What creates a team?

I spent a fair part of this week reading and studying team leadership.

Team leadership can be defined a few different ways. In the mid-2000’s, Zaccaro, Heinen, and Shuffler developed conceptual models that defined teams as either being leader-centric and/or team-centric interactions that define the hierarchy of what would be considered flatter than the traditional organizational style. The comparison between the centricities of a team-based theory is interesting, and requires some additional discussion.

In a traditional organization, the leader-centric environment has been the norm; where there is a hierarchy of director, manager, supervisor, and subordinate. A director would formulate a mission and communicate it to their manager, who in turn would direct their supervisor, who in turn would guide their subordinates to act accordingly in fulfillment of the organizational cause. This has been since before the study of organizational leadership; there was a known and predictable flow in the workplace.The team leadership theory teaches us

an alternative concept. While leadership and decision making can still come from the traditional leader-centric hierarchy, organizations will also look to its employees for decisions that can leadership. Decision making can occur from any source in the organization, from the highest director to the newest subordinate. Hence, the concept of team-centricity. Within a team leadership organization, the leader can be the typical defined manager or supervisor, but can also be someone working on the production line, and would emerge as a leader from within the team itself. 

Early discussions of team leadership began as early as the 1960’s, as organizations began understanding the importance of team effectiveness. Throughout the 70’s, American industry saw in increase in competition from Japan and other countries as foreign industrialists cut into a share the U.S. economy as foreign industrialists were able to manufacture faster and for less money. While foreign products became common place, U.S. output was waning as their countrymen chose lower prices over the Made in America label. American industry had to respond. In the late 1980’s, psychologists and management professionals began studying and defining group dynamics and the team-centric philosophy that helped define the team leadership approach. 

One of the earlier team leadership models was created by Susan E. Kogler Hill, Communication Management Division Director for Cleveland State University. Her Model for Team Leadership takes one through the process of how leaders make decisions; consider internal task or relational actions and external environmental actions and develop team effectiveness. When I first studied Hill’s Model for Team Leadership, I thought “oh great, another flowchart!” The more I study Hill’s team leadership model, the more I appreciate its elegance. Within the model, a leader has the option to monitor the situation, or to act upon it. As a leader, there are times in the workplace confrontations between staff or other problems can occur, and it is not always in your best interest to act on it; at least not right away. If staff can work out issues themselves, let them, as long as the problem is not slowing down production. Encourage them. Coach them. Let them grow. Of course, if issues are at the point of escalation or if the problems are affecting the quality of services being offered, then you must take action. If you do take action, you need to determine if the action necessary is internal or external. Internal actions can be task related, such as goal focusing, structuring for results, facilitating decisions, training, or enforcing standards; or relational, such as coaching, collaborating, managing conflict, building commitment, satisfying needs (or at least satisficing needs), or modeling principles. External actions are generally environmental in nature, and can be

achieved either inside or outside of the organization. When I speak of external actions, it is in reference to your direct work team, and can include a work team within a similar or associated division. Actions can include networking, advocating, negotiating support, buffering, assessing, and sharing information. The goal of determining and acting upon the solution is simple: to increase team effectiveness, the obvious indicator of a leaders success can be an increase in performance, and the development of your staff. One of the many benefits of the team leadership approach is ownership. When you include staff in the process of decision making in the workplace, you instill a sense of ownership within them. As the sense of ownership increases, accountability grows. Ownership and accountability increases employee growth, satisfaction, and ultimately, retention. 

As a leader, all of your hard work will result in effectiveness within your team.