Servant leadership and power dynamics in a college team project

LASA: Applying Theoretical Approaches

The team chosen for this study was a class group team that I was part of for a semester in college. The team was selected by the teacher, who chose everyone based on backgrounds. The composition was diverse and consisted of five members -- a male business manager seeking an MBA, a young female student-athlete with a strong academic background; a 30-year-old housewife, a student from India, and myself. The team initially got off to a cordial and friendly start at the introduction stage, but when it came time to choose a leader, Sarah -- the young student-athlete -- and Bob, the corporate professional, vied against one another for the role of leader of the group. Each touted their qualifications in an attempt to make their case. Bob won the vote, 3-2 -- an awkward situation, as it was an open vote, and Sarah was clearly hurt by the outcome. This caused a lasting friction to endure the rest of the semester; however, Sarah proved a valuable help when it came time to coordinating weekly projects and motivating the various members. The biggest obstacle of all came towards the end of the semester when the big, final project was due. Various parts of the assignment were divided up among members of the team and communication was done either face-to-face during class or via email. The issue was that not every member of the team had the same academic abilities or motivations -- so some finished early and others procrastinated till the very last minute to hand in their parts. This caused a great deal of stress as the final project could not be put together till all parts were handed in. Communication broke down; the delaying individuals could not be reached -- almost as if they were purposefully keeping the rest of the team at bay so as to avoid having to explain why they had not finished yet.

Power and Social Influences plus 1-2 Best Practices

The power dynamic within the team is particularly present in Bob and Sarah\'s leadership and what should have been a great working team based on their experience, drive and academic know-how instead turned into what seemed at times like an egotistical battle of wills. Petty differences (molehills) became mountains that the rest of the team was indifferent towards. Much of the semester was spent wondering whether Bob or Sarah would try to dominate in various ways at the next class meeting. Even when Bob\'s leadership would prevail there was always the sense that half the team was unhappy about the direction the group was taking. Groupthink occurred at multiple times just simply so that members could avoid a fight, awkwardness, having to express themselves on a subject they did not care about, and for the sake of just getting through the exercise.

The social influences and dynamic of the group was a bit better: the members for the most part got along well in spite of the difficulties between Bob and Sarah competing with one another. Everyone liked and respected each other -- and until the end of the semester there was never really any major crisis. With the approach of the big project, however, a few members completely stressed out and went offline, leaving the rest of the group in the lurch, wondering if they were going to do the responsible thing and complete their part or bail on the group and force someone else to pick up their slack. Thus, when the pressure was turned up, the social dynamic and diverse influences proved to be a weak support for the group in terms of communication and meeting expectations of dependability.

A best practice recommendation and condition to engage the team to counter groupthink and to sustain the team\'s healthy dynamic at the outset before the pressure hit would have been to implement a brainstorming type of activity in which all members contributed ideas about the project -- from subject matter to execution, delivery, etc. Then, for homework, each member would go home and work individually on a plan for the final project coming and how he/she thought it should go. This would be the real creative part of the team project, which Thompson (2013) notes is what actually helps to reduce groupthink and flat overall performance: \"True collaboration often calls for periods of focused, independent work interspersed with periods of intense, structured team interaction\" (p. 4). In fact, it is Thompson\'s opinion that collaboration can be deadly for a team because it can quickly turn into a mess: \"team members who are passive or overly controlling will certainly lead their teams to failure\" (p. 2) -- and this is exactly what we experienced. Thus, taking a cue from Thompson\'s recommendation, I would suggest that the team reflect upon this revelation: \"although creative team collaboration is essential for companies and businesses, decades of research evidence clearly reveals that groups are inferior to individuals when it comes to creativity!\" (Thompson, 2013, p. 2). By finding the creative members in the team -- most likely the ones sitting there uninspired by the leadership contests between Sarah and Bob -- and letting them do more work individually, the team may have really come together in a way that would have prevented it from falling apart at the end.

The team\'s decision-making process and problem solving strategies were not very efficient -- mostly because the process was dictated by two members of the group who mostly did all the talking because they viewed themselves as the leaders. They just wanted everyone to give agreement to whatever they said: this set up the major problem at the end, when the support players, uninspired and unmotivated, failed to deliver until the very last minute. Sarah was good at motivating the team players in the early stages but under pressure at the end, she began to be less persuasive and motivational and more like a person under stress herself.

A few procedures that could have been implemented for daily team operations, motivation, and resolution of conflicts could be the following: 1) remember what Morgan (2006) says: \"Favored ways of thinking and acting become traps that confine individuals within socially constructed worlds and prevent the emergence of other worlds\" (p. 211) -- or, in other words, avoid the psychic prisons that groups manifest for themselves through dictatorial leadership; let group members contribute in creative ways by giving individuals more authority to pursue their own ideas and then see how or what way they can be used down the road; 2) plan ahead -- the team should have been preparing for the final project all along, allowing members to draft their own parts instead of waiting for orders or direction from Bob or Sarah; waiting for them to lead essentially undermined whatever potential the other team members might have had. This is what Liu (2010) means when he says a group must \"bring the person back into the organization\" (p. 192). In short, our group could have benefitted from a transformational leadership style -- rather than from a dictatorial leadership style, in which the two leaders vied for control. 3) By making the individual members to feel more authentic and valuable, control should have been ceded to them to pursue weekly objectives designed by the leaders to contribute to the end project. This would be in line with Vries\' (1999) sense of authenticating the workplace and empowering workers with individual motivational support within the overall construct of the team\'s operations.

As for resolving conflicts, this might have been achieved through a servant leadership style from Bob, who won the vote as team leader. Servant leadership is a manner of inspiring others to perform and take responsibility by offering yourself as their support -- the leader is there for them, not the other way around (as it often seemed in our group) (Hunter et al., 2013). Had Sarah and Bob taken this approach with the group, they might have encountered better results at the end and the conflict between them would have been mitigated as well, for they both would have been supportive of the other instead of butting heads throughout. They would have established a solid serving culture within the group that would have facilitated communication down the line (Liden et al., 2014).

The Role of Diversity

Diversity and cultures contribute to motivation, creativity and innovation in the team\'s productivity in the sense that everyone is representative of a sub-group -- Bob was the professional, Sarah the academic; then there was the foreigner, the housewife, and myself. We were interested in one another\'s lives and backgrounds but not on a really deep or personal level and for the most part interaction was superficial -- which may have accounted for the breakdown in communication at the end. Diversity was never really seen as an issue because it was never really identified in the first place; it was accepted that we were all of diverse backgrounds -- but beyond that no one seemed ready or willing to tap the potential that may have existed in this diversity.

Some initiatives that could be implemented to help the team embrace the complexity of diversity in team building might be: 1) to explore the possibilities that each individual offered. For example, the housewife could have brought the practical, real-world approach to our project -- the boots on the ground perspective, so to speak; she no doubt has a lot of experience in the daily, real world of adulthood that people like me or Sarah or the Indian or even Bob would not have -- so this was experience that could have been better tapped for the team\'s final project; the same could be said of each of the team members -- whether the Indian or Bob or Sarah -- all of us had some experience from some place and could bring a unique take on things; but this was never explored. 2)

Addressing cross-cultural issues should also have been done; this would allow the team to identify individual needs and better prepare for down the road (Kissack, Callahan, 2010): for example, the procrastinators in the group might have been more readily identified and as a group we could have implemented a better support network so as to ensure that their needs were being met when it came to crunch time.

Conclusion

Because the power dynamic in the group was stressful from the outside, with the two leaders taking a competitive stance and essentially acting dictatorial with respect to the other group members, who showed indifference to decision-making, some strategies need to be put in place to effect a more positive outcome down the stretch.

These strategies consist of more creative control being given to individual members, which would facilitate active-involvement on their part and allow for the final project to be approached more steadily throughout the course of the semester, rather than having everyone pile in at once at the end, following orders from the leader. Second, a strategy of culture-promotion could be implemented in which cultural awareness is pursued by embracing the diversity of the group and getting each member to share so that needs can be identified: this will better help the team to prepare for down the road as well, as it will become evident that specific members require specific aids. Third, a strategy of servant leadership could be implemented in order to give more motivation to the individual members and discourage the kind of procrastination that was seen at the end; servant leadership approach is in the same vein as transformational leadership in the sense that both are other-oriented; the needs of the individual is placed before the needs of the leader. In this group, the leaders displayed a desire to succeed mainly because they themselves did not want to be negatively impacted. They did not put the others in the group ahead of themselves are look to see how they could help the individual members. Sarah was initially good at motivating because she had energy and could be socially aware -- but under stress the friendliness evaporated; underneath there was no real servant leadership principle. Having this would really help to develop the team in a more positive way.