A final point when building a leading team is that team members are as responsible for offering honest feedback as they are for receiving it. The inability to manage any of these areas results in a team that cannot develop to its fullest capability.
Teams don’t just happen. They are developed through hard work, mutual respect among members, and striving toward group goals.
Conclusion
In conclusion there seems to be an opportunity to bring together the characteristics of what it takes to make up a successful leadership team. The Hay Group, a management consulting firm in Philadelphia, and Harvard University conducted a joint study and examined the differences between outstanding leadership teams and typical and poor ones.
They found that outstanding teams were significantly more developed than the others in the following ways:
+ They are real teams, with clear, stable boundaries and interdependent team tasks.
+ They have team leaders who create organizational conditions that facilitate teamwork and link team purposes to those of the broader organization.
+ Team members are emotionally intelligent rather than just the smartest-of-the-smart.
+ They are twice as capable as members of poor leadership teams in reading others’ concerns.
+ Team members do what they promise, and at least one member will do something for the good of the company, even if it means a personal sacrifice.
References
The Investment Dealers’ Digest : IDD; New York; Dec 20, 1999
Executive Excellence, Warren Bennis, Vol 15, Issue 3, Mar 1998
Academy of Management journal, 37: 1649-1665.
Milliken F & Martins L 1996, Searching for common threads: Understanding the multiple effects of diversity in organizational groups. Academy of Management Review, 21: 402-433.
American Management Association, Louisa Wah, Vol 89, issue 2, Feb 2000
Management Teams, Why They Succeed or Fail, Belbin RM., 1994
Teaming Up, Harshman CL & Steven LP, 1994
322