Leading and Motivating the Team - Essay Example

?Running head: leading and motivating a team effectively 2nd December Connecting the team with vision and strategy For an organization to be successful and attain a sustainable growth, it is imperative that it emulates a clear vision and strategy. Vision entails the desired future state of a firm. Precisely, a vision is an aspiration which is adopted by strategists in their efforts to focus the energies and the attention of the employees as well as managers. On the other hand, a strategy involves the direction and scope of an organization over the long term. One of the key aspects of a strategy is that it aims at achieving advantages within the changing environment with an aim of fulfilling the expectations of the shareholders. In Peytons General Supplies, our vision is to “be the leader in provision of maximum security in working places”. While our vision is “improving safety in the work place in order to make our economy grow by providing quality safety equipments”. In order for a team to be productive, it is vital for leaders to advocate for spirit of cooperation which entails a united team that works together towards achieving its goals. Three major aspects that indicate a harmonious and a team in good relationship are a sense of shared purpose, a belief in shared objectives and being committed to a group (Baumeister and Vohs, 2004). One of the major implications of a common sense of purpose in a group is that it enables the team members to be united. Additionally, it enables the members of the team to have a knowhow on the operations of their teams including the effects of their own contributions to the team. Through the unity that is brought about by a common purpose, the team members in Peytons General Supplies work towards attaining the mission and the vision of the organization. Failure to having a common purpose would lead to each employee working towards his or her own goal. Role of communication in establishing a common sense of purpose Within an organization, clear communication between the leaders and other members of the team is a major aspect that cannot be overlooked. Good leaders must be good communicators. One of the major merits of communication is that it leads to the development of a well-committed workforce that is aware of the goals and values of its organisation. A key aspect that characterizes a communication system is the source. As a team leader, one should be clear about what he or she is communicating and what they want to communicate. The second aspect that should be adopted during communication is encoding. This means that in order to have a good communication, it is imperative to ensure that the information being transferred is in the correct form and the receivers are able to decode it and understand it in an easy way. Similarly, leaders who are focused at creating a sense of purpose among their followers should adopt effective channels of communication. Some of the notable channels that organizations use include face-to-face meetings, emails, memos, telephone and videoconferencing among others. Decoding is equally important to encoding. Decoding entails properly reading of the messages sent by the sender. Thus it is imperative for the receivers to have good communication skills in order to avoid making an error while decoding the message. It is also crucial for leaders to consider the receiver of their messages. During the communication process, each individual reacts in a different way that affects his or her understanding of the messages from the leaders. Thus, a good leader must consider the reactions or actions of his team members and act in an appropriate manner. Effectiveness of my communication skills On the basis of initiating a good communication in a team work, I am able to oversee a communication system that is all inclusive. First, I usually plan my communication. This entails understanding the objectives of my communication, understanding my audience and providing an opportunity through which my audience would give their feedback. One of the major strategies that I employ in my communication is KISS which means Keep It Simple and Straightforward. In my written communication, I usually review my styles to ensure that my audience does not face hardship in understanding my message. This also entails checking my grammar and punctuation to allow simple decoding by the receivers of my messages. My main strength as far as my communication skills are concerned is active listening. In order to ensure that I provide reliable answers or ask resourceful questions, my active listening involves keenly looking at the persons speaking, paying attention to the speaker’s body language, avoiding destruction and nodding to acknowledge the points. Motivational factors Within a work context, leaders can emulate various forms of motivational factors that are focused at improving their employees at individual as well as team level. One of the factors is extrinsic motivation. This encompasses tangible rewards including benefits, salaries, promotion, conditions of work and conducive work environment. Intrinsic motivation on the other hand, entails the psychological rewards for example personal achievement, positive recognition, being appreciated and a sense of challenge among others. Our directors at Peytons General Supplies mostly rely of extrinsic motivation that includes increasing our sales commission and promotions. Other notable motivational factors that a leader can use to improve the performance of his team are economic rewards. These include offering fringe benefits, pension rights, pay increment and security among others. Similarly, employees are motivated by the creation of social relationships within the working place. These are attained by ensuring friendship among the workers, working in groups, being concerned with other employees and offering of relational orientation. An effective leader should have adequate skills on how to motivate individuals as well as teams within his or her organization. One of the ways of motivating individuals is by meeting their personal needs. For example, as Peytons sales executives in cases any one of us needs to be assisted in undertaking a particular task we are free to contact our sales manager. Similarly, leaders should give praise to their employees especially when they do exemplary work. In this way, they feel appreciated thus improving their productivity. Another keen way of motivating individual within an organization is by training them. For example, in our organization, newly recruited employees who may not have good marketing skills are freely trained by the sales manager on the various marketing strategies Team motivation is also important especially for the organisation that values team work. One of the notable ways of motivating a team is by building a team spirit. In this way, each of the members feels as part and parcel of the team. Additionally, a leader should maintain a good system of communication within his team. In this way, the leader can easily identify the problems that are been faced by his team members. Just as in the case of individual motivation, leaders should train and develop his teams. By holding in house training, the teams are educated on the various ways to undertake their activities such as attracting customers, branding and record keeping among others. Importance of a leader being able to motivate teams and individuals Apart from emulating good communications skills, a good leader must be able to motivate his employees. An effective leadership entails the process of developing and communicating a vision for the future, as well as motivating people as a way of gaining their commitment and engagement. A team leader should be able to create the right atmosphere where members of the team can perform their duties in a harmonious and peaceful way. Taking into consideration the positive implications of good performing employees within an organization, it is imperative for leaders to give rewards where they are deserved. In this way, he or she will motivate the employees to repeat similar performance or even better with an aim of receiving more rewards and for self satisfaction. Keeping the work team informed is another essential quality of a good leadership as far as motivation in an organization is concerned. This entails updating the team on the policies that have been initiated by the management team as well as change of responsibilities. Leaders should also be fair is allocating tasks. This is usually done by evaluating the team members to identify their strengths and weakness before allocating duties to them. In order to ensure that individuals are more productive, it is fundamental for team leaders to give their members scope for development. This can be achieved by giving them opportunities to undertake part time courses for example that relates to management and leadership. In contrast, a leader who disregards the importance of motivation makes the team members to lack commitment in achieving the objectives of their organizations. Additionally, employees who are not motivated lack sense of security, becomes aggressive including physical attack on others, emulate withdrawal actions such as resignation and regression. Leaders have a duty to support and develop their teams and their members. For the individuals, leaders should encourage them during the time the employee feel discouraged. For example, our sales manager at Peytons General Supplies held regular meetings with the sales executives who did not achieve their targets at the end of every month. During the meetings he strongly encouraged them an aspect that resulted to improvement in their performances. In his role as our overall team leader at Peytons, the manager ensured that all the groups had rules and regulations that every member was supposed to follow. In this way, he trained the members on how to become responsible in their future endeavors. References Baumeister, F and Vohs, D. 2004. Handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, and applications, New York: Guilford Press. Read More