Importance of Communicating Expectations and Giving Feedback
“What is your leadership style and what can we expect from you in the way you go about leading?”.
I think a leader must at the very first try to communicate about his work expectations clearly to all his team members so that they can get a clear knowledge about what they are expected to do so that to achieve the desired goal of their team leader. Hence, I start from sharing my expectations with all my peers regarding my aim and would highlight each and every thing that has been communicated or said to me by my managers and the executives. I think it reduces the chance of failure. This is because having a clear insight about the aim and expectations would work for them as a road map for success as it shows them exactly what is expected from them to do in order to make their leader happy. Secondly, I would frequently give them feedbacks on their performance so as to make them know whether they are on their targets or not. I would make sure that my feedbacks are constructive and positive in every way and that too in timely manner. Thirdly, if I see any of my team members are falling short of my expectations then I try to communicate with him personally so as to know about his problems and to know where he is getting stuck or facing complications. I try to guide him to perform better from the day onwards and take regular check-ups on him. I constantly try to help my people when I am their leader. Fourthly, throughout the task or the project, I monitor the key performance indicators for checking if all my team members are on their schedule within the budget and are producing a quality work (Yin, Zhu and Kaynak 2015). This is because if I ignore the issues taking place within my team instead of trying to address and resolve them too many times, some or the other member would eventually wonder regarding my results and my effectiveness as a team leader. With the same, I also asks that whether my team members are maintaining consistent and constant communication with me all through the task. This is because of the fact that this helps me to identify and anticipate the problems prior to their emergence and also helps me in reducing any kind of negative effects. I also try to conduct different meetings with my team members so that I could know them better and understand about their backgrounds. This is because of the fact that a team comprises of diverse people and I personally believe this fact that each and every individual possess some or the other qualities that is different from the others. Hence, each one of us has something to learn. Diversity in a team helps in sharing of more knowledge, ideas, thoughts and skills and as a result the production is far more creative and productive. Hence, I make sure that my team celebrates diversity so that each and every one of them could share and understand their strengths and weaknesses so as to help them share their skills and could assist others in overcome their weaknesses. Through the meetings, I also help them to improve further and place them in their worthy position where they could use their knowledge and skills better. Also, one of the major reasons to conduct such meetings is that in this way my team members seems me to be approachable and real rather than a person who is figurehead or out of reach and who is not involved. I don’t just know my team members with their names and faces but to understand them really well.
Monitoring Performance in a Team
Leadership competencies are the practical behaviours, knowledge, attitudes and skills that inform the manner a person can operate in his working life. In my earlier job, I was given the responsibility for supervising a team of ten people, including the work of managing their schedules, mentoring the team and training them. I really enjoyed the leadership and I am really proud to say that there were six people who prompted when I was mentoring them. Also, in one of the other jobs I was again given the task of supervising a team comprised of five members on certain projects. I was not their direct manager but I do want to say that they reported to me for the projects that I was leading. Hence, I can say that I have a mixture of the project management experience and the direct management experience from those roles of mine from my most recent job and I really enjoyed both of them. As a group leader, my primary responsibility was to use my problem solving skills for analysing and developing the plans and ideas. With each of the team members, I had analyse their backgrounds as well as their individual thoughts to different subjects in order to determine if we could carry on with the idea or should drop it there itself. At that time there was a rise in conflict among the team members as because everyone was desiring that their idea would be chosen for completing the project. I talked about the same with my manager and he suggested me to sit in a group discussion where each of the voices would be heard and analysed in an open manner.
I did the same. I choose to make use of a round table discussion in order to solicit creative inputs and I must say the conflict was resolved there itself as the advantages and disadvantages of every ideas were put in front of everyone and the one that was better was chosen by everyone. I also later introduced a monthly team based competitions with an intention to build morale within the team and spark more exciting new thoughts and ideas as well as to improve the collaboration. I also made sure that no member is being judged socially on the basis of his or her weaknesses in the workplace and always encouraged collaboration and unity within the team (Gingerich 2015). In the very first meeting with my members I clearly stated that each and every one must lift the other in my team. If someone sees any weaknesses of his peer, he must help him in overcoming those weaknesses rather than mocking him for the same. Playing the role of leader, I learnt many things. I have learnt many leadership skills through volunteering my teams. It has provided me with rewarding experiences, chances and several opportunities and has helped me in building string networks within the industry. It has helped me in building passion and confidence within me. I have also learnt to reflect on myself through connecting with the others. While giving me the responsibility of managing a team, my managers had provided me with great opportunity to make a difference. I really enjoyed being working as a team leader and it has taught me many things to implement in my future and that too with more efficiency.
Diversity in a Team and Celebrating Differences
As stated by Banks et al., (2016), introduction of effective leadership practices have higher level of impact on the overall performance management process in a team. Here the study has also mentioned about different leadership styles, among all the leadership style, I believe, transformational leadership can be considered as the effective leadership style in which the individuals will be able to give their decision regarding the development. Therefore, this can be said that through this process, each team members get the chance to be a part of the decision making process. Through the transformational leadership process, the positive changes can be brought in the workplace (McCleskey, 2014). I have also realized that if the transformational leadership practices is being introduced in the team, this can also influence the internal culture in the team. I can suggest that in order to achieve the goals and objectives, the leader should be able to develop strong personality, this can help to increases the passion of the team members. With the good communicational skill and effective team management practices, the leader of the team will be able to encourage the team members towards their objectives (Tepper et al., 2017). Healthy relationship is needed to be maintained in the team, so that the leader will be able to understand the need and demands of the team members. I strongly believe that the skills of emotional intelligence have higher level of impact on the leadership practices. Leader is considered as the role model for the team members. Therefore, the leader should have the quality to control one self and others emotions. With these skills the operations in the team can be done in the effective way.
Another way I have also analysed that engagement of large number of people in the team activity is very important which needs to be maintained by the team leader. Each and individual team members needed to be informed about their roles and responsibility in the team. It has been los analysed that if the team members will be well trained, this can strengthen them. It is also very effective in the case of increasing the confidence of the team members. If the team members will be involved in the decision making process, this will be helping in the case of gain the trust of the team members. On the other hand, I have also analysed that, as a leader I need to be more flexible to handle to challenges. If I will be able to manage the sudden challenges, this will be helping in the case of increasing the confidence of the team members. I need to focus on the well-being of the team members. This will help to increase their love for their job. By developing the well-being of the team members, job satisfaction can be increased (Dong et al., 2017). It has been analysed by me that proper performance structure is also needed to be introduced in the workplace. This will help to maintain the discipline in the team operations. As a leader I should adopt the monitoring skill so that I will be able to analyse both the strength and weakness of my team members. After identifying the team members who are not being able to compete with the other members, I will give special attention to them. This will play an effective role in the case of increasing the confidence of the team members and they will get the chance to perform with their colleagues with same efficiency. Therefore, this can be said that transformational leadership style can be considered as an important leadership style that impacts on the overall performance of the team. On the other hand, this can be said that through this process, a leader can develop healthy cultural environment in the workplace.
Reference list
Banks, G. C., McCauley, K. D., Gardner, W. L., & Guler, C. E. (2016). A meta-analytic review of authentic and transformational leadership: A test for redundancy. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(4), 634-652.
Dong, Y., Bartol, K. M., Zhang, Z. X., & Li, C. (2017). Enhancing employee creativity via individual skill development and team knowledge sharing: Influences of dual?focused transformational leadership. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38(3), 439-458.
Gingerich, A., 2015. What if the ‘trust’in entrustable were a social judgement?. Medical education, 49(8), pp.750-752.
McCleskey, J. A. (2014). Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), 117.
Tepper, B. J., Dimotakis, N., Lambert, L. S., Koopman, J., Matta, F. K., Park, H., & Goo, W. (2017). Examining follower responses to transformational leadership from a dynamic, person-environment fit perspective. Academy of Management Journal, (ja).
Yin, S., Zhu, X. and Kaynak, O., 2015. Improved PLS focused on key-performance-indicator-related fault diagnosis. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 62(3), pp.1651-1658.
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