What makes an effective senior leadership team (SLT)?
The nature of an effective a senior leadership team (SLT) will be the topic of this essay. The idea of team work and various models of SLT will be covered linking their roles, strategy, values and pitfalls. I will interlace this essay with some personal experience and relevant literature Belbin and Fullan to conclude through an historical analogy, my personal understanding of what SL T represents.
The combination of words in the sentence “Effective Senior Leadership Team” brings together an amalgam of important and decisive words, which individually symbolise strong individual qualities. None the less, one word effectively links the whole sentence into one, “team”. According
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He (2001: ) further mentions that “it is the people who work in the business that really count. Treating employees badly...will inevitably come to haunt us in the long run”.
This would essentially result in creating a blame culture where as Fullan (2010, spb-161129: p4) highlights, punitive pressure from authoritarian regimes only serve the purpose of creating a counterproductive team that generates an atmosphere of mistrust and individualism.
However, Fullan (2010, spb-161129: p5) also suggests that no pressure is not the solution as it induces idolatry, but motivation pressure on the other hand can be a very powerful tool to create a “sense of focused urgency, partnerships and peers, transparency of data, non punitive accountability and irresistible synergy”.
SLT can introduce strategies such as the “Six Thinking Hats” by Edward de Bono as part of their school improvement scheme. De Bonos’s method is based on the brain chemicals studies, which demonstrate that different brain chemicals are released through various thoughts process, the method enables each team member to use their individual best by tapping into their own experience, intelligence and information, leaving aside their ego in the process thus creating “parallel
The team leader’s ability to manage and improve team performance will be limited by his or her own authority and ability to influence others. There may be restrictions in terms of organisational policy; there may be financial, resource, or time constraints, or team members themselves may be reluctant to participate and to accept change.
Clear responsibilities and roles, the structure of the team, job descriptions, competencies, accountabilities, resources, tools and equipment should all be provided. Problem solving, communicating, managing conflicts, tasks, planning meetings, performance evaluation, managing change and decision making should follow clear procedures ensuring effective team working. Positive relationships, mutual respect and trust, continuing support and inclusion, valuing diversity and listening to feedback can overcome challenges to effective team performance. A strong credible leader with clear expectations can also overcome challenges to an effective team.
Many of us have seen that "Nobody's Perfect - But A Team Can Be" and we have seen a team produce a quality and quantity of work far higher than the sum of what the separate members could have produced on their own. The success of any Endeavour hinges on the behavior, talents, balance and cohesion of this management team. There are two main points when it comes to relevance of teams, the first is the recognition that human strengths usually bring countervailing weaknesses and the second is that some combinations of these roles have a greater probability of team success than others.
The selection of a team leader is of key decision that can have a great impact on the overall success of a team. A good team leader should be able to build and maintain team morale, instilling confidence and trusting in other team members allowing them to work together to achieve the teams goals (Llopis, 2014). The ability to understand the stages of a team and provide the guidance to all members is essential. The stages of forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning (Abudi, 2010) are a helpful framework for recognizing patterns during team conversations and the understanding that team development may not always be linear. The aptitude to walk the team through these stages and ensuring they understand the development of the team and why things are happening in certain ways is an important part of the self evaluation process. Having ways to identify when certain behavioral patterns are occurring and a way to then cause changes to the team behavior can help the team maximize its productivity.
| The key features of an effective team performance are: * Leaders who are hands-on, who unite their staff behind a shared purpose, and who are transparent and open in their expectations and pursuit of excellence. * Clarity of vision, which is absolutely focused on the experience
An effective and productive team doesn't just happen. It requires structures, support and processes that encourage development. Team building happens over time. When building and developing a cohesive, effective and productive team you need to determine how your team fits and the roles they play in the organisation. Does anything need to be changed? How and when can these changes be put into action? Organisational, strategic and operational plans need to contain suitable mechanisms for supporting team development.
• Team Learning—transforming conversational and collective thinking skills, so that groups of people can reliably develop intelligence and ability greater than the sum of individual members’ talents.
Businesses also have a variety of different leaders controlling the organization. Some executives attain a high-level position, placing them in a leadership role. However, there are many leadership positions that do not actually “lead” a team. A leader does not decide to be a leader overnight. A leader possesses a particular set of qualities and
Although teamwork is discussed in greater detail elsewhere in this text, it is important to note that any individual who works as a part of a greater team should be an effective
The book “Wooden on Leadership” is a revelation of the wisdom of the author in matters of leadership. Through the book, readers are able to acquire the essential facets of practical and theoretical leadership, as the author depicts a chronological method that he applied in ensuring that every person within his circle of influence obtained their goals. It presents the core methods, beliefs, concepts, and essentials that could guide leaders in teaching their teams on how to attain and maintain their competitive advantages (Wooden & Jamison, 2007). Besides, it focuses on heightening the personal success through giving audience to all members within the organizational or team work force.
In today's society some corporations have achieved success by replacing the hierarchical boss-subordinate relationship with that of an empowered work team. Many corporations know the value of a high-performance team. A high-performance team has a great deal to offer to the organization. In a team environment, people are not managed, controlled or supervised. They are led by their mutual vision of the organization's purpose and goals. Teams surpass individuals working alone, especially when performance requires several abilities, verdict, and active involvement...
Realizing that a group can become a high performance team is important. Accomplishing this goal is invaluable, advantageous and profitable. Once able to operate from a group to the high performing team is a great step into preparation into the big business world. Leaders and members must also realize not only how to accomplish this but that some problems will and can arise from different demographic characteristics and cultural diversity. That is if one is in such a group, which the probability would be quite high.
The area of team leadership attracts a lot of attention in the modern world because of the need to assemble and deploy diverse teams for the completion of projects. The future of many corporations relies more and more on the kind of team leadership they have for their projects. This paper explores a number of facets that constitute effective team leadership.
Comment on the following quote by Katzenbach, Smith "simply put, teams will be the primary building block of performance in the high performance organization of the future. As a result, effective top managers will increasingly worry about both performance and the teams that will help deliver it." (p. 239, The Wisdom of Teams). By referring to the concepts you have learned in this course including the different dynamics teams bring to the workplace discuss what have been the key lessons learned about teams and leading them for you and how you will or would apply those in an organization.
Despite the advantages associated with a shared leadership approach, some disadvantages also exist. One disadvantage originates from individual interpretations of teamwork (Baghai & Quigley, 2012). In other words, not all people in a work environment view working together the same, posing a leadership challenge to clearly delineate the organization’s concept of team. Other disadvantages arise when workers chose to bypass or overlook some team members, or when an individual lacks the confidence to exhibit leadership skills resulting in organizational loss of leadership potential (Pearce, Wassenaar, & Manz, 2014).