30 January 2020
3 Findings That Link Leadership To Productive Team Results
It happens all too often; you kickstart your day with lots of brainstorming, giving yourself a pep-talk and a hint of caffeine, which pinches you to bring something new to the table now and then. Every day you construct mind maps and cautiously shuffle through your team’s performance to plan your next move. Something fresh! That would add value to your team’s results. But the scene is all too familiar, and every time you endeavour a new practice for the team, it disappoints and you began doubting your leadership capabilities.
The truth is, we perceive teams as extremely democratic and autonomous entities, where the team members play their equal part to complete a project. We end up thinking that teamwork efficacy can only be achieved by enabling individual members to complement each other’s skills and share talent to accomplish a common goal. But during the process, we often forget, who is going to enable teamwork collaboration? Who is going to be accountable when everyone is trying to play a blame game? Who is going to empower team members and decide on a consensus when every individual wants to assert his or her dominance? And lastly, who will keep the entire team focused and motivated to succeed in times of chaos?
Fig 1. Leadership and Team Performance Model. Source: Dionne et al. (2004)
By now, the answer to all these questions is evident (See figure 1). The above framework advocates the need for specific leadership styles to facilitate the teamwork process and enhance team performance. Here are the 3 verdicts (findings) that can help you adopt new leadership ways to enhance productivity from your teams.
1. TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADER AND TEAM PERFORMANCE
In order to grasp the concept of transformational leadership-team performance, let us first comprehend the transformational leadership style.
The foundation of Transformational Leadership comes from the four I’s, based on the empirical evidence of Bass and Avolio (1994), which includes idealised influence, inspiration, individual consideration, and intellectual stimulation. James V. Downton (1973) came up with the notion of transformational leaders who support, instigate and motivate their team members to innovate and create change that will not just modify processes but also aid growth and shape the future success of the overall organisation. This process is facilitated by transformational leaders without micro-managing each individual, but trusting their employees to take charge of their assigned tasks’ decisions.
The findings of Dionne et al. (2004) elucidates transformational leadership’s impact on the productive team results. The general proposition of this concept rests on the premise that specific dimensions of transformational leadership (Such as; idealised influenced, inspirational motivation, considering individuality and intellectual stimulation of change) may help formulate key transitional outcomes that could positively impact team interpersonal processes, ultimately improving team performance. The four dimensions of transformational leadership, according to Dionne et al. (2004), have been critically mapped to develop teamwork processes by aiding team communication, managing conflicts and promoting team cohesion.
2. AUTHENTIC LEADER AND TEAM PERFORMANCE
The spectrum of Authentic Leadership refers to a pattern of behaviour build upon self-awareness and an internal moral perspective. It aims to promote positive psychological capacities and an optimistic climate, to foster shared processing of information and relational transparency as a responsibility of the leader, working with a team of followers.
The construct advocates for four dimensions: self-awareness, balanced processing, internalised moral perspective and relational transparency. Perceiving these four dimensions from theoretical lenses, each one of them possesses a pinch of emphasis on self-regulation in terms of being governed through leaders’ internal standards and assessment of their own behaviour.
The findings of Lyubovnikova et al. (2017) link authentic leadership to various positive outcomes at the team level, which includes work engagement, creativity, productivity and job satisfaction of team members. These findings have been largely drawn upon the evidence that team members emulate their leader’s authenticity and try to duplicate their behaviour, demonstrating that an acceleration of the locus of authentic leadership towards the entire team level is possible. Bearing in mind the self-regulatory lens, the conceptual departure of this notion explains that an authentic leadership practice increases your team reflexivity since the team engagement involves reflective discussions regarding the alignment of commonly shared objectives and clear deliberations about team values, strengths, and weaknesses.
3. SHARED LEADERSHIP AND TEAM PERFORMANCE
Although the dynamics of shared leadership have been identified long before the 20th century, the definition wasn't developed until recently when Pearce and Conger defined it as interactions which influence the teamwork process among team members in a team, with the objective of leading one another to the achievement of group or common organisational goals. Rendering to this definition, shared leadership is considered as an informal and internal style of leadership, wherein more than one team member motivates and influences the team and each other, in ways, that enable task completion in a timely manner. The findings of Chad (2016) shows that the construction of shared leadership is exhibited in interpersonal interactions where different individuals from the team continuously play their part as leadership identities while the other teammates in the group are willing to accept and recognise them as their leader.
Actions to apply:
When we think about our teams, our strategies often revolve around making the communication more effective, sharing a common goal and solving conflicts. Whilst each of these is equally essential, we at times forget substantial key elements that make up strong teams i.e. Leadership! In fact, the CONQA’s team considers leadership as the foundation of team formulation, without which the teamwork in an organisation might crumble. Here is how you can start building your team’s foundation stronger today!
Incorporate different leadership styles: there have been times that the leadership style we choose works for us in different situations or always makes us fail under different circumstances.
Team-oriented leadership strategies: Practicing team-oriented leadership strategies can work in effective ways. Our team at CONQA is all about escorting a sense of productive output among your subordinates by helping you practice such strategies.