by Steve Nyambe
The vast majority of difficult, important human problems both inside and outside the organisation are
not solved by a swift, decisive stroke from someone at the top. No. What usually matters are careful,
thoughtful, small pragmatic efforts by people working far from the limelight, that’s your team, (Badaracco, 2002). Effective leadership is hinged on effective team building. Firing the gun in the leadership jungle without appreciating the impact of teamwork is a true uphill task. Excellent leaders need teams, and it’s not the team that needs leaders. Dynamic leaders know that a successful team is more than the sum of its parts, Larson (2001). Thus you just need others to move forward. To put this to light Craig (2008) presented the 7Cs of that summarise the critical role played by teamwork. These are:
Commitment
The tongue of the leader is the glue that binds teams together. Commitment can be achieved by ensuring that the leader appeals to the heart of the team’s emotions. Without commitment, the journey of a business leader will be turned into a sole ranger game: an individual walk, where his effort always translates into a drop in an ocean. This is a form of disengaged employee scenario, in which there is no unity. Where there is no unity, performance is likely to be negatively affected.
Common purpose
Football teams always play for one common purpose which is to just win. Nothing short of this will delight the souls of the team members. Thus leaders embrace the motion of driving teams in one direction to achieve a common goal. Where there is no vision people perish, thundered The Holy Bible.
“Organisations whose leaders have no vision are doomed to Connection Very few executives, managers or even supervisors understand the importance of team connections. Remember you must first win the peoples’ hearts before we ask for their hands. A good connection is just a game of heart to heart relationship. It is achieved by an empathetic relationship. This demands the ethical dimension of the usual golden rule; do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.
Conflict management
Teams have differences, which may lead to disagreements. If disagreements are not held correctly, then teams will turn into mere underperforming groups.
Communication
It is the tool called com It is the tool called communication that guides and controls diverging views in order to for the organisation to keep moving towards the super-ordinate goal. Without effective communication based on mutual respect, the organisation is likely to be left hanging on the paralysed thread of leadership catastrophe. Communication can be used as a tool for motivation. However, if words are poorly converged, chances are high that demotivation creeps in.
Community
Great leaders don’t do business for profit maximisation and personal gratification. They always remember the community. These leaders don’t forget that it is the goose (the teams) that lays the eggs that is more important than the eggs laid (production), because without the goose there are no eggs. So the employee matters. The customer matters. How about your business community?
It could be com It could be a community in terms of where the business is operating or in terms of Internal Environmental Factors (IEFs). It just matters. Many leaders may tend to focus on the bigger picture of the community while forgetting the critical part of their community: their teams
Celebrations, yes l mean celebrations!
Every milestone must be celebrated. People always love to feel appreciated. They love the “triple-A” treatment: Attention. Appreciation. Affirmation. Give them your attention. Appreciate their effort, no matter how little their progress. Last but not least, just give them affirmation; (Dr JC Maxwell) to give affirmation is simply meant to make them firm, strong and
Remember…
As l come to the end of this presentation you may be asking why is teamwork so crucial for effective leadership? Is it not that its leaders who are supposed to know everything and have all the answers? That is just a myth. Why not pick something from the Alexander Hamilton Institute report on Successful Team Building: Companies worldwide are getting in on the team building revolution. In Sweden, Volvo pioneered the replacement of assembly lines with work teams in manufacturing. The big auto company was so impressed with the results that it redesigned its products to make them fit the team concept.
In Japan, electronics company Hitachi introduced teamwork problem-solving in one of its plants, The approach was so successful that during the six month period, workers came up with 112 000 suggested work and quality improvements. In Denmark, another electronic company Bang and Olufson found
that work teams resulted in reduced absenteeism and higher morale.
More than 1000 companies in the United States ha More than 1000 companies in the United States have committed themselves to some aspect of the team-building concepts. Another company Hewlett-Packard says the team strategy actually doubled productivity in three works. We can go and on stating exciting facts from that report until we get to the horizon. But in conclusion, Hay Group, a global
management consultancy, says there are 75 key components of employee satisfaction, amongst them is teamwork. Don’t forget that the firm said; “Sharing information with employees on both how the company is doing and how an employee’s own division is doing relative to strategic business objectives is very essential, (Lamb, 2004).
