Leadership quality and styles

Flexible structures
The structures that most organizations adopt are line organizations, project organizations or
matrix organization.

A line organization is based on a hierarchy of managers responsible for ongoing operations

supported by staff organizations, which exists to serve the goals of line. Companies that
produce products typically have a line organization structure.

Staff functions are those which need to serve all the lines such as human resources and
accounting. In a for-profiting company line managers will be responsible for the bottom line
profitability of their line of business.

In a matrix structure the project manager may have little written authority but needs to rely
primarily on personal relationship and personal power. The diagram below gives an indication of
how the matrix structure works.

Production Sales Distribution

Product A

Product B

Product C

Figure 7.1 matrix structure

This figure shows the team working on product C would be responsible not only to the head of
that product, but also to the heads of the production, sales and distribution departments.

Within a team you will find a mixture of different people with people with different assignments
but that does not necessarily require a specific structure. For each issue or process someone
needs to be the recognized leader someone has to believe it is his responsibility to drive an issue
otherwise it make become forgotten. There will also be a sub-set of people most appropriate to
make contributions. It could mean that a leader for one issue might be a contributor for
another.

The team structure that develops will be flexible such that the right people work togetherfor any
topic given.

Linking pin
Renis likert proposed that the structure of an organization should be formed around effective
work groups rather than around individuals. He devised an overlapping structure that involved a
linking pin process in which the leader member of one team was a subordinate member of the
team above. The diagram below is of a project organization:

Steering committee

Linking pin person

Project managers

Project teams

Likert argued that this type of structure improved communications, increased cooperation,
more team commitment and faster decision making.

Working culture
The working culture of an organization is determined by the following elements:
 Labour force
 Work organization
 Working environment
 Employment conditions
 Labour relations

The key elements of the labour force include:

 Numbers employed
 Social characteristics
 Contractual status
 Recruitment sources

Team work has become an important part of the working culture and many businesses now look
at teamwork skills when evaluating a person for employment. Most companies realize that team
with multiple skills to produce, and a better product will result when a team approaches is taken

Diversity issues within teams

Diversity can be defined as the presence of differences among members of a social unit. It is an
increasingly important factor in organizational life as organizations worldwide become diverse.
Jackson et al (1995) differentiate between two sources of diversity readily detectable attributes
and underlying attributes.
 Readily detectable attributes are those which can be easily recognized in a person such
as age, gender, or national.
 Underlying attributes represent personal characteristics, which are not so easily
identifiable such as cultural beliefs, personality characteristics, or knowledge level.

Focusing on diversity and looking for more ways to be a truly inclusive organization is not just a
nice but it is good business sense that yields greater productivity and competitive advantage.

Teams with members from varied backgrounds can bring different perspectives, ideas and
solutions, as well as devise new products and services, challenge accepted views and generate a
dynamic synergy.

Winning team players are aware of and appreciate diversity in their team member’s individual
styles, perspective, and opinions. A team that does not appreciate and value diversity among
team members defeats the purpose if a team. Their best, winning teams bring together players
with diverse talents, experience, and perspective to accomplish on their own. Teams that lack
diversity in breadth of skills, experience, and point of view are poorly prepared to solve complex
problems or succeed at challenging tasks that, by their nature, require diversity.

Anti-discriminatory practice

Everyone is unique. Working practices and behaviors that discriminate, stereotype or label
people are limiting and impact negatively on group level of motivation. A team that can
acknowledge and appreciate difference is strong. There is no simple short cut to integrating the
values of equality and diversity into an organization’s culture. There can be commitment across
the top team and a superb set of policies but in the end, many elements of the working culture
are actually determined at team level. That means everyone has a part to play in developing an
inclusive culture.

The team leaders should:

 Promote a flexible approach to work.
 Use team meetings to discuss equalities issues including the development, progress and
monitoring of the operational team equality action plan.
 Support their team, and the individuals in it, to feel comfortable in raising equalities
issues in meetings and performance reviews.
 Include a discussion and review of equalities targets and equalities issues, including
training and development needs, in the team meetings.
 Act promptly, confidentially, sympathetically and appropriately to informal or formal
complaints by individuals in the team concerning discrimination, unfair treatment.
 Endorse their selves and team to receive training, support and development
opportunities on equalities issues.

Team interactions

Belbin’s team role theory

Belbin researched business game and drew up a widely used framework for understanding roles
within work group. He identifies nine roles.

The first Team Role to be identified was the “Plant”. The role was so-called because one such
individual was “planted” in each team. They tended to be highly creative and good at solving
problems in unconventional ways.

One by one, the other Team Roles began to emerge. The Monitor Evaluator was needed to
provide a logical eye, make impartial judgments where required and to weigh up the team’s
options in a dispassionate way.

Co-ordinators were needed to focus on the team’s objectives, draw out team members and
delegate work appropriately.

When the team was at risk of becoming isolated and inwardly-focused, Resource

Investigators provided inside knowledge on the opposition and made sure that the team’s idea
would carry to the world outside the team.

Implementers were needed to plan a practical, workable strategy and carry it out as efficiently
as possible.

Completer Finishers were most effectively used at the end of a task, to “polish” and scrutinize
the work for errors, subjecting it to the highest standards of quality control.

Team workers helped the team to gel, using their versatility to identify the work required and
complete it on behalf of the team.

Challenging individuals, known as Shapers, provided the necessary drive to ensure that the team
kept moving and did not lose focus or momentum.

It was only after the initial research had been completed that the ninth Team
Role, “Specialist” emerged. The simulated management exercises had been deliberately set up
to require no previous knowledge. In the real world, however, the value of an individual with in-
depth knowledge of a key area came to be recognized as yet another essential team
contribution or Team Role. Just like the other Team Roles, the Specialist also had a weakness: a
tendency to focus narrowly on their own subject of choice, and to priorities this over the team’s
progress.

The nine roles are complementary and belbin suggested that ideal team should represent a mix
or balance of all of them, if managers know employees team role preferences, they can
strategically select, cast and develop team members to fulfill the required roles.

Belbin insists that a sharp distinction needs to be made between:

 Team role
 Functional role

Dynamics within teams

To evaluate team dynamics it may be helpful for the team leader to:

1. Assess who is performing each of Belbin’s team roles. Who is the team’s plant,
coordinator, monitor-evaluator and so on. There should be a mix of people performing
this task and maintenance roles.
2. Analyze the frequency and type of individual members contributions to group
discussions and interactions.
 Identify which members of the team habitually make the most contributions,
and which the least.
 The team has a problem on its communication process.

Neil Rackham and Terry Morgan have developed a helpful categorization of the types of
contribution people can make to team discussion and decision making.

Category Behavior Example

Proposing Putting forwad suggestions, new
concepts or courses of action
Building Extending or developing someone
else’s proposal.
Supporting Supporting another person or his
proposal
Seeking information Asking for more facts options or
clarification.
Giving information Offering facts options or
clarifications.
Disagreeing Offering criticism or alternative
factor opinions, which contradict
a person’s proposals or opinions.
Attacking Attempting to undermine another
person on their position: more
emotive than disagreeing.
Defending Arguing for one’s own point of
view.
Blocking/ difficulty stating Putting obstacles in the way of a
proposal, without offering and
alternative.
Open behavior Risking ridicule and loss of status
by being honest about feelings
and opinions.
Shutting-out behavior Interrupting or overriding others;
taking over.
Why don’t we look at a
flexitime system?
‘Yes. We could have a daily or
weekly hour’s allowance,
apart from a core period in
the middle of the day’.
‘Yes I agree, flexitime would
be worth looking at’.
‘What exactly do you mean
flexitime?’
‘There’s a helpful outline of
flexitime in this article’.
‘I don’t think we can take the
risk of not having and staff
here at certain periods of the
day’.
‘in fact I don’t think you’ve
thought this through at all’.
‘Actually, I’ve given this a lot
of thought, and I think it
makes sense’.
‘What if the other teams get
jealous? It would only cause
conflict’.
‘I think some of us are afraid
that flexi-time will show up
how little work they really do
in a day’.
‘Nonsense. Let’s move on to
something else-we’ve had
enough of this discussion’.
Bringing-in behavior Involving another member;
encouraging contribution
Testing understanding Checking whether points have
been understood.
Summarizing Drawing together or summing up
previous discussion.
‘Actually, I’d like to hear what
Fred has to say. Go on, Fred’.
‘So flexi-time could work over
a day or a week; have I got
that right?’
‘We’ve now heard two sides
to the flexi-time issue: on the
one hand, flexibility; on the
other side possible risk. Now.’