Interrelationships between Effective Leadership, Decision-Making & Empowered Self-Managing Teams - Coursework Example

Running heading: Effective leadership, decision making and self managed teams Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Name and Code: University: Date of Submission: Interrelationships between effective leadership, decision making & empowered self-managing teams Introduction The process of decision making, effective leadership, decision making in addition to application of self managed teams may be so beneficial to an organization. These three factors work together to form an inter-relationships; that is very essential in creating efficiency in organizations. This is evident for leaders who use decisions making skills and competence to carry out their functions effectively. Effective leadership Effective leadership involves the following: (a) Effective leadership, begins with what is the recognition of effective Leadership Qualities Effective leaders have many common qualities. These qualities extend to influence how leaders make their decisions, with respect to giving teams freedom to manage themselves. Effective leadership requires leaders who portray the following traits: (i)Listen openly to others A leader is required to listen to people he leads, as well as, other stakeholders of the enterprise. Listening skills are very important for the effective functioning of a leader in an organization. There is need for an organization to establish leaders, who posses listening skills, for this will help them to be effective in understanding, both the demands of the organization and that of workers. A leader should also be sensitive to listen, so as to come up with effective decisions that can push an organization upwards. (ii)Offer and accept constructive suggestions Besides a leader just having the ability to listen, there is need for a leader to have the ability to offer and accept constructive suggestions. Through the listening processes, constructive suggestions will be raised; an effective leader should identify the constructive suggestions, out of all that is raised, for through it, then solid solutions can be arrived at. This also calls for decision making, for a leader has to come up with a decision through giving considerations to the constructive suggestions. (iii)Give clear directions This is what requires much of the application of decision making. A leader should be able to give clear directions where needed. Many organizations are involved in processes that require collective responsibility from workers; however, an effective leader bears the greatest responsibility to give clear directions to workers. These directions relates to what workers are to do, how they should do it and by whom the responsibility is left for performing the task. (iv)Set and meet deadlines Work would always be arranged the order of priority and with some deadlines attached to it. It is paramount for an effective leader, to monitor the priority of those tasks and ensure that deadlines set are arrived well at. Any work that is brought down by a leader should first be broken down to feasible bits, arranged into priority levels, tagged with particular deadlines then implemented by observing the timeline of the set deadline. (v)Give formal and informal presentations For leadership to be said to be effective, there is need for a leader to have the ability to give formal and informal presentation. A leader portrays the image of the organization; therefore either informally or formally, he would give the picture of the organization through his/her presentation (Schein, 1992). (vi)Help members identify and solve problems This is a critical role that an effective leader plays in an organization. In the day to day running of an organization, there would be moments that problems would erupt up and this would call for a leader to exercise effective leadership, through identifying the problem and finding solutions to the problem. Effective leadership is characterized by leaders who: •Do what they say they will do. This is an aspect of integrity and transparency in managing leadership responsibility. These leaders keep the promises they make and follow through on their commitments. •Effectiveness in leadership is seen when leader’s actions are consistent with the wishes of the people they lead; and the people they lead have a clear idea of what others value and what they can do. •Effective leadership is too made of leaders who believe in the self worth of others. •A unique trait in effective leadership is that it comprises of leaders who admit to their mistakes; which increases their credibility. •Effectiveness in leadership is created when the leadership creates a climate that is open and trusting. •Leadership needs effective decision making for it to be a success. However this should not be done in isolation with the real task. An effective leader should be able to roll up his/her sleeve; he ought to show the members that he isn’t just a decision maker. This is because, members respect leaders, who show the willingness to work alongside them (Bennis &Nanus,1995). In leadership, moments would always come that key decisions has to be made by leaders. These decisions after being made are communicated to those under a leader; the most important thing that portrays effectiveness in the leadership is the feedback. This feedback is often two way; either from the leader or from workers. As a leader your feedback can be in the following ways: Silence –This type of response may portray indecisiveness of the leader, it is likely to encourage a decrease in performance and confidence of worker in the long run. Silence would make followers indifferent in knowing whether, their actions are appropriate or inappropriate. Actually, silence can create paranoia. Criticism – A leader when tying to bring to an end unwanted behavior or results, may criticize a member of a team. This if done with a wrong approach, often may hurt the relationship a leader has with team members. For the case of self managed groups, criticism by a leader may have more cons than pros. Advice – This is done through telling a team member what results you want and your preference of what is to be done. This should be accompanied with positive reinforcement, which takes advice a next step further. This type of feedback is encouraged for effectiveness in leadership (Johnson & Johnson, 2000). Effective leadership involves delegating Leadership For effectiveness in leadership, a leader may decide whether he/she can delegate tasks to others, by asking a number of questions: •What a leader would like to do and the need to see someone else do it. •Skills that team members can use more effectively. This is done by giving them more responsibility (Bennis &Nanus, 1995). After making a decision of the need to delegate, a leader needs to: Know and understand the team members, the things they did and what can they do •listen to the members and pick up information about what they want to do •let them know that you are willing to share authority •Outline for them the purpose of the delegation •show appreciation for their efforts Effective Decision making Decision making is such a core aspect in any setting. Leaders as well as other team members of organizations, are involved in the decision making process. It is very essential for leaders to effectively be involved in making decisions that are best for the teams they lead. This is because, how successful an organization or a team will be, is depended on the decisions that are reached at. For decisions can either strengthen or break up a team. For the case where the decisions to be made are reached at after a consultative process, then the decisions made are likely to be binding to the members of that team, than when the team leader has imposed a decision on them. Decision making process is such a significant aspect that can build good relations in the event, that the process is open and more involving. If more team members are involved in making decisions, then it would increase the harmony between leadership and team members. I would advocate for creativity in how decisions are made in an organization; however, the structure of the process of making the decision, can still be maintained through the following five key stages. Decision Making Process Define the objective This is the first step that includes defining the real objective of making the decision. It is dangerous to come up with objectives based on the problems, a team is going through. For the objective may end up being misdirected, instead there is need to define the objectives based on what the team want to achieve. This can be reached at after some brainstorming on the priority needs of the team, team member’s views, the expert views and the views of the leadership. When defining objectives, it should comprise of the objective statement, the timeline for meeting it and the content of the objective. Collect relevant information After defining the objective, then there is need to collect more relevant information relating to the objectives that were already set. Information regarding to the feasibility plan of the objective, information regarding the implementation of the plans, to reach at the set objectives, information regarding the new methodologies that may be appreciated in the future projects may also be looked at. Finally, information as regards to the individual and team responsibilities is also captured. In this stage, more unlimited space should be given, so that more information is gathered, so as to make final decisions be more binding. Implement and evaluate After collecting the required information, it then follows that whatever is reached at, needs to be evaluated and a decision should be made. This should involve implementation of the agreed decision and evaluation of the outcome. For the decision to be made well there is need to give consideration to views collected during data collection, the leaders views and the opinions of team members. Decisions are such an important pillar to a team, therefore, there is caution that the implementation should be done carefully; for any mistake may cause losses to the whole group. There are three key things to look at as a leader, when relating decision making self managed team (i) Environments for Decision Making The environment created by a team is critical for the decisions to be made. A free atmosphere would encourage innovation, creativity and the free will to raise their opinions that will push the group forward. It is important that the team should create an environment that would promote its members to be interested on the affairs of the group, through giving their suggestions, contributions and views of issues. (ii)Methods for Decision Making Self managed teams should be able to arrive at decisions in the different ways. There are different ways that can be adopted. Each of the method has advantages and disadvantages. The team should look at the methods and come up with newer methods for decision making. (iii)Tools for Decision Making There is need to develop a number of tools to facilitate the teams, to be able to visualize the requisites for decision making in self managed team As opposed to individual decision making, which involve making up one’s mind; team decision making is a process by which, a team chooses an alternative. Team performance is depends largely on the choices reached at by the team itself; and these choices, in turn depends on the processes through which, teams go through to come up with a decision (Zawacki & Norman, 1994). Therefore, in the case of high performing teams, then the team requires processes through which quality decisions can be arrived at (Holpp, 1996). The members of a self-managed team may help the team(s) to improve their performance, as well as, reduce the likelihood of dysfunctional teams, through increasing cohesion in their efforts to improve their capabilities to make team decisions. Every day, self managed teams make many decisions; this ranges from the small scale decisions to large scale decision, in addition to the impact of the decisions arrived at. An example of a small scale decision, may be why, where, and when to is the date to hold the next meeting. A decision such as this involves resources, in terms of time and energy that is spent, to determine and come up with the purposes, and location of the meeting. In a self managed team, the inability of a team to effectively make small-scale decisions in time and effectively, may lead to a dysfunctional team. On the other side, a large-scale decision may be in the form of determination of the approach to adopt for the design project. Such decision involves much spending of time and energy of team members, who research on the diverse alternatives, alongside their advantages and disadvantages. It is indeed true that some team members may already be commited to this approach. This team decision has the potential and should be cautiously made, for they have the ability to make or break a team. Importance of effective decision making in self-managed teams Each self managed team has to make many decisions during its existence. The decisions in such teams may be made in an adhoc ways or by the use of procedures that augment the probability of valuable choice. The procedures by which decisions are reached at, may dramatically affect the quality of the decisions that a team makes in addition to increasing team performance. For instance, the choice of a design approach might be made by a thoughtful analysis of the pros and cons of each alternative. Teams in their effort to make informed choices in selecting team decision making processes, they have to learn how others have thought about decision making processes (Development Dimensions International, 1995). Empowered self-managing teams These teams which are otherwise known as self-directed teams, the natural teams, and/or semiautonomous work groups; have been on the increase over the last five years, however articles have been written over this subject matter from as early as 1940s. I would discuss the roles of self-managed teams within an organization. Such a model includes the following roles: a) Upholding the organizational and personal values and principles b) Accomplishing team's work c) Organizing team's work environment d) Managing team's work processes; e) Participating in organization-wide systems f )The participation in the organization-wide strategies and g) Managing team processes. Basically self managed team may be defined to comprise of employees, whose daily responsibility is to manage themselves and the work they do. The members of self-directed teams typically are in charge of handling job assignments, planning, scheduling work, making the production-related decisions, and taking action on problems that arise (Block, 2002). Members of these self managed teams are characterized by: a) Face-to-face interaction in natural work groups within the organization b) Defined Responsibility (ies) in the production of a definable product; c) The responsibility for a set of interdependent tasks; and d)The control over management and execution of the given tasks. Zawacki and Norman (1994) suggest that successful self-managed teams evolve through five stages. These include: Stage 1: This involves the typical hierarchical structure where the team leader is in charge of the provision of one-on-one supervision. Stage 2: It involves a leader evolving into a group manager whose main role is making the transition into team coach. Stage 3: It involves the group manager becoming the team coordinator and providing a structure for self-managed team members, to be able to receive the necessary training to take on more leadership tasks (Bellamy et al., 1994). Stage 4: It is involves the team assuming most of the duties previously reserved for the group manager. Stage 5: The team manager (i.e., the team coordinator) now becomes a resource for the team. Reasons for use of self-managed teams (i) It makes customers typically to receive customer requirements and feedback directly, as opposed to it being filtered through a supervisor. The team members also have an opportunity to use this first-hand information to respond in an appropriate manner to customers and thus continually increase their own learning over time (Silverman, 1995). (ii) The cycle time used for making on-the-spot customer-related decisions is much shortened. (iii)The desire of the organizations to promote the satisfaction of employees; in this type of team, the human potential has the opportunity to be cultivated to maximum potential as the team members take on additional roles and responsibilities. (iv) Finally, this method allows organizations to be more proactive. It releases individual employees or team members, from first-line supervisor roles that are typically reactive in nature, and allows the engagement in future-oriented work, which ultimately encourages organizational growth. In real sense, an inappropriate rationale for initiating self-managed teams involves the removal of a layer of management as a means to contain the costs. However, it can further be noted that these responsibilities are related to the processes of self-management. Conclusion In conclusion, as organizations leaders make effective decisions, they increase the use of self managed teams, in addition to making leadership effective. There is a necessity to increase participation of members in organization-wide training, upgrading the efforts towards organizational assessments, and finally improving the quality systems and certification audits. Participation of members needs to be more involving during the making of organization-wide Strategies (Kline, 1999). The role of team members to participate in organization-wide strategies requires vision directed work. Actually teams cannot perform this role, unless the organization has a vision and strategy for the future. Looking at all this, I believe that leaders ought to devolve decision making to self-managing team. References Bennis, W. & Nanus, B. (1995). Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Bellamy, L. (1994). Team Training Workbook, Arizona State University. Retrieved April 4, 2011, from http://www.eas.asu.edu/~asufc/teaminginfo/teamwkbk.pdf. Block, P. (2002). The Answer to How is Yes: Acting on What Really Matters. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Development Dimensions International. (1995). Self-Directed Teams: A Study of Current Practice. Chicago: SAGE Publishers. Holpp, L. (1996)."Self-Directed Teams are Great but They're Not Easy." Journal for Quality and Participation, December, 3, 64 - 70. Johnson, D. & Johnson, P. (2000). Joining together: Group theory and team management skills. (7th. ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Kline, N. (1999). Time to think: Listening to ignite the human mind. London: Ward Lock Wellington House. Kline, N. (1999). Designing Effective Organizations: The Sociotechnical Systems Perspective. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Schein, E. (1992). Organizational Culture and Leadership. Califonia: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Shonk, J. (1992). Team-Based Organizations: Developing a Successful Team Environment. Ilinnois: Business One Irwin Publishers. Silverman, L. (1995). Using Teams to Achieve Customer Satisfaction and Optimize Business Performance. London: Cengage Publishers. Zawacki, R. A. & Norma, C. (1994). Successful Self-Directed Teams and Planned Change: A Lot in Common. London: Spring Publishers. Read More