Leadership Portfolio

Significance of Teams

The essence of any team is a commitment they share. Without the essence of commitment, the groups of individuals perform as an individual, with it, the group of individual become an invincible unit of tremendous performance. The best teams always invest time to identify their purpose meticulously. Once they identify their goals they embark their struggle to translate those purposes into particular performance goals. Performance is a primary element that distinguishes a team from a group. Performance is a measure of success for the teams. A working group primarily counts on the individual contribution of the members that eventually gives group performance, however, a team always stride towards the outcomes that are far greater than what its members could achieve individually. Hence, a successful team is the one that worth more than the sum of individual efforts. The performance of a team can be inhibited by organizational boundaries and its hierarchy. As teams could potentially achieve an extra level, hence, it is reckoned that the teams are the primary work unit in high-performance organizations ( Katzenbach & Smith, 2005).

Characteristics of successful team

Therefore, the basic characteristic of the successful teams are:

· Challenges become exciting for them. They are no more afraid of taking challenges.

· It comprises of people with a passion to strive for the best.

· They have a space to excel. They innovate, fail and start over. It expedites the power and passion in them (Nayar, 2012).

Being a member of a team in my organization, I have identified all the preceding characteristics in my team. Different teams are working at different levels of an organization. All of the teams are working keeping in view certain goals and all these teams consist of passionate individuals, which are conducive to high performance.

Factors Important for Leading Teams

A team always entail a perpetual flow-through of new members to stay active and give a relentless performance. Leading always needs a depth of knowledge about the factors that can bolster the team performance. A leader of a team is responsible for a trade-off, which means they have maintained the stability in a team while moving forward. A leader is always responsible to set the profound goals for the team to achieve. Fostering vague goals and leaving to the members to work out on the details is not adequate (Stark, 2002).

Assessing a team is important as a leader. It is indeed indispensable to know for a leader whether they have a right people on their team and if they are moving in a right direction, catapulting the organization forward (Watkins, 2016). The organization, which I am a part of, a leader always assess the skills of its members and assign them tasks that are pertinent to their skills. In fact, assigning right task to the right individual at right time is also an imperative factor. These factors are indeed important to consider at a different level of the organization including executive level.

Aspects for identifying appropriate member for a team

Choosing the right team members for the right task itself is a meticulous task to perform by a leader. While choosing a member for a team some basic aspects that are needed to be considered are:

· Excellent Communication Skills: This aspect will enable the team members from different backgrounds to work effectively together for a specific purpose.

· Knowledge of Project: Taking in pundits with deep knowledge pertaining to a project is not a bad idea.

· Highly Organized: Well-disciplined people are highly organized and possess confounding time management skills (Jones, 2017).

Ensuring the successfully launched team

To ensure whether the teams have successfully launched or not, it is important to assess the team frequently. Similarly, the performance of the team can also profoundly signifies towards its potential and reveal whether it is successfully launched or not.

Factor important for team dynamics

Some of these factors that are important to bolster the team dynamics are:

· Know your team

· Solve the problem through feedback

· Define the role and responsibilities

· Pay close attention to communication skills

Evaluate the team productivity

The criteria for measuring the performance or productivity of a team is to discern their

· Job specific competencies

· Leadership competencies

· Morale

· Operational metrics

By assessing these factors the leaders can successively evaluate the performance of a team (Duggan, n.d.).

Empowering Team through Compassion

Compassion is something that emanates from deep inside us. Being compassionate means putting other needs before your own. Being a compassionate leader I will communicate openly. They openly ask the team members about their needs. Moreover, I would be flexible, I will set aside the rules and procedures whenever it is needed. I will not be afraid to exhibit my emotions, as being a compassionate leader I will consider it as a strength. People often think that exhibiting your emotions in a business environment will make you weak. The leaders that are not afraid to show their emotions, actually possess a great depth of character.

References

Katzenbach, J., & Smith, D. (2005, July). The Discipline of Teams. Retrieved from Harvard Business Review.

Duggan, T. (n.d.). Evaluation Criteria for High Performance Teams. Retrieved from Chron: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/evaluation-criteria-high-performance-teams-57312.html

Jones, T. (2017, Dec 02). 6 Tips for Choosing Effective Project Team Members. Retrieved from Bright Work.

Nayar, V. (2012, Jul 21). The Key Ingredients of a Successful Team. Retrieved from Harvard Business Review.

Stark, M. (2002, Jun 15). Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances - The Five Keys to Successful Teams. Retrieved from Harvard Business School.

Watkins, M. (2016, June). Leading the Team You Inherit. Retrieved from Harvard Business Review.