as being responsible for ‘boundary management’ for their
groups, ie relating to more senior management and support
staff and external contacts and working with other groups.
■ The role of team leaders is, however, primarily to act as
coordinators and facilitators; their style is expected to be
more supportive and participative than directive.
■ The team is highly autonomous, responsible to a consider-
able degree for planning and scheduling work, problem-
solving, developing its own performance indicators, and
setting and monitoring team performance and quality stand-
ards.
■ Job specialization is minimized, team members operate flex-
ibly within the group, tasks are rotated among them and they
are multi-skilled.
■ The team meets at least once a week as a group.
■ Effectiveness as a team member is a major performance
criterion in appraisals.
■ Some form of team pay, related to group performance, may
be provided.
■ The team is encouraged to develop new ideas for improving
performance – awards for suggestions are team based.
TEAM EFFECTIVENESS
An effective team is likely to be one in which the structure, lead-
ership and methods of operation are relevant to the requirements
of the task. There will be commitment to the whole group task
and people will have been grouped together in a way which
ensures that they are related to each other by way of the require-
ments of task performance and task interdependence.
In an effective team its purpose is clear and its members feel
the task is important, both to them and to the organization.
According to Douglas McGregor (1960), the main features of a
well-functioning, creative team are as follows:
- The atmosphere tends to be informal, comfortable and
relaxed. - There is a lot of discussion in which initially everyone
participates, but it remains pertinent to the task of the
group.
How to be an Effective Team Leader 289