Team Leadership

The recent trend of lean organizations, use of technology and increasing pace and complexity of work have turned the managerial focus from individuals to team in organization. As we also saw in the previous chapter on leadership theories, one-on-one leadership is not considered as popular as the team leadership. This marks a break from a command and control prospective of management, toward facilitative, collaborative leadership, through empowerment and continuous improvement.

The term 'Facilitative Leadership' places much stronger demands on leaders. Under a team leadership approach,

• Leaders facilitative the shaping of a collective vision through the active role of team members, who are themselves very highly skilled and qualified and capable of envisioning.
• Leaders are expected to facilitate the team in arriving at its own solution rather than solving their problems.
• In cross-functional teams, leaders understand and manage the diversity and the quality of relationships between the team members and the functional superior of these team members.