I think that a team that collaboratively, honestly, sportively, and openly work together towards a common goal (objective) in a coordinated way, the members of which are giving their best and are able to produce results, support, trust and be accountable to each other would make an ideal team for me.
While there are many theories and practices in developing an ideal team, in my opinion these are series of actions taken in right consequence that would address gaps based on maturity/development level of the team as broken down and presented in both Three-wave pattern and Tuckman’s model. E.g. at the stage of Taking Hold (from Three-Wave Pattern) and Stage 1 –Forming (from Tuckman’s model) I would take the following actions:
Clarify objectives and task of each team member
Make the mission the motto of the team
To have a clear direction, see the future and beware of the next steps in formation/performance of the team
Take initiative and introduce exercises that will strengthen the trust among team members, allow them to learn about each other more and increase the level of commitment
Teambuilding exercises would be very beneficial for this stage
Emphasize small group projects that the team members familiarize working with each other
Establishes norms, rules, performance expectations, indicators and monitoring tools
The leader should to absorb, analyze, come up with quick fixes and think of using the mentioned analysis/ lessons learned as an information to shift the next stage of three-waive pattern in a more informed way
The leadership style of the team leader is acceptable to be directive
E.g. My team is currently transitioning from Stage 2 – Storming to Stage 3 – Norming; According to the Three-Wave Pattern my leadership style is Stage 2: Immersion transitioning to Stage 3: Reshaping; from the five most common performance gaps the most important existing ones that need to be addressed are: Ability to delegate tasks, and the ability to communicate clearly and effectively, Ability to clearly define the roles of team member. The Table 1 nested below flashes out my plan on what strategy to use and how to address the gaps.
I found the Three-Wave Pattern not only informing my approach to addressing performance gaps, possible outcomes, next steps, leadership style but also a tool that shapes the stages of development of the teams, members and leaders and their behaviors at each stage by keeping the possible expectations clear relevant to each stage.
For my team and industry, as demonstrated in the table below, the Team Culture, Gap Analysis, Adult Learning, Leading Through Teaching, Creating Team Synergy, Task and Relationship-Focused Processes are very dynamic tools and techniques that play significant role in team development and success at any stage of team development as the team members, leadership, functions and the objectives change all the time in my industry. I have came up with a matrix that structures the analysis above.
A while ago, someone asked me whether there an optimal level of creativity for a person to have? And is it possible to be 'too creative'? Is it true that creative people can be difficult to manage? I tend to think that it depends on the industry, workplace and organizational setup in determination of the limits of creativity. In most of the organizations creativity is to bring positive, viable, feasible and progressive results/outcomes but these are not the only results that creativity can bring. Creativity also can lead to negative, bad experimental results and therefore each organization and its business should guide such processes and have fairly structured framework for creative solution analysis, testing and application. I believe that if it is the expectation of the organization from some individuals/departments/units to come up with creative ideas and convert them into viable solutions, there should be no limit to creativity and it should not be considered 'too much'. 'Too' is a comparative term and unless you qualify and quantify creativity in a particular sector of an industry, I do not think it is would be applicable. 'Too creative' also may not be applicable to use for specific positions/jobs/departments in organizations that require creative minds to come with creative solutions to achieve better results. In my opinion creative individuals should have the following characteristics: independent, expressive passionate and perhaps operating beyond organizational norms. There is also the possibility of wide dialog and debates, especially when a leader rejects some ideas from creative individuals and it can be difficult for some leaders to say 'No'. Some leaders might not like question 'What if…' that creative individuals should often ask. Good leaders should know how to manage creative individuals without discouragement and coming in the way of generating new ideas. The leaders should be able to support and create right environment for creative individuals to come up with feasible solutions, monitor the process and make rewarding. Nonetheless, to say difficult to manage sounds somewhat subjective and would depend on experience and personality of the leader and the creative individual.
This blog is a great reading and educative material
presented in short blog posts and aims to help busy professionals working in the
related field to understand the components of leadership, how those really work
in organizations, make comparisons with their organizations in a very creative
way. The author of this blog is a flexible, dynamic and adaptive leader who
looks into problem solving and solution finding in a creative way.
You will also find in the posts filtered news, opinions and
theories by experts in the area of leadership in organizations, experience, facts
and thoughts around executive decision making, creative thinking
and leading with creativity, strategic thinking and planning, challenges of current
leaders and techniques to overcome those, coaching and mentoring, negotiations
and lots more.
