Personal Reflection Based on a Teambuilding Day - Essay Example

Despite the problems that the team faced throughout the day, it should be noted that morale remained high throughout the unfolding events and while a more formal approach to leadership and management may have been appropriate, a significant amount was still achieved through the self leading workgroup structure adopted by the group. 2.0 Theory In Practice In the first instance the group lacked a formal leader and as such, decisions were taken on a democratic basis. Overall the results of such an approach would seem to highlight the same issues as those in the literature, namely that while the moral of the team was high and members engaged in their tasks, the organisation suffered through a lack organizational skills or accountability which would have normally rested with a formal leader (Bratton and Gold 2007, Torrington et al 2008).

In addition, the leadership day also highlighted another key element which is often discussed in the literature (Mullins 2009, Handy 1999), the fact that leadership and management while often manifested in the same figure are two separate issues. While the lack of leadership within the group never saw team members suffering from a lack of initiative or inspiration, traditionally elements associated with leadership (Robbins and Judge 2007). What the group lacked were the organizational skills which are often associated with the subject of management.

The opinion of the writer is that a greater number of organizational skills such as time management, task delegation, communications and job design would have overall resulted in greater performance of the team (Adair 1989, 2009). However, as the literature suggests (Huczynski and Buchanan 2009) it is also believed in this case that the skills of both leadership and management would have had to come together in a single person in order for the two theoretical concepts to have had a significant impact upon the performance of the team.

Having worked with the team, it is evident that despite the lack of a leader, team members were well-motivated and had high levels of inspiration throughout the day. This would seem to support the theoretical views of motivational theorists such as Maslow (1970) who attributed motivation to intrinsic sources of motivation, such as a sense of belonging, recognition and self-actualization. This is in stark contrast to those who supported earlier theoretical models such as Taylor (Handy 1999) who advocated that motivation came from extrinsic sources, such as the motivation derived from a financial reward.

While there was no formal leader appointed, the overall traits of team members and temperament of the group may suggest that a transformational leadership style would have been the appropriate style of leadership in contrast to more transactional styles of leadership. It is the belief of the writer that a transactional style of leadership making use of extremely formal and authoritarian styles of management may have overall resulted in poorer results for t team as a whole. The possibility of such poorer results would be attributed by the writer to resentment and resistance which may have come to light, should such an approach towards leadership and management have been brought into effect during the course of the day (Northouse 2004).

A transformation approach, on the other hand, may simply have added a greater level of direction for team members, giving the team a