Signs of Ineffective Leadership
I learned a lot from studying this particular section. There were certain areas which stung a bit. I caught myself re-evaluating and often looking in the mirror. Sometimes we think we are excelling or surpassing in most arenas. However, it is great to have frequent self evaluations or provide feedback tools to our team in order to measure the temperature of our true effectiveness. I particularly like the Team Audit and Team Effectiveness Worksheets to assess many areas of team vision and goals all the way to team leadership.
Implementation of these tools can help to identify the following symptoms:
Lack of Participation
Failure of Member contributing creative ideas
Failure to get a consensus from team
Poor Communication
Lack of Team Identity
Potential dead end or stale results yielding from Groupthink
Like the question was posed, how would you discern if you or another team leader is providing less-than-stellar leadership?
Ricciano,
You might consider interviewing team members and asking about the leadership style and project results. Ask how they think leadership of the group might me improved.
Ron Obstfeld
I remember reading a quote from a successful business executive, it may have been Lee Iacocca, about a good way to get team members to express concerns in a meeting. The leader would discuss an idea, have a discussion, and then ask if everyone was in agreement. If they were, he said that they would not move forward until someone expressed a good reason that this could fail. I was impressed by this as a way to make it safe to disagree or share concerns. I use this as a technique when I feel that group think or apathy is taking place. One way that I can tell if someone is a good leader is if they approach problems with curiosity rather than blame and if their team members feel safe contributing honestly and taking risks.
Our depertment recently went through an accreditation visit. During the preparation, our director became very difficult to work with. This person is a very type A personallity to begin with. Although they did delegate assignments for the other team members to complete, with daedlines, every week we were hounded with questions if the task was completed yet. The pressure was enormous.
At one point, this person, stormed out of a meeting and yelled, "I will do it myself", and our deadline had not even arrived yet!
After completing this course, I now know practices and tools that will help me and my co-workers in the future.
