Leadership in Teams

This paper focuses on leadership in teams, different sources of leadership and their

influence on team processes and effectiveness. Morgeson et al. (2010) in a study describes

leadership functions and procedures as a framework that combines existing team leadership

survey and all the ways in which leadership can demonstrate itself in team.

Team leadership is fundamentally focused on a team as a collective unit. This type of

leadership is oriented on idealized influence and inspirational motivation of team including

intellectual stimulation and behaviours, associated with being an example, displaying

high ethical standards, and sacrificing for the good of the team. An individual with team

leadership skills identifies weaknesses and strengths of each member and inspires them

work in effective way to meet and exceed the goals and objectives.

The article presents four different sources of leadership: formal, informal, external and

internal. The impact of leadership method on accomplishing team goals depends on

situation, the characteristics of individual members, social climate in a team, relationship

between the team and larger organisational environment. The authors suggest that

proposed ways of team leadership are likely to be effective in different ways. For

example, “formal or informal external leaders might be most effective at managing a

team’s boundaries because they are positioned outside the team’s day-to-day task cycle.

Conversely, formal or informal internal leaders might be best to provide feedback or

support the social climate of the team to observe team behavior and perform the leadership

function at the most appropriate time”(DeRue et.al, 2010).

Marks