BC 112 Coastline Community College The Team Leader Essay

BC 112 Coastline Community College The Team Leader Essay

M07 Leading With Confidence – Study Resources & Knowledge Building

“True leadership is much more than authority and recognition from the outside world. Instead, leadership is all about developing people and helping others reach their full potential. It’s about equipping others with the right tools and strategies to not only maximize the success of an organization but also the lives of individuals.”
Matt Mayberry,
Speaker and Maximum Performance Strategist, CEO of Matt Mayberry Enterprises

What Is the Difference Between Management and Leadership? BC 112 Coastline Community College The Team Leader Essay

• Managementis the act of organizing and directing people or things to accomplish organizational goals.
• Leadershipcan be defined as the act of inspiring and motivating people to achieve organizational goals.

Read more on the important distinction between leading and managing (Links to an external site.).

What Are the Qualities of an Effective Leader?

Read this Forbes article on 11 Powerful Traits of Successful Leaders (Links to an external site.).

Next, watch the following TedTalk on Everyday Leadership. This is a transcript  Download transcriptof this video.

So, what are some of the traits of a good leader? Here is a summary of three of the major traits to be a successful and effective leader.

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Integrity

Having integrity means doing the right thing in a reliable way. It’s a personality trait that we admire, since it means a person has a moral compass that doesn’t waver. Having integrity means you are true to yourself and would do nothing that demeans or dishonors you. How do you show integrity?

1. Keep your word. If you want to establish a solid reputation you must deliver on your promises.
2. Follow through on your commitments.
3. Pay attention to your environment.
4. Stay focused.
5. Surround yourself with honest people.
6. Take responsibility.
7. Respect your employees.
8. Lead by example.

Emotional Maturity

One key factor of emotional maturity is the ability to handle challenging situations without unnecessarily escalating them. Instead of seeking to blame someone else for their problems or behavior, emotionally mature people seek to fix the problem or behavior.

Some of common characteristics of emotional maturity include:

• Flexibility– Flexible leaders are those who can modify their style or approach to leadership in response to uncertain or unpredictable circumstances (the ability to adjust to changing circumstances).
• Responsibility– Responsible leaders create an environment of trust, open communication, creative thinking, and a cohesive team effort; they provide the team with a vision of the project objectives; they motivate and inspire team members; and they lead by setting a good example.
• Conflict Resolution– True leaders find a peaceful solution to disagreement—whether personal, financial, political, or emotional—among staff. When a dispute arises, often the best course of action is negotiation and this is where the emotionally mature leader excels. BC 112 Coastline Community College The Team Leader Essay
• Confidence– Self-confidence is necessary for leaders to take risks and accomplish big goals. Leadership involves influencing others and self-confidence allows that leader to feel assured that his or her attempts to influence are appropriate and right. Self confidence also requires a positive self-image.
• Decision-Making– The ability to consistently make good quality decisions is what keeps a business moving forward.
• Vision– To be a visionary, a leader has a clear vision of the future, clearly and passionately communicates that vision and motivates employees to act with passion and purpose, thereby ensuring that everyone is working toward a common goal.

Personal Growth

As you grow as a leader, you will begin to identify your motivation, you will unmask your flaws, you will learn from your failures and you will listen to those with more experience. A leader who values personal growth will continually invest in him/herself.

It’s important to remember that personal growth as a leader is a continuous process that, over time, will result in the improvement of one’s human capital, administrative, and managerial strengths and capabilities. While this growth is often very much personal, as a leader grows in his or her leadership capabilities, the entire organization will undoubtedly be impacted by it.

Personal growth can be challenging, opening us up to patterns of our own thought and behavior we may prefer to not look at. A commitment to personal growth as a leader requires:

• Self-discipline, self-responsibility, and persistence in overcoming challenges.
• The ability to question oneself and one’s motivations. Understanding the motivations behind your actions and learning from mistakes are integral to personal growth.
• The desire to learn as much as possible and continuously improve oneself.
• Good communication skills. We don’t grow spontaneously. We do so through interactions with others.
• Teamwork skills. Because of the amount of influence a leader can have over their employee teams, it is a leader’s responsibility to do whatever is reasonable to create and promote teamwork.

Read more about what leaders should know about personal development (Links to an external site.).

Leadership Styles

A leadership style  is a leader’s method of providing direction, implementing plans, and motivating people, and represents the leader’s philosophy, skills and attitudes in practice. The ability to adjust one’s leadership style may be useful, depending on the context and the nature of the followers involved.

Here are three major leadership styles:

• Autocratic

• Democratic
• Laissez-faire

Autocratic Leadership

An autocratic leader tends to centralize power and decision-making in him/herself. Autocratic leaders typically make choices, give orders and assign tasks based on their ideas and judgments and rarely accept advice from followers. Autocratic leadership involves absolute, authoritarian control over a group and tends to control via threats and punishment. BC 112 Coastline Community College The Team Leader Essay

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Some of the primary characteristics of autocratic leadership include:

• Almost all of the decisions made by the leader with little or no input from group members.
• Work methods and processes are dictated by the leader.
• Group members are rarely trusted with decisions or important tasks.
• Work tends to be highly structured and very rigid.
• Creativity and out-of-the box thinking tend to be discouraged.
• Rules are important and tend to be clearly outlined and communicated.
• Employees tend to work only as hard as is necessary to avoid punishment.

An autocratic style of leadership facilitates quick decisions, prompt action and unity of direction and may be considered appropriate in certain high-risk, stressful situations that require immediate action.

This leadership style is less likely to be broadly effective because the new generation is more independent and less submissive and not amenable to rigid control; people look for ego satisfactions from their jobs and revolution of rising expectations changed the attitude of the people.

 

Purpose

The goal of this assignment is to apply team-building strategies in a real-world situation and more practice creating a well-formatted memo.

You’re In Charge!

You have just been promoted to Team Leader at Data Development, Inc.  You are so excited…BUT…you haven’t spent much time with any of the members of your new four-person team.

You know that strong communication and relationships are important to effective leadership, right? Your supervisor (you can make up a name and title) has asked you to devise a plan for developing rapport and building relationships with (and among) the individuals in your group to create a sense of “team.”

1. Consider whatleadership style you will use for most of your group interactions (review the Module 7 Knowledge Building content for this).
2. Prepare a bulleted list of five to eight awesome ideas for how you will get to know your team members, establish rapport with and among the team, and develop trust. Be sure to detail your ideas. (“Do an icebreaker activity” would notbe sufficient detail.)
   Suggested search terms to get you started: team building ideas and/or build rapport with team
3. Once you have created your list, using MS Word, construct a memoto your supervisor (use an appropriate office memo format) and include:
   • Company logoat the top of the memo (copy the image above)
   • Proper memo format(Links to an external site.) (with all required information)
   • A short introductory paragraph (or two)
   • 5-8 detailed ideas
     • Explain the purpose (how will it build team?) for each idea and your plan of action for how, specifically, it will be implemented
       EXAMPLE:
       Informal Sharing– “I plan to set aside time during the weekly meeting for team members to just socialize and create a safe space to share whatever they would like to share with the group. I believe if everyone is more open with each other, trust will be easier to build and sustain.“
   • Description of your leadership style and how that will promote development of your team
     • Explain the “why” behind your style. Why are you drawn to that style; what do you feel it will accomplish that’s important to you? BC 112 Coastline Community College The Team Leader Essay
       EXAMPLE:

“I would say my style is mostly laissez-faire (with a little autocratic when things are stressful!). I’m willing to help when needed but I am an independent worker myself and appreciate team members who can get their work done without a lot of hand-holding. I think giving my team “free rein” will encourage their own initiative and will, hopefully, cause them to build their own leadership skills as they manage tasks and projects.”

Be sure to spell-check everything and proofread again before submitting your document.  Remember, you always want to put your best foot forward!!

Submitting Your Work

Save As: Your Name_DevelopingMyTeam.

Submit as File Upload.

Due Date

Submit by Sunday, May 22 by 11:59pm Pacific.

Grading

You may resubmit prior to grading. Once I’ve graded the assignment, please do not resubmit (unless I ask you to).

The grading rubric is available below the assignment details. BC 112 Coastline Community College The Team Leader Essay