Team Leadership and Empowerment (Term Paper Sample)

Team Leadership and Empowerment Name: Institution: Date: Team Leadership and Training Senior Management Training at ORBITT Company Theme: Team Leadership and Empowerment Topic: Establishing High Performance Teams at ORBITT Company Speaker: XYZ The question of leadership and empowerment is a critical function of management in many organizations. Many current organizational trends have also revealed that team leadership and team empowerment are critical ingredients for the success of a team. Research has shown that there is a correlation between team leadership and team effectiveness. One of the most important elements worth noting is that teams will function well depending on the approach taken. Consequently, while it is important to note that leadership is hierarchical, leadership in the context of adult teams should also be treated as a collective process. This is particularly so since team members in an organization bring in different skills and expertise for the success of the team. Both the team leader and team members should come out as active participants in a team. It is in this context that as the senior management, and as people in charge of various teams, you should appreciate that for the success of team processes, you should work closely with your team members. Most importantly, as senior managers at ORBITT, you should strive first to understand each team member as an individual before rushing to handle the whole team as a group. There are various dynamics, roles and responsibilities worth taking note of for purposes of team leadership and empowerment. For effective team leadership and empowerment, you should observe the following critical areas of management approaches while handling your teams. The first thing to have in mind is that employees always look up to you to provide strategic direction and leadership. As you embark on your daily responsibilities, the most critical task is team management within the strategic direction of the company. In order to establish high performance in line with the strategic direction and objectives of the company, you have to demonstrate team leadership and empowerment. Each one of you will be solely responsible for the effectiveness of his/her team and accountable to the company for the level of his/her team success. While managing a team as a team leader, or in your capacity as a senior manager, it is important to understand that team members are adult professionals and must be handled as such. Your team members are professionals who bring in different levels of expertise and experience to the team. Consequently, it is also vital to appreciate that such team members are usually self-directed, achievement focused, goal oriented and are practical. Your role as a senior manager, in many cases, would be to direct their effort in one direction for the achievement of a common goal. Even so, it is important to understand your team dynamics. This calls for you to understand the emotional intelligence and emotional reality of a team. This is particularly so from the observation that despite a team’s qualification, its effectiveness is tied to interpersonal relationship within its members. Understanding such interpersonal relationship will help you understand how to regroup the team when there is a need to send them on small assignments to clients. Take for instance that you need to do a follow up at one of the local universities where you recently offered some IT solutions. In the event that you need to send only two or three members, you may want to send the people you are sure work best within their small sub-group. Your understanding of your team’s interpersonal relationship would guide you in making such a decision Moreover, understanding of your teams interpersonal relationships would also help you handle team challenges such as groupthink, scapegoating and conflicts. Besides, you will have to understand the emotional tone in a team and how it is closely tied to overall team effectiveness. You will have to set the right emotional tone and emotional reality. A team leader with high emotional intelligence is capable of managing team norms. A team leader with a high emotional intelligence will also be able to maximize the cooperation of his/her adult team members. Such a leader will also achieve collaboration and eventually team effectiveness. This is achievable through cultivation of trust, team identify and team efficacy. You should also note that team leadership and empowerment entails self-awareness, self-management, and management of relationships. Adults are internally motivated and self-directed. It would be important for you as a senior manager to offer some room for self-management within the team. This will enable your team members to deliver their best since many of them are presumably adults with experience in their various areas. In addition to the above, you should also create self-aware teams are easy to manage as they run like planes on autopilot and on the same course. Even so, just like planes on autopilot, conducting periodic checks is still crucial. Your role, just like a pilot, would be provision of leadership and guidance during critical stages. The most important thing to note in this case is that although adult team members are self-motivated and self-directed, you have to do follow ups and supervisions. This is for the purposes of synchronizing all effort and making sure that the team is moving in one direction. As senior managers, you should also note that a team might deviate from its goals and ideal vision if there is no linkage of a team’s activities with practical outcomes. Owing to this, it is important that you, the senior management, link the strategic direction required of a team to a practical application. Having seen what team leadership entails, let us now look at the concept of team empowerment. Team empowerment pertains to developing the skills and expertise of the team members. Whereas training is one of the ways of team empowerment, workshop model of team empowerment works best to achieve the same goals. This is particularly so as it does not take a long time to implement. You as the senior managers can target and strengthen specific expertise areas to enhance high performance within your teams. In team empowerment, you should understand that on-the-job-training mechanism such as sharing of information could empower a team. When you share with team members matters and issues pertaining to organizational development and obstacles, team members acquire insight into the specifics of the organization. This helps a lot during brainstorming and decision-making at group level and translates into high performance by a team. Most importantly, you should also prepare employees and teams in advance for roles such as decision-making. You can achieve this through offering of skill training and mentorships for your team. The mentorships and skill training help in developing the capacity of your team to be in a position to be able to make wise decisions for the company. You should guide them to subject such decisions through a process of critical thinking and evaluation before arriving at logical conclusions. Even so, when you feel that the junior management is not making good decision, you may want to train them before thinking of overhauling the whole team. The last time Apple Inc. did overhaul its management team, there were far reaching repercussions that impacted negatively o...