Leadership Challenge: Selecting Team Members

When we think leader, we think of the person in charge, the person who is making all the decisions within an organization. We believe that a leader should be charismatic, smart and able to influences others to do what they want and be successful at their role. Nahavandi (2006) defines a leader as a person who influences individuals and groups within an organization, helps them in establishing goals and guides them towards achievement of those goals, which allows them to be effective. In order to be a good leader you will need to be effective in your role. Effective leaders are proven when their supporters achieve their goals, can work together as a team and can adjust to the many changes within the company and the changing demands from exterior forces. Is there a difference between a manager and a leader? Most people would say that a good manager can be a good leader. The functions of a manager are similar to that of a leader; the functions of a manager are to bring order and regularity to the company by planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing directing and controlling. Throughout this report we will show the differences between leading and managing. Should the company move towards a team based, empowered organization and why. We will provide ways in which to deal with resistance to the new changes within the company. Leading vs. Managing Leading and managing is said to be different in the way they organize people. A manager’s role is to capitalize on the output of the company through managerial operation by organization, planning, staffing, directing and controlling. These functions allow the manager to focus on the resources in addition to people while leading focuses on influencing people. Both are needed in order for a company to be successful and effective. They are often considered to be the same thing, the main distinction between leading and managing is that we manage things and lead people. Pascale (1990) states that a managers do things right, while leaders do the right thing. You will need to lead the managers into the need of a team-based environment which will allow them to manage the lowest level employee to achieve their goals. The effectiveness of teamwork in a transfer to a team-based organization, consistency improvement practices by showing them learning by leading as an example, mentoring and guided delegation are important to improve the social effectiveness of the team as a whole. Team-based, empowered organization Moving to a team based environment in order to increase customer satisfaction can be considered to be a good thing for the company on a whole. Allowing the lower level employees the ability to make decisions that are within the best interest of the customer and that will benefit the company. They will get a sense of pride in their work because they are more involved in the development and decision making process of the company. There are many companies today who operate under a team-based environment, like 3M, General Electric and Deere & Co. They are known for their good management practice. While other companies were moving toward a more technology environment Deere realized to having a world class company was in the organizing its people. Deere brought their product and manufacturing engineering team together to create the yellow backhoe loader-digger. By doing so Deere the teams shift from tentative synchronized engineering to organized united engineering. Both teams were involved from the design phase to the production phase. In 1988 for the first time Deere had everyone from all the department involve in the production of their new machine, tool design, welding, product and manufacturing engineering, purchasing, the shop floor, and the accounting department. Moving your company to a team-based environment will benefit everyone involve from the lowest level employee to the managers and executive.