Ref: Leading My Team
As you know, a new department has been formed to match our need to develop a new market segment. A team of three people has been assembled with that purpose in mind. In order to be successful, a proper leadership strategy has to be identified and implemented, one that would match different leadership approaches with each of the team member's personalities. The purpose of this memo is two-fold: (1) to analyze the personality of each of the team members, according to the approach that will be described below and (2) to propose leadership approaches that, according to theory, will match these.
In order to analyze the team members' personalities, we have used the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), proposed by Isabel Myers-Briggs and Peter Briggs (1995). The indicator proposes several typologies, namely extraversion vs. introversion, sensing vs. intuition, thinking vs. feeling and judgment vs. perception. Depending on the way these different traits of personalities are combined, we have a resulting personality.
Analysis of Personality Results
There were three personality assessments, corresponding to the three members of the team. These will be labeled as team member 1, team member 2 and team member 3, to avoid any nominal reference to them.
Team member 1 has resulted as a ENFJ indicator, which means extraverted, intuitive, relying on feelings in the decision making process and on judging. The latter reflects his preference for information that is well organized, but he is someone who moves away from pure logic in his thinking, taking into account feelings as part of the decision making process.
Team member 2 had a ENTP indicator, namely extraverted, intuitive, thoughtful...
It is interesting to note that team member 2 is both thoughtful, namely he is an individual who makes decision following a significant analysis and evaluation process, but he is also perceptive: he is flexible in his interpretation and open to new ideas that he can incorporate in his analysis.
Team member 3 resulted as a people-oriented, creative and highly optimistic individual. His MBTI was ENFP, namely extraverted, basing his decision on intuition and feeling, as well as very perceptive.
Leading the team
This part of the memo will focus on identifying different leadership theories and applying them for a successful management of the team. The leadership style will be based both on the characteristics of the team members, as previously analyzed and described, and the situation in terms of urgency and culture.
The latter will be addressed here. Entering and developing a new market segment is a medium to long-term endeavor. The main objective is a sustainable development of this new segment rather than a quick, skimming approach. For this, and also taking into consideration the analytical skills of the team members, the focus will be on creating an environment that will stimulate creative ideas and long-term commitment.
The first thing that needs to be done is decide upon an overarching method that will govern the relationship within the team. The choice was for a democratic style of leadership and the main reason behind this was the size of the team, as well as the personalities of the individuals making up the team. The size of the team is small, there are only three members in the team. This means that these individuals will likely work together for a long period of time…
