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LEADERSHIP SKILLS
Trần Thị Bích Nhung
Email: tranthibichnhung.cs2@[Link]
Introduction to the course
Materials:
- Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. (7th edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Assessment:
- Individual report
- Group presentation
- Final examination
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Contents:
Unit 1: Introduction to leadership
Unit 2: Power and influence
Unit 3: Trait, Skill and behavioral approaches
to leadership
Unit 4: Situational approaches
Contents:
Unit 5: Contemporary approaches
Unit 6: Team leadership
Unit 7: Developing leadership skills
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Unit 6: TEAM LEADERSHIP
Trần Thị Bích Nhung
Email: tranthibichnhung.cs2@[Link]
Contents
Team leadership
Strategic leadership
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TEAM LEADERSHIP
1. Team leadership
A team is a specific type of group composed of members who are interdependent, who
share common goals, and who must coordinate their activities to accomplish these goals.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the era of organizational development, researchers focused on
developing team and leadership effectiveness through interventions in ongoing work
teams.
In the 1980s, competition from Japan and other countries encouraged the focus on quality
teams, benchmarking, and continuous improvement.
In the 1990s, the focus on organizational teams, while still focusing on quality, shifted to
a global perspective focusing on organizational strategies for maintaining a competitive
advantage.
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1. Team leadership
A review of team research suggests that studies since 1996 have become more complex,
focusing on more team variables, and no longer focusing exclusively on the outcome of
team performance.
Current research is also investigating the role of affective, behavioral, and cognitive
processes in team success and viability.
The role and impact of mediating processes such as trusting, bonding, planning, adapting,
structuring, and learning are also being studied in terms of team performance and viability
(Ilgen, Hollenbeck, Johnson, & Jundt, 2005)
1. Team leadership
Team Leadership Model
The model provides a mental road map to help the leader (or any team member who is providing
leadership) diagnose team problems and take appropriate action to correct these problems.
Hill’s Model for Team Leadership monitor the team and then take whatever action is necessary to
ensure team effectiveness.
Model provides a tool for understanding the very complex phenomenon of team leadership, starting
at the top with its initial leadership decisions, then moving to leader actions, and finally focusing on
the indicators of team effectiveness.
the model prescribes specific actions that leaders can perform to improve team effectiveness.
The model is designed to simplify and clarify the complex nature of team leadership and to provide
an easy tool to aid leadership problem solving
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1. Team leadership
1. Team leadership
Leadership Decisions
Leadership Decisions lists the major decisions a leader needs to make when determining
whether and how to intervene to improve team functioning.
The first of these decisions is whether it is most appropriate to continue to observe and
monitor the team or to intervene in the team’s activities and take action.
The second decision is to choose whether a task or a relational intervention is needed
(i.e., does the team need help in accomplishing its tasks, or does it need help in
maintaining relationships?).
The final decision is whether to intervene at the internal level (within the team itself)
or at the external level (in the team’s environment).
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1. Team leadership
Internal Task Leadership Actions: The task box lists the set of skills or actions that the
leader might perform to improve task performance.
Goal focusing (clarifying, gaining agreement)
Structuring for results (planning, visioning, organizing, clarifying roles, delegating)
Facilitating decision making (informing, controlling, coordinating, mediating,
synthesizing, focusing on issues)
Training team members in task skills (training, developing)
Maintaining standards of excellence (assessing team and individual performance,
confronting inadequate performance)
1. Team leadership
Internal Relational Leadership Actions. The second set of internal leadership reflects
those that the leader needs to implement to improve team relationships.
• Coaching team members in interpersonal skills
• Collaborating (including, involving)
• Managing conflict and power issues (avoiding confrontation, questioning ideas)
• Building commitment and team spirit (being optimistic, innovating, envisioning,
socializing, rewarding, recognizing)
• Satisfying individual member needs (trusting, supporting, advocating)
• Modeling ethical and principled practices (fair, consistent, normative)
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1. Team leadership
External Environmental Leadership Actions
If environmental monitoring suggests a leadership intervention, then the leader needs to
select from the following functions:
Networking and forming alliances in environment (gathering information, increasing
influence)
Advocating and representing team to environment
Negotiating upward to secure necessary resources, support, and recognition for team
Buffering team members from environmental distractions
Assessing environmental indicators of team’s effectiveness (surveys, evaluations,
performance indicators)
Sharing relevant environmental information with team
1. Team leadership
Team effectiveness: performance (task accomplishment) and development (maintenance
of team).
Team performance is the “quality of decision making, the ability to implement
decisions, the outcomes of teamwork in terms of problems solved and work
completed, and finally the quality of institutional leadership provided by the team”
(Nadler, 1998, p. 24).
Team development is the cohesiveness of the team and the ability of group members
to satisfy their own needs while working effectively with other team members
(Nadler, 1998)
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1. Team leadership
1. Team leadership
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STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
2. Strategic leadership
How top executives can influence the financial performance of an
organization
Conditions (including constraints and external conditions) that determine
how much influence top executives are likely to have on the organization.
The Implications of executives for change-oriented leadership
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2. Strategic leadership
How leaders influence organizational performance
Flexible Leadership Theory (FLT) model: Organizational performance (or effectiveness),
performance determinants, leadership processes, and situational variables.
Organizational effectiveness is the long term prosperity and survival of the organization,
and it depends on three determinants: (1) efficiency and process reliability; (2) human
relations and resources, and (3) adaptation to the environment.
The relative importance of these performance determinants will differ across
organizations and over time for the same organization.
2. Strategic leadership
How leaders influence organizational performance
Situation: type of organization, types of products or services and competition in the
external environment; changes in customers…
Complex interdependencies and trade-offs among the performance determinants create
difficult challenges for leaders, because attempts to influence one performance
determinant can affect the others in a positive or negative way
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2. Strategic leadership
Primary Performance Determinants
Adaptation to the environment
Efficiency and process reliability
Human resources and relations
2. Strategic leadership
Ways to influence the performance determinants
Leaders can enhance the performance determinants with a combination of methods:
Leadership behaviors
Changes in programs, system, and structure
Competitive strategy
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2. Strategic leadership
Ways to influence the performance determinants
2. Strategic leadership
Ways to influence the performance determinants
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2. Strategic leadership
Ways to influence the performance determinants
2. Strategic leadership
Need for flexible, adaptive leadership
It is essential to find an appropriate balance that reflects the relative priorities of the
performance determinants and the potential for improving each one
Changes in conditions affecting the relative importance of the performance determinants.
Assess the situation and determine: what types of behavior, programs, management
systems, and structural forms are relevant.
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2. Strategic leadership
Constraints on executives
Internal constraints
External constraints
GROUP DISCUSSION
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