A team is a group of people who share a common team purpose and several challenging goals. Members of the team are mutually committed to the goals and to each other. This mutual commitment also creates joint accountability which creates a strong bond and a strong motivation to perform. Jim Sisson (June 2013).
Leadership theories seek to explain how and why certain people attain leadership positions. Such theories often emphasize the characteristics of leaders, but some try to identify the behaviors that people can adopt to improve their own leadership abilities in different situations.
In our project which was a good and rewarding teamwork also experienced good team leadership. The two examples of good team leadership I saw with the team of my project are trait leadership theory and contingency leadership trait.
The trait leadership theory is a theory that assumes that leaders are born due to the characteristics that they possess. The quality they possess that makes them suitable for leadership is communication skills, decision-making, interpersonal skills, flexibility, value, confidence, and problem solver/innovation. I believe that the trait leadership theory I possess due to my flexibility and interpersonal skills helped made the project a successful one. I was able to find time to speak to our sponsors at different opportunities. I used good communication and interpersonal skills to let them see what we needed and how they could come on board to help us. The information gotten from our sponsors helped us in making good decisions on how to carry out the social walking project easily.
The contingency leadership theory is theory puts forward the idea that the success of a leader centers on the specific situation about to happen. This involves using the right leader with the right followers for a situation. In other words, when an organization finds itself in a new situation, then it would have to employ a new leader or transfer someone from another department that would be more suitable. The idea of the theory is that leaders are situational which means that factors to be considered for leadership are the assignment, the qualities of the leader and the makeup of the team to be led. The contingency leadership theory skill I see, is prominent in myself and two other members of the project group as we already walk on a daily basis before the idea of the social walking project came up. In the making up of the group, we were able to ascertain that the project would not be difficult as walking was not a challenge to most of us in the group. So, leading other staff and students of the college to engage in social walking was not a problem as we were always ready five minutes before break time and went around to the classes to encourage people to come out regardless of the weather. We had the yellow vests on in time with our walking shoes motivating people and leading by example.
Stages of team development in the project
Developing a team requires time and usually goes through certain stages because it involves the coming together of different people with different ideas that want to unite to reach a common goal. The stages of team development are
Forming – this is the genesis that represents the beginning, at this stage great expectations are shared by all the team members. At this stage, to succeed they need to familiarise themselves with each other’s strengths and weaknesses, their previous experience with other teams, and have clarity of their purpose.
Three members of the group had always walked constantly before we started the project, so we knew our strength was walking so we decided to do the social walking project. Even though we loved walking we did not go for brisk walking, to encourage people to be part of the project we opted for social walking which would last for just about twenty minutes.
Storming – this is the stage where team leadership demanding as ways to approach the struggle from confusion must be dealt with. Storming would be prompted by disagreement about missions, jostling for positions, and arguments about goals and strategy.
To know if people would be interested in the social walking project, we did a questionnaire to know what people feel about the project, we saw that people knew the importance of walking but do not make for it and would be interested in the social walking. We checked for the routes that would be traffic free as much as possible, made out a poster advertising the walk, organized how to get yellow vests, and made water available for people that might need it during the walk.
Norming – at this stage when the storming is over, the team would have stabilized, and be open to communications. Intentionally or unintentionally at the stage, the group would have agreed to norms to facilitate the progress of working together effectively.
We started the walk on the first day with about 15 people which was encouraging as we were expecting between 10 and 15 people to participate. Although, due to the weather and other logistics we get about 5 people sometimes. We have been advised to keep a particular route so as not to go through a farmyard due to health and safety issues.
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Performing – at this stage, the actual work of the team has been maintained. There is work in progress, established relationships, and the team is successfully working towards their goals.
Presently, the social walking project is going as well as planned, we get a variety of numbers each time depending on what is happening on the college premises. The awareness has been built around the college that there is a social walking project and more people are getting interested in it.
To succeed as a team requires practicing a small set of principles over a long period of time. Teams only work when the five dysfunctions of a team are acknowledged, identified, and overcome.
The 5 dysfunctions of a team are
One dysfunction of my team is Inattention to results which is when the pursuit of individual goals and personal status erodes the focus of collective success. (Patrick Lencioni 2012). Why this happened is that some of the members of the team have already started walking before the project and were already seeing the results of the walk so they were more interested in doing the walk than checking for the results or improvement of other people that had joined in the social walking project. This could have been prevented if team members were told before the beginning of the project that an evaluation of people’s improvement will be done and presented to the college at the end of the social walking project.
Examples of how I could demonstrate leadership
I could have demonstrated the transformational leadership skill which is to raise each to higher motivation and morality, creates an inspiring vision for the future, manages the delivery of the vision, and motivate people to buy into and deliver the vision thereby building strong, trust-based relationships with people.
I would have brought the creativity of the social walking project and its importance to the students of the night classes for them to have about twenty minutes walk just before they head home after lectures, but unfortunately I am not a local student; I live 48kms away from the college, this will not give me the opportunity to be able to run down to the college to join and motivate the night student to do the social walking project.
I would have loved to speak to people individually about the inspiring benefits the social walking project will do for them to raise higher motivation by the start of the project but unfortunately, I was away in Vienna on an Erasmus+ program when the social walking project started.
I look for sponsors and liaison students that would encourage the social walking project on the days that we are not in school so that the walk would run five days a week, this will help eliminate the break in between the days.
I noticed some people like to do the fast walk so I would do a survey on people that want the brisk walking and the social walking then make room for both teams to that everyone is doing the form of walking they prefer.
I would not limit the walking to the social walking project of twenty minutes three times weekly, but I will also organize long walks like the 5k frequent walk to help stress a little and improve on the overall health benefits.
I will also hold talks on healthy eating so that the effect of social walking would be felt more because it does not really do much good when people are doing the walk but are not making a conscious effort to monitor what they are eating to produce high-quality results.
I will always inquire from other team members what the long-term goals of the project are, this will help keep people focused and be able to maintain the existence of the project for a longer period.
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