmental factors in a single leadership strategy (Hui-Ling, Yu-Hsuan, 47). This also gave each team an opportunity to work with the other and appreciate the perspective of added features and product quality, two areas engineering had deep personal commitment to, and sales achievement, what marketing wanted.

The use of the Team Leadership Management creates a framework that trust can be created upon when a leader seeks to balance internal and external factors, often serving as pressure points, on a cross-functional or multifaceted team (Keiser, Nancy, Maureen Kincaid, and Kristine Servais, 20). Ultimately this strategy created shared leadership and ownership of the product, which is another indication of effective team leadership (Vandewaerde, 414).