Practical Aspects Of Leadership

To help your team to be successful you will have to direct and help them. As previously discussed an overly autocratic style (an emphasis on the task) does not build good team relationships. It is also important to look afer your team on a personal level. Hopefully the following articles will help enhance your leadership style.

Becoming a Leader

A leader may not always be a manager, and one day you may see an opportunity to lead a project or team within your group, but when do decide the time is right and how do you go about becoming the leader?

Steps to Leading

Look at the context of the situation and decide if your leadership is required and if you can feasibly lead the team. Perhaps another group member would be better or, even worse, the group would not accept your influence. If this is the case your attempt to lead will be a failure.

   1. Identify team members and resources willing to support your leadership. Clearly, change may be resisted by some people or organisations, but if you can find enough support this resistance can be overcome. Note that the support of your team may not be enough if you do not have the support of authority (the boss for example) or the physical/financial resources to accomplish your goals.
   2. A crucial step is to empathise with others and assess their understanding of the situation. This will help you understand how to influence these people. Many ways of doing this are available: memos, phone calls and informal chats are a few examples.
   3. Now you should open a discussion which the members. Clearly, without open discussion some people may feel neglected or excluded. By getting everyone's views it is more likely that you will be able to alter them and get what you want. Now you must convince the others that your view is the one most likely to achieve a favourable outcome for everyone. This may be easy if everyone shares the same goals, or it may be difficult. In the end some form of 'payment' may be required, such as a promise of a favour, to convince certain members. This is easy if you are in a position of power, if not, make sure the cost to yourself is not too high.
   4. Having convinced the team of your leadership, encourage team communication to build a team identity. You should also try to motivate the team appropriately.
   5. Plan and organise the team by setting realistic goals. However do not give too much or too little guidance, experienced workers may resent you treating them like new-recruits, and this can undermine your leadership.
   6. When goals are achieved recognise and reward the team. Do not expect the team to exceed them - this will undermine your leadership and the team will lose trust in you. Of course you may decide that the goals are unachievable or insufficient, but any re-definition of these goals should be done carefully and with team co-operation.

Ready to lead?

Delegation

A key aspect of leadership is delegation. Unless you delegate tasks to your subordinates, your team will become inefficient and demoralised.

"I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow."
- Woodrow Wilson

Poor Delegation

Signs that you are not borrowing enough brains or that your delegation is failing include:

    * Team Motivation / Morale is down
    * You are always working late
    * Your team is confused / conflicting / tense
    * You get questions about delegated tasks too often


Not delegating a task because you think that you would do it better than anyone else is a poor excuse. Doing this will just make life difficult for yourself.


Advantages of Delegation

Positive aspects of delegation include:

    * Higher efficiency
    * Increased motivation
    * Develops the skills of your team
    * Better distribution of work through the group


How to Delegate

   1. Identify a suitable person for the task.
   2. Prepare the person. Explain the task clearly. Make sure that you are understood. Leave room in the task description for ingenuity / initiative.
   3. Make sure the person has the necessary authority to do the job properly.
   4. Keep in touch with the person for support and monitoring progress. Do not get to close. Accept alternative approaches.
   5. Praise / Acknowledge a job well done.


Responsibility

Even though you have delegated a task to someone else, you are still responsible for making sure the task is done on time and correctly. If the task fails, you can not point the finger. You delegated. It is your fault. You may have picked the wrong person for the job.


Authority

The amount of authority you delegate is up to you, although it should be enough to complete the task. It is no good giving Bob the task of opening the safe every morning at 10am if you do not give him the authority required to do it. Bob needs the key to open the safe with.


Tasks you should not delegate

Obviously some aspects of leadership are sensitive and should not be delegated. For example:

    * Hiring
    * Firing
    * Pay issues
    * Policy

Your Task after Delegating
After delegating:

    * Plan - goals, meeting, tasks
    * Direct - your team, keep them on track
    * Encourage - boost morale

Practical Aspects of Directing Teams

When directing a small team it is important to structure the tasks to be performed. Goals should be easily understood by everyone and tasks broken down so that they appear achievable.

Break down the task.

Nothing will be more demoralising for your team than setting them a task which seems impossible (the brick wall approach). Therefore it is important to define a task as a series of small but significant steps which seem realistic. As the person performs these broken-down steps he/she will still feel that something tangible has been accomplished, and the next step toward finishing will become clear. The brick wall approach will usually result in the task not being accomplished.

                        
1. The brick-wall approach     2. Broken down-steps


Goal analysis

It is probable that as a team leader you will want to set goals for your team or project. One such goal may be "to improve communications amongst the team". Clearly there will be many different interpretations of this goal by different team members. Goal analysis seeks to remove this ambiguity.

Goal analysis should define an abstract goal in terms of concrete criteria, which when met will clearly demonstrate that the goal has been achieved. The criteria should be expressed in terms of actions or results rather than abstractions (which may be ambiguous). There are 5 steps:
1) Write down the goal.

At this stage the goal is an abstract thing, and it is important not to worry too much about how the goal is written down - a rough definition or idea will suffice.
2) Without editing or judging - describe the goal.

Get team members to quickly describe what they understand by the goal. At this stage all suggestions should be noted down - no ideas are wrong or stupid. This is similar to the technique of brainstorming.
3) Sort.

Sort out the ideas generated by 2 into an ordered or prioritised list which defines the goal. At this stage it may become apparent that some ideas are abstractions but are still important. If this is the case use steps 1 and 2 to clearly define these.
4) State each action or result obtained from 3.

Make the team read and try to understand the list from step 3.
5) Test the statements.

Ask the question - "When these all statements have been demonstrated to be true, will the goal have been achieved?" Test each statement in turn for relevance. If the answer is yes then the goal has been defined.

Keeping The Team Together

One function that a leader of a team must perform is holding the team together. A leader is responsible for:

    * ensuring project goals are met
    * ensuring a full team effort
    * keeping the team happy

Motivation

The key to holding the team together is motivation. To motivate is to:
"cause (person) to act in a particular way; stimulate interest of (person in activity)."1

In simple terms, motivation can be considered as the amount of effort an individual is willing to put into their work. Therefore, it is important to ensure that any team is highly motivated towards their work. A lack of motivation in any member of a team can have a negative affect, reducing the group's effectiveness and possibly leading to the demotivation of others. Given the fact that different people are motivated in different ways, the problem facing someone in the role of leader is to create an environment in which each individual fulfils their potential.

It is important to highlight the major influences in the motivation of people. According to the influential motivator-hygiene theory, motivation occurs when people have job satisfaction. Job satisfaction can be improved by increasing opportunities for:

    * Achievement
    * Recognition
    * Responsibility
    * Career advancement

While not increasing job satisfaction, improvements in the following areas can lessen job dissatisfaction:

    * Supervision
    * Salary
    * Working conditions


6 Steps to Motivation

The following steps can be taken to help achieve and maintain group motivation:

    * Provide opportunities for group members to become acquainted.
    * Indicate the importance/value of the group.
    * Make people feel they are important.
    * Clarify goals.
    * Identify progress.
    * Acknowledge achievements.


Disputes

Inevitably, disputes ranging from minor differences in opinion, to fundamental differences in ideology, will arise. The role of the team leader is to handle such disagreements constructively, ensuring that the team remains focused on achieving its goal. The leader must encourage team members to stand back from any disagreements and look at things objectively. By doing this, any differences between group members will be resolved and possible conflicts avoided.


Conclusion

The most important point for a team leader to remember is that each individual needs to think that they are working with the best people - to feel proud to be part of the team. By getting people into this state of mind a leader will instill a high level of group morale; people will work harder and achieve more.