Role of leadership in a team:
Leader is the key element that decides the success of a team. It is presence of leader that can result in to effective decision making, giving direction to the team and ensure participation of each member. He can be appointed by the management or elected by the team members. He performs the following activities.
Group task activities: It is requirement of a group/ team to have members who are willing and skilled enough to perform the task assigned to the team. They perform the activities that are essential for the contribution towards the team goals. Group will face difficulty to accomplish the objectives if these activities are not performed adequately. So it is vital for a leader to work upon these activities. Some important task related activities of an effective group leader are following:
Initiation: Suggesting new ideas or styles of defining problems, offering new methods of troubleshooting.
Gathering information: Attempts made to collect facts, asking suggestions and ideas from the related people.
Sharing information: Offering reliable and significant information and data
Summarizing: Evaluating the group functioning, clearing doubts and presenting logic and practical possibilities of the suggestions of members.
Group maintenance activities: The activities related to the supporting the social, psychological and interpersonal relationships among the members of the team are known as group maintenance activities. A leader should execute these activities very effectively. It protects the social system of the group. Group maintenance activities are important to and if not done effectively the relationship of the group members may suffer and members would become dissatisfied. It can lead to development of conflict in the group. The members of a group have to perform following maintenance activities.
Encouraging: It includes activities like giving importance to the members by praising the members, accepting their ideas and suggestion, indicating team spirit and affection.
Harmonizing: Mediating squabbles within the group, helping resolving interpersonal conflicts, maintaining harmony of the group.
Setting standards: Deciding minimum acceptable behavior pattern, and standard operating procedure for the group activities.
Following: Cooperation with the group members, going along with the group, favoring the ideas and suggestions of members.
Gate-keeping: Encouraging participation of all the members and prevent people to dominate other members.