Team leadership: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats

Team Leadership

Overview of theory and research

Team leadership is, broadly defined, a leadership approach where teams without designated leaders, or with leaders who act as facilitators rather than directive mangers, engage in self-managed approaches to decision-making. Although the teams are often formed for a specific purpose and usually have a goal they must collectively achieve, it is the group, not a single individual that instructs, facilitates, plans, and sets short-term objectives for the team (Armstrong 2008). The group is judged as a whole on the final performance, tasks and decisions are taken on by the group, rather than a single leader ("Team leadership," 2008, NCREL). However, some approaches to team leadership stress the need for a single individual to foster urgency and channel the team members to reach a specific goal (Clark 2005).

Team Leadership SWOT

Strengths

Team leadership combines the input of many different individuals, incorporating a diverse range of skills, experiences and personality types. There are "superior outputs against all odds. This is due to the synergistic effect of a team" (Clark 2005).

All modern organizations are by their nature composite and require consensus. Team leadership enables this consensus to take place on a continuing basis, minimizing future divisiveness and bridging divides between different people in different parts of the organization.

The use of team leadership reduces tunnel vision and the tendency of one strong individual to lead an organization down the wrong path.

Self-managed teams mean that keeping open communication channels and other group maintenance functions are given added importance in the organization, which can increase decision-making efficiency overall ("Team leadership," 2008, NCREL).

There is an increased sense of shared responsibility to one another on the team and this sense of responsibility transfers to the team's common goal. This fosters an atmosphere where things 'get done" ("Leadership teams," 2008, NSBA).

Weaknesses

This leadership style can stifle unique ideas because some ground-breaking ideas are initially not popular with the majority of the group.

Personal popularity of certain team members rather than quality of ideas may determine which viewpoints are heard during a session.

The goal, vision statement, or driving purpose of the organization's leadership can be lost.

Too many people on a team can make the team's goal fuzzy.

Too much time is wasted enabling every viewpoint to be heard, even if it is of limited value.

The construct of a team may encourage 'social loafing' and certain members of the group may do more work than others, even though the team is rewarded as a unit.

Opportunities

Team leadership's fostering of diversity is essential in today's global environment

Team leadership requires leaders and team members to improve their communication skills and to put their own personal interests to the side, in the interest of the good of the larger group (Armstrong 2005).

People are less apt to blame a leader, more apt to take responsibility for the team when something goes wrong (Hackman 2004).

Relevance

Team leadership is ideal for generating long-term solutions to multifactoral problems. Generating swift, efficient decisions that need to be taken immediately is difficult, even with a focused group lead by a more conventional leader. Team leadership's need for consensus adds to this difficulty. Also, diversity can hamper group decision-making. There must be some commitment to an ideal that rallies the group together, especially as final credit is shared by the group.

Application

Team leadership is ideal for decision-making in an educational setting, such as a community college. Unlike the cutthroat competition of some corporate organization, larger ideals hold employees at a college together than mere self-aggrandizement. Academics and administrators must discuss how best to use scarce resources and address the complex socioeconomic issues that affect students today. This requires employees to share many different experiences and perspectives with one another. Time rather than swiftness is important when arriving at decisions that will last for a long period of time within an educational organization.