I lead a team of six members with unique personality traits. Team member A is largely extroverted, intuitive, goes by his feeling and sometimes quite judgmental. For instance, he is people-oriented, creative, and highly optimistic. From a deeper assessment of this team member, it is evident that he can work well as a conflict mediator, columnist, and restaurateur. Also, team member A likes publicity and may be useful as a research assistant in the company. On the other hand, team member B is extroverted, intuitive, a critical thinker, and perceptive. She is entrepreneurial, versatile, individualistic and likes innovating ideas and programs.
Team member C is extroverted, sensitive, demonstrates feelings, and equally judgmental. He is keen on pleasing people, demonstrates excellent interpersonal skills and gracious in terms of character. He can work as a health adviser, fundraiser and TV producer. Team member D is also extroverted, sensitive, emotional, and perceptive. She is a good giver, can act spontaneously and quite social. She prefers working as a comedian, ER nurse or even as an event coordinator.
Team member E is extroverted, sensitive, critical thinker, and judgmental. He is a decisive and analytical person. He is a good organizer and can make things happen fast. He may prefer working as a teacher or a medical technologist.
Finally, team member F is extroverted, intuitive, thinking, judgmental. He is largely a natural leader who cannot tolerate incompetence at the workplace. He is also an argumentative and an outgoing person. He may prefer working as a police officer, lawyer or even a manager.
The organization desires to expand its operations possibly to a new market segment. The formation of this new department is part of the company’s strategic plan to attain the aforementioned objective. While expansion is a crucial company’s activity towards increasing revenue base and profitability, it might not be possible without establishing proper leadership in place. It is crucial to mention that the growth of any organization depends on the nature of the leadership structure. Contemporary leadership is a complex task because the current leader requires not just technical skills to manage employees and teams, but also the ability to develop the subordinates, serving personal and professional expectations and aligning the interests of an organization.
Inspiring professionals, motivating team members, flexibility, good communication skills, conflict management skills, proper planning, and strategic organization are some of the characteristics found in a good leader. As a team leader, it is vital to know how to lead, guide and lead team members to perform the designed functions and achieve the expected results.
Coaching helps leaders in potentiating their skills and abilities to manage and develop people. It also assists in constantly motivating their employees and accelerating results. By adopting the culture of coaching in organizations and especially in work processes, leaders can maximize their potentials because employees will be presented with an overview of activities to be carried. An effective team leader will also delegate responsibilities, motivate and drive individual team members. The latter can assist in achieving the expected results in a short time since a leader will be serving both personal and professional expectations.
For an organization that seeks to expand its marketing segment, there are unforeseeable strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Also, this company may face stiff market competition among other barriers to entry in the course of expansion. It is against this backdrop that a robust and effective leadership is required so that team members with diverse personalities can exploit their potentials for the benefit of the company.
Before dwelling on team leadership theories, it is perhaps necessary to highlight how the team of six members should be led as a group. To begin with, I should not be too formal as a team leader. It is necessary to relieve elements of stress arising from the working environment. A team leader should also make less formal meetings and gatherings with members (Gonos & Gallo, 2013). Second, a team leader should try as much as possible to eliminate red tape by evaluating all that can be improved or reduced to streamline decision-making processes. Third, leaders should be realistic, impartially face issues, and consider all the available alternatives before making conclusions. Fourth, keep it simple, simplify work processes, and keenly listen to the opinions of team members. Also, perceive changes as opportunities, learn to deal with new developments, stimulate critical thinking among team members and always prepare them for emergencies. Better still, giving and receiving feedback is very important because employees and team members should be aware of project results and the prevailing challenges.
At this point, it is fundamental to determine leadership approaches that will be most suitable for individual team members in the group. Three areas stand out in the leadership. These are self-development, communication skills, and influence as well as systems thinking. To lead the team successfully, it will also be necessary to understand the core theory groups of leadership (Gonos & Gallo, 2013). First, trait theories will assist the team leader to assess and understand the individual needs of team members in terms of leadership approaches that can yield positive results. External behaviors are demonstrated through the traits of an individual. Second, behavioral theories emphasize the anticipated habits of an effective leader. In other words, leadership styles such as Laissez-faire, democratic and autocratic are put into consideration. Besides, contingency theories of leadership focus on how effective leadership ideals are influenced by situations. The source of power exercised by a leader is explored under the power and influence theories.
For team member A, it is necessary to give him adequate time to voice his opinions within the team. Since he is a judgmental character, it is also vital to explain every bit of development within the team so that he does not misunderstand the progress and end up as a critic. As an extrovert, he is talkative due to high energy. This explains the reason why the team member should allocate him roles that demand a lot of verbal exchanges. Needless to say, dealing with an intuitive person requires a lot of tolerance. A team leader should be strong and have a high potential to manage energetic members of a team. There will need to influence and inspire such a team member when passing key decisions. Being a leader means to develop oneself. Member E will be led similarly because both A and E share almost the same personality traits.
For team member B, the application of a transactional leadership theory can be of great help to a team leader. The member is a critical thinker and intuitive as well apart from being extroverted. Unless a team leader agrees to develop a mutually beneficial relationship with team member B, conflicts can hardly be avoided. An intuitive personality can readily be innate, spontaneous and instinctive. As a team leader, team member B is capable of strengthening my leadership skills.
Team member C likes pleasing and is well endowed with interpersonal skills. From the behavioral theory of leadership, it is pertinent to mention that such a member of the team should be stopped from pleasing people. The team leader should appreciate this character trait in the presence of other members of the team but assign roles that are compatible with the behavioral patterns (Gonos & Gallo, 2013).
The comical, social and sensing character of member D is a major ingredient in the team. Leadership is based on purpose, vision, and values. It is not a quality that can be rationed or controlled. The purpose establishes the destination while vision entails seeing where you are going and guiding values towards a sustainable long-term successful future (Lorinkova, Pearsall & Sims, 2013). Although she is comical, the team leader will redirect this ability in marketing the company. This will call for a transformational style of leadership.
Since member F is a natural leader who appears to be a stern character, the team leader should assign this member very sensitive roles within the group. It is pertinent to exercise democratic leadership style to this member because he hardly needs to be supervised. Before a team leader can make any decision, it is fundamental to permit member F to provide input.
References
Gonos, J., & Gallo, P. (2013). Model for Leadership Style Evaluation. Management: Journal Of Contemporary Management Issues, 18(2), 157-168.
Lorinkova, N. M., Pearsall, M. J., & Sims, H. P. (2013). Examining the Differential Longitudinal Performance of Directive versus Empowering Leadership in Teams. Academy of Management Journal, 56(2), 573-596.