Example of leadership, team building and communication essay

Question 1

Leadership theories and interpersonal forms of power
Leadership is the art of influencing others socially in order to achieve a common goal or objective. Some of the theories used to study leadership are the traditional leadership theories, including trait approaches, leadership style approach and contingency approach. These theories insist on the leader having supervisory approach over the employees. Contemporary theories, on the other hand, argue that effective leaders normally have cognitive and behavioural ability to effectively recognize and react to the complexity of their environment and what it presents o them. They include transactional and transformational leadership models. The emerging leadership theories came up with the emerging and rapid technological advancement that led to the increased demand of market leader organisation.

Leadership profile

One such good leader is Eric Schmidt who works for the Google Company. His core duty is supervision and also the improvement of corporate infrastructure for the company which is needed to maintain its rapid growth. He uses the emerging leadership models in his leadership, which is appropriate with the technological advancements of the company. Schmidt normally meets up with the Google founders on a daily basis in order to discuss emerging issues. This means that for this company there is boundary spanning; whereby everyone works together in order to achieve a common goal. This has greatly encouraged innovation which has led to the success of Google as a company.

Question 2

Impact of organisational stressors on organizational performance
Organisational stressors are any physical or even psychological demand on the organisation that are out of the ordinary. Some of the organisational stressors for Google include having to keep up with the rapid technological advancement and emerging trends. Google deals with this by hiring managers in unique positions that other countries may not even have, such as Chief Culture Officer, Chief Internet Evangelist and Distinguished Entrepreneur in order to identify and establish new technologies. This will always help Google to maintain its position as a market leader since it is always ahead of other competing companies.

Question 3

Elements for effective group and work team performance
The critical elements of an effective group and teamwork are good communication, effective interpersonal relations, adequate motivation, and diversity of skill, creative freedom, diverse capabilities and adaptability.

Steps involved in developing an effective team

For Google to have effective work teams, they should form work teams with the mentioned elements. This can be done by first researching on the different employees and their capabilities and experience, and using this information to make these work teams. It is also essential to create an effective communication channel that facilitates the dissemination of information either vertically or horizontally. Incentives that reward collective success but recognize individual effort should be established to boost the morale of the group.

Question 4

Potential sources of conflict within the group or work team
Potential sources of conflicts in these work teams include poor communication, lack of coordination as a team, poor leadership and poor definition of the tasks every group member should perform.

Conflict management style

There are five conflict management styles. Competing style means that the manager or leader can solve the conflict by creating a competing environment for the conflicting parties. Collaborating style is where the leader tries to bring the conflicting parties together and attempts to solve the issue that is causing the conflict. Compromising technique is whereby the leader brings the parties together to discuss what each party can forego in order to solve the conflict. The leader can also decide to completely ignore the conflict and act as if it does not exist and therefore avoid solving it. This is the avoiding conflict resolution method. Lastly, the manager can decide to accommodate the conflicts in the work place if they adopt the accommodating method. The most appropriate conflict resolution method for the problems mentioned above is collaborating, since this is a work team.

Question 5

Communication barriers and impact on group and work team performance
Possible factors that may hinder effective communication include linguistic barriers, cultural barriers, physical barriers, biases, differences in perceptions, expectation and prejudices, use of jargon and emotional barriers. These barriers can really affect a work team and greatly reduce its performance. This is due to the fact that communication is one of the most important elements of an effective work team without which the team work will fail to materialize.

Recommendations

– The physical barriers to communication can be resolved by the use of technology such as teleconferencing or video conferencing which will help enhance effective communication even when the members of the team are far away from each other. In order to mitigate language barriers, the group members can be told to use an official language that can be understood by all members and to avoid the use of jargon.
– Team-building workshops can be used to help the group to deal with emotional issues that may affect its members in the course of working together. Such platforms assist members to deal with their personal issues outside the work environment. This fosters the spirit of team work.

References

Olmstead, J. A. (2002). Leading groups in stressful times, teams, work units, and task forces. Westport, Conn.: Quorum Books.
Rosner, B., Halcrow, A., & Levins, A. S. (2001). Communication. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Wise, P. S., & Kowalski, K. (2010). Leadership. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders.