Working in teams is critical to delivery key organizational initiatives. Cross-functional teams are the central part of many organizations, especially those adopting lean and agile practices. Therefore, understanding methods and approaches to maximize team effectiveness is important for successful delivery of an organization's products and services. Various approaches for teams to interact effect have been put forward, such as the Tuckman model of teams forming, storming, norming and performing (Tuckman, 1965) and the six thinking hats model (de Bono, 1987). Another important aspect of working in teams is to determine leadership skills needed when working in organizations that operate pre-dominantly through teams.
The Project Management Institute Talent Triangle indicates that building leadership skills for project, program and portfolio managers involves building "Competency in guiding and motivating" and the types of activities include "Brainstorming, Coaching and mentoring, conflict management, emotional intelligence, influencing, interpersonal skills, listening, negotiation, problem solving, team building" (https://ccrs.pmi.org).
An examination of prior research on leadership in a team based environments indicates that "previous leadership theories have tended to focus on how leaders influence collections of subordinates, without attending to how leadership fosters the integration of subordinate actions (i.e., how leaders promoted team processes)" (Zaccaro, Rittman and Marks, 2002); in other words, not making a distinction between leader-subordinate and leader-team interactions (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006).
When work is done pre-dominantly in teams, various team members would need to exhibit leadership skills in different situations based on the skills, expertise and experience that is required for successful completion and delivery of the product or service. Team leadership is engaged in determining approaches for enhancing team effectiveness (Morgeson, DeRue, Karam, 2010). Therefore, rather than understanding the leader's role in "creating performance expectancies and valences for individual subordinates" (House & Mitchell, 1974), what is needed in such organizations is to understand how to effectively develop and maintain team interaction and integration.
One study that researched leader behavior in teams determined that "Most influential team leaders actively involved the members of their teams in decision-making, and helped set goals and expectations for the team" (Sarin and O'Connor, 2009)." To foster collaborative cross-functional teams operating effectively in an agile environment, "leaders in agile organizations learn to guide with questions, such as “What do you recommend?” and “How could we test that?”" (Rigby, Sutherland and Takeuchi, 2016).
References:
1. https://www.pmi.org
2. https://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/core-scrum-values-roles
3. Zaccaro, Stephen J., Andrea L. Rittman, and Michelle A. Marks. "Team leadership." The Leadership Quarterly 12.4 (2002): 451-483.
4. Morgeson, Frederick P., D. Scott DeRue, and Elizabeth P. Karam. "Leadership in teams: A functional approach to understanding leadership structures and processes." Journal of management 36.1 (2010): 5-39.
5. Rickards, Tudor, and Susan Moger. "Creative leadership processes in project team development: an alternative to Tuckman's stage model." British Journal of Management 11.4 (2000): 273-283.
6. de Bono, E. (1985). Six Thinking Hats. Penguin, London
7. Kozlowski, Steve WJ, and Daniel R. Ilgen. "Enhancing the effectiveness of work groups and teams." Psychological science in the public interest 7.3 (2006): 77-124.
8. Tuckman, B. W. (1965). ‘Development Sequence in Small Groups’, Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), pp. 384–3998. Sarin, Shikhar, and Gina Colarelli O'Connor. "First among Equals: The Effect of Team Leader Characteristics on the Internal Dynamics of Cross‐Functional Product Development Teams." Journal of Product Innovation Management 26.2 (2009): 188-205.
9. Rigby, Darrell K., Jeff Sutherland, and Hirotaka Takeuchi. "Embracing agile." Harvard Business Review 94.5 (2016): 40-50.
10. House, Robert J., and Terence R. Mitchell. Path-goal theory of leadership. No. TR-75-67. WASHINGTON UNIV SEATTLE DEPT OF PSYCHOLOGY, 1975.
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