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Nursing leadership
[Name of the author]
[Name of the institution]
Purpose Statement
'To describe the differences between poorly and highly
functioning teams and their stages of transition'.
A team that functions well can be more productive than
the mere sum of the individuals' work; team members
may also enjoy their work more. Poorly functioning teams,
however, can make life miserable. They can increase
turnover and actually retard productivity.
It's not easy to change a poorly functioning team into
a high performer. Teams tend to stick to whatever mode
of functionality they develop.
Teams should be able to commit to a shared goal, to
listen and respond to others in an objective and productive
way, to take on different roles in the group in order
to accomplish shared ends, to be open and honest with
one's ideas, concerns, and values, to be a leader as
well as a follower and to not carry hidden agendas into
team meetings.
Team leadership differs from traditional top-down leadership
in the following ways (Yukl, 1989):
1. Responsibility for group effectiveness is not just
on the leader's shoulders but is shared by the group.
2. Control over the final decision is not held by the
leader but is best left to the group.
3. The importance of one's position and power are de-emphasized
in team leadership.
4. The leader perceives the group not as a set of individuals
but as an "interacting and collective team."
5. The task-oriented functions of the team are not
performed only by the leader but are shared by the entire
group through its new roles.
6. Group maintenance functions are not performed systematically
but are emphasized and shared by the group as a whole.
7. Socio-emotional processes and interactions, while
mostly ignored by leaders in top-down settings, are
observed closely by team leaders.
8. Expressions of members' needs and feelings are not
discouraged but are encouraged by team leaders and are
dealt with openly in meetings.
Poorly functional teams According to Katzenbach and
Smith (1993), and resistance to working in teams is
often the result of:
Lack of conviction that teams are worth the effort
Discomfort and riskiness for individuals
A school that lacks clear focus on performance and success
Each of these sources of resistance can be overcome.
Lack of conviction can be eliminated as the group develops
common goals and starts to work together. Discomfort
in a team setting can be reduced when individuals are
encouraged to speak up and feel more comfortable in
the group. A weak focus on performance and success in
the school can be remedied as common goals and a shared
school vision are developed.
First, realizing it had enormous problem-solving strength
but virtually no one to direct the team's energy and
follow through on solutions, a poorly functional team
brought in a manager from another department. A manager
has a unique and critical set of natural abilities that
make it easy for him or her to provide leadership and
direction.
Next, that team has to recognize that it needed to
pay more attention to the one or two members who were
strong in logical problem solving. These people became
leaders of the research and strategic planning efforts
of that team. One of these members becomes the recorder
for team meetings: issues were not decided until she
was satisfied that all the problems were thought through
and that there was a working plan for implementation.
That team goes from being an under performing and frustrating
group to be the company hot slot. Unlike in systems,
this change occurred quickly and it continues to endure.
By learning and using a shared neutral language of abilities,
and by using this to create a team profile, a poorly
functional team was able to come to a shared team vision
for how they wanted to accomplish their major roles
in the organization.
Summary
As we have seen in the article, the managers act as
a role model to the team and once a team has grown in
any functioning direction, it is very difficult to divert
and change the course of its performance.
References
Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith. The Wisdom of
Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization, 1993.
pp 21-23
Yukl, Gary. Leadership in Organizations Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc. (1989)
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