Abstract

Leadership is the most critical reason for success and failure of self-managing work teams in organizations today. Leadership is a relationship that consists of three main components: the leader, the team members, and the organization. For leadership to work and create a supportive atmosphere for teams, every one in the relationship must believe teams will work and perceive that the other one believes teams will work too. The leader and team members must also have certain skills and characteristics for teams to work. While the organization’s culture and structure must support the development of work teams. If one of these components of leadership fail then the teams will fail. A Leadership Readiness Scale was created to help determine whether organizations have the leadership necessary to make teams work.

Leadership in Teams

Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus (1997) said " leadership is like the Abominable Snowman, whose footprints are everywhere but who is nowhere to bee seen" (p.19). Leadership is everywhere but no one seems to be able to determine or figure out what makes up good leadership. Bass discusses in his book a study by H.L. Smith and Krueger (1933) in which they researched various primitive cultures around the world and concluded that leadership exists among all people, regardless of their culture, race or beliefs. No matter where you look in history: at animals, primates, humans, Greek mythology, the Bible, Plato, or any other society, leaders appear. Even where societies do not have established or elected leaders, chiefs, or rulers, someone (a leader) always exists who initiates a process and plays a critical role in the decision making process of a group (Bass, 1990). Leadership has always been a crucial part of life.

Today leadership has become even more important, especially to the success of organizations. The reason why is many organizations in the U.S. are switching to self managing work teams to deal with the increasing change in their work environment and so they can adapt quickly to the change at minimum cost to them. A survey done by Sims and Manz in 1993 revealed that at least 40% of U.S. employees would be working in self-managing teams by the year 2000. Many more organizations probably will eventually switch too, as the business world becomes more technology based and changes faster which will require the organization to adapt quicker. Therefore they will need employees to be more competent, take more initiative, and be able to make decisions on their own. The employees will have to learn to be leaders themselves. The self-managing work teams can provide this to many organizations. But one of the most important reasons these teams fail is leadership. The teams do not get the needed support or direction to succeed. As a result they do not develop correctly and do not meet the organizations goals or expectations (Vecchio, 1997).

Leadership does not come from one person. Bass & Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership (1990) defines leadership as:

An interaction between to or more members of a group that often involves a structuring or restructuring of the situation and the perceptions and expectations of the members. Leaders are agents of change – persons whose acts affect other people more than other people’s acts affect them. Leadership occurs when one group member modifies the motivation or competencies of others in a group. (p.19-20)

Leadership is a process that involves three main components. One is the leader, the second is the employees, and the third is the culture of the organization. If the relationship between these three components is not compatible than leadership will fail in the long run and so will the team (Hollander, 1978). Just like a relationship between two people, if one of them does not believe it will work then its not going to work.

The first component of leadership is the leader. For good leadership to occur in teams a leader must have certain beliefs, perceptions, characteristics, and skills. Leaders of self-managing work teams job is basically to teach the members of the work team to be leaders themselves. To do this the leader must have certain beliefs and perceptions about employees and teams. First, the leader must believe that the employees are the company’s most valuable assets. And that employees can grow, learn, and have the capability to lead. Thirdly, that employees probably know more about the task they are working on than anyone else in the company and therefore should be involved in the decision making. And when given availability to necessary information, resources, and training that the team is capable of making a quality decision. And lastly, leaders must also realize that they don’t have all the answers and cannot succeed without other members of the team. That teams are effective and make better decisions than individuals alone (Bens, 1998). These beliefs are important because a leader must first believe and have the perception that the team concept will work for it to work.

A leader must embrace the Wallenda factor. The Wallenda factor is the ability to only think about succeeding, and concentrating on the task at hand and not thinking about failing. The Wallenda factor was named after a famous tightrope walker Karl Wallenda who fell to his death. Karl Wallenda was getting ready for his most challenging stunt of his life. And for 3 months prior to his greatest tightrope walk all he could think about was falling, instead of concentrating on the task at hand, walking the tightrope. So as a result of his perception that he was going to fall he started doing things and portraying the feeling to his wife and coworkers that he was going to fall and not make it. For instance, he checked and personally supervised the construction of his tightrope for the first time. Something he never did. He was not concentrating on succeeding but failing, and as a result he fell (Bennis & Nanus, 1997).

Leaders, who believe that self-managed work teams will not work, will engage in acts that hinder the development of the team. This is better known as Merton’s self-fulfilling prophecy. If the leader does not have confidence in the ability of the self-managing team, than the leader will not adapt to the changes he or she needs to make. Instead the leader will try and keep things in the traditional hierarchy setting which will hinder the development of the team (Vecchio, 1997).

Good leadership also requires the leader to have certain skills and characteristics. One is leaders must have good interpersonal skills. They must be able to deal with conflict that could arise between team members as the team develops, or between the team and other members of the organization. The leaders must know their personal strength and weaknesses as well as their team members. Knowing this will help the leader determine what motivates him or her and the team members to excel and achieve self-actualization and intrinsic satisfaction (Bens, 1998).

Leaders must also be willing to share power and control with the team. Leaders must act like a player/coach to the team and not like a traditional boss. Leaders are to act like a facilitator, they must be there for support and encourage employees to solve problems on their own. The leader can not step in every time something goes wrong. The idea of self-managing work teams is to empower employees and give them increased responsibility and authority so that they can help the organization adapt more quickly to the changes in the business environment. Leaders are like colleagues not bosses. They treat employees like equals. Leaders are equivalent to the 6^th man in basketball or the utility player in baseball. Leaders come in only every now and then to help out (Hollander, 1978).

Giving up control and actually learning to depend on the team, is one of the hardest parts for a leader. They usually take the stance that they are losing their power and hence job. But they are not losing their power and just sitting back and becoming a laisse-faire leader. Leaders form a relationship with their team in which power is exchanged back and forth like money (Bennis & Nanus, 1997). By empowering employees leaders earn more legitimate power in return. Legitimate power is the power to exert influence on others because you have earned their respect and trust. Good leaders use legitimate power to get things done and do not rely on their title to enforce their wishes (Cangemi, Kowalski, Khan, 1998).

Relying on this type of power, coercive power, in which threats of punishment are used for employees who do not comply, can have several detrimental effects on the team. Two main ones are people quitting and people who do not physically quit but mentally quit. The latter type cost the organization money. They will do just enough to get by and even attempt to sabotage the work. The quality of work will also go down as a result of unmotivated employees. (Cangemi, Kowalski, Khan, 1998).

Knowing when to empower and increase the responsibility and accountability of each team member is an important job also. Harvey Robbins, President of Robbins & Robbins, Inc., refers to this skill as "boundary management". The leader must determine based on each individual’s skills and capability what they are capable of doing. By clarifying to each team member what they are accountable and responsible for they will know what is expected of them and what they can do on their own without having to get permission from a higher up authority. This is extremely important when a new person joins the team and does not have all the skills of other members in the team. Once the leader determines how much power to give the employee, the leader then must make sure to give the employee access to the information, resources, and training to do the job required of him or her (H. Robbins, personal communication, September 15, 1999).

Harvey Robbins created a chart (Figure 1) that helps leaders and the team members know specifically what their boundaries are. It’s a tick- tack- toe shaped chart with goals and objectives in the middle box, resources in the box above it and quality in the box below it. To the left of goals and objectives is the quantity box and to the right is the schedule box. As a team member becomes more skilled the leader will put his or her name in one of the boxes and then that team member will be responsible for that job. So if employee A was put into the scheduling box, he or she would now be responsible for possible making his (her) schedule or the work schedule of the other team members, depending on the specifics. The other boxes deal with being in charge of the quality of the product produced, the quantity of the product produced, and in charge of the resources used to produce the product. Other responsibilities could be added to the chart if needed. The only box, according to Harvey Robbins, that is not negotiable is the center box: goals and objectives. Leaders will never completely give up control of goals and objectives because they must make sure the team members’ goals and objectives stay in align with the organization’s goals and objectives. But the team members still are involved in the decision-making (H. Robbins, personal communication, September 15, 1999). So depending on the maturity of the team, several members will assume leadership roles in some form or another. So team members must also learn about leadership and their leader is the one they will be most influenced by. So it is critical an organization has good leaders to develop their future leaders.

Figure 1. Boundary Management Chart

To help empower the team, the leader must become a resource of the team. A pivotal skill that allows a leader to do this is good communication. The more the team and leader communicate the more interdependence there will be between the two. As a result, the leader and the team will be able to influence each other more. This helps create a participative relationship between the two instead of a subordinate one. Studies have also shown that more open communication leads to better job satisfaction and a better perception of the leader by the employees (Pincus, 1986). The open communication also helps build trust between the leader, the team members, and the rest of the organization. Besides strengthening the relationship, communication also makes groups more effective in the work place. A study by O’Rielly (1977) showed that better decisions were made by employees who had easy access to information (Bass, 1990). When a leader gives not only horizontal but upward communication paths to the team, the team members will be more effective. The upward communication will allow the employees to gain more information and solve problems easier. They will also be more motivated to work knowing that they have an influence or say in what goes on above them in the organization. A leader who provides access to information and resources to the team will also help them with unfamiliar tasks and allow them to take chances with minimal risk.

A leader must have patience, and allow the employees to take risks on their own and make mistakes, as long as the employees are trying their best and learning from their mistakes. A mistake must be looked at as a process of learning or as one leader put it "a mistake is just another way of doing things" (Bennis & Nanus, 1997, p.64). Success comes from learning from your mistakes. Leaders must not point the finger or blame anyone for mistakes. They must set up an atmosphere in which team members look for solutions or the root cause of the problem and not spend wasted energy finding out who did it but spend energy on figuring out how to stop it from happening again.

Leadership is about "doing the right things", unlike a manager who concentrates on "doing things right" (Cangemi, Kowalski & Khan, 1998, p.13). Leadership is about effectiveness while managers deal with efficiency. In other words the manager is the one who catches the fish do feed a person for a day, while the leader shows the person how to fish and how to do the right things so the person can feed himself (herself) for life. Leader looks to empower the employees to take risks on their own while the manager looks to make sure the employee makes no mistakes during the process.

For leaders to allow employees to take risks they must also trust them a great deal.

Trust is an important element of good leadership. It is something that is very hard to earn and very easy to lose. Several of the above skills are ways in which trust is built between employees and leaders. One was sharing of information and access to upward communication. A second was allowing team members to take risks without fear of punishment. Another way to help build trust is through another form of communication in the workforce, feedback.

Good leadership requires giving good feedback. Good leaders must be able to give feedback frequently to team members and promote an atmosphere in which team members ask for feedback from the leader and from each other. The feedback process must be a two-way communication. Its is not a time when a leader lists what an employee does wrong. That creates a victimization mentality in the employee when it comes to feedback. Feedback is another opportunity to succeed and shouldn’t be looked at as a blaming session by the employee. In fact, the best leaders will promote an atmosphere in which the employee actually comes to him or another member and elicits feedback on his own. The receiver of the feedback should be the one in charge of the process. The leader’s job is to supply information to the employee that is specifically requested or solicited by the employee. Leaders should make sure they give objective data back to the employee and not subjective or a perception of how well they think the employee is doing. The leader must make sure the employees understands the data given to them and how it relates to the team member’s goals and objectives. Giving data back allows the employee to understand where he or she is in the company and how well he(she) is performing in relation to his(her) goals and objectives. Subjective or evaluative statements by a team member or leader does not give a good judge of how an employee is doing, because everyone’s opinion is different. To elicit the data, the leader must teach employees to ask specific questions and not general ones about how they are doing. Finally, leaders must also realize that they should ask the team members for feedback. This will help promote team members to do the same. And leaders must realize that sometimes they are not the best person to give the feedback and that someone else who has worked with the employee in question might be better suited (D. Radcliff & L. Burrell, personal communication, September, 13, 1999). This goes back to the maturity level of the team. At some point, team members will assume leadership roles and giving feedback is one of them.

Finally, leaders must make sure the team has clearly defined goals and that those goals align with the overall vision, goals and objectives of the company. Leaders, as stated earlier, are concerned with effectiveness. So knowing the company’s vision, objectives, and goals will allow the leader and the team to develop strategies that will differentiate their product or service from others and provide them with a competitive advantage. If the leader is going to be effective and knows the organization’s vision and goals than the leader should be able to answer Peter Drucker’s questions. They are: "What is our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer buy? What will our business be? What should our business be?" (Cangemi, Kowalski & Khan, 1998, p.20). The leader must know the answer to these questions and make sure the team knows them too, so that everyone’s efforts are pointing in the same direction.

The second component of leadership is the employees. In self-managing work teams employees eventually take on leadership roles themselves. Therefore they too must learn the skills, mentioned above, and believe that teams will work. Leaders are the employees’ mentors and therefore they must be good role models. What they do and how they react during critical incidents will go along way in determining whether or not the employees believe the organization is serious about the move to teams or not. Also how the organization distributes information and scarce resources is another big factor in the employees’ decision about whether they believe the organization thinks teams are an important part of their success (Cangemi, Kowalski, & Khan, 1998). If the leader and the organization does its part to champion the move to teams than the employees will be motivated to make the teams work and will gain a sense of accountability and ownership in the organization. The employee must believe and perceive that both the leader and organization want to make the change to teams work.

But for leadership to completely work the leaders must also perceive that the organization is serious about the shift to teams. The organization is the third significant aspect of leadership. If the leaders don’t believe the organization is serious than they will not put the effort forth to make teams work. The leaders play the most critical part in the shift to teams. Their role is the most difficult and demanding. So if the organization has not aligned its visions and goals to adapt to the team structure than one can reasonable believe that leaders will not make the effort or take on the heavy burden of trying to make the teams work.

The organization must reward leaders for team development. And like leaders the organization must not blame the leader for the team’s mistakes but allow the team and leader to grow and take risks. The organization must not focus on the short-term performance of teams but the long term. The reason is that many organizations that switch to teams initially have a drop in performance before the actual gains occur. So if leaders perceive that the organization is going to hold them accountable initially for the teams performance than they might revert back to or hold on to their old authoritative ways of leading. Resulting in the bad leadership and the failure of teams (Stewart & Manz, 1995).

The organization must also clearly communicate with leaders what their role is to make sure the leaders understand that they aren’t going to lose their job. The organization must point out the benefits of the switch to teams to leaders or they will not do it. The organization must show the leaders that they are not losing power but gaining legitimate power and will have more time to concentrate on tasks beneficial to them instead of having to act like a parent and watch the employees all the time. If leaders do not see the benefits of the switch to teams and feel threatened than they will create goals and objectives that will benefit themselves and not the organization (Stewart & Manz, 1995).

Every level of culture in the organization must be structured to support teams or the employees or leaders might not believe in the effort and in turn hinder it. The levels of culture are artifacts, espoused values, and basic underlying assumptions. The first level of culture is artifacts. These are visible structures and processes in the organization. For example the organization could get rid of offices or leave the office doors open to promote information sharing. They could get rid of reserved parking for upper office management to promote that everyone is a colleague. Or structure the office in some other way to promote the team structure. The second level of culture is called espoused values. These are the strategies, goals, and philosophies of the organization. As mentioned earlier, the strategies, goals, and vision of the organization must match that and support the team structure. The final level is called the basic underlying assumptions. These consist of the unconscious, thoughts, feelings, or beliefs about the organization. This is the most important level of culture. This is the most important source of how organizations are perceived. The organization can change these perceptions by how they act in critical situations, by actually using artifacts (the first level) like slogans or signs to change the perception of the organization (Cangemi, Kowalski, & Khan, 1998). Having every level of the organization in congruence with each other and teams is an important step to having good leadership.

In an attempt to measure leadership and whether an organization has the leadership for teams, I created the Leadership Readiness Scale (Appendix A). The scale consists of several questions about the beliefs and skills needed for leadership to exist. The scale also takes into account the relationship between the employees, leader, and organization. The scale consists of two sets of statements. One set is rated by the leader and asks about his or her beliefs, skills, and perception of the organization and team members. The other set asks about the employees’ beliefs, skills, and perception of the organization and leader. The items are statements and ask the rater to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 whether they fully agree with the statement or disagree with the statement (1 = not at all to 5 = I fully support the statement). Each set consists of 35 statements and 10 of them (items 8,9,12,14,15,18,22,30,31,32) require reverse scoring. Seven questions in each set (items 15,16,18,30-33) are focused on the rater’s relationship with the organization. Then once the leader and the team members have rated the statements, the scores should be summed together for each one. Then the total scores for each rated set of statements should be totaled together and divided by the number of people who filled them out. Then to determine what the score means I created a scale with 5 numbers: 35, 70, 105, 140, and 175). These numbers were determined by multiplying the 35 statements by the numbers 1 through 5. Considering that 1 is a score that reflects bad leadership on the statements (except on the reverse statements) then an average score of 1 for a total of 35 would indicate that bad leadership would be present in the organization. This organization would then need to look at the statements and look at itself and determine where the problem in the relationship is occurring. A score of 2 or total of 70 on the scale would also be bad. A score of 3 (or total of 105), I believe, would mean the organization has a good basis for leadership but still can use improvement in certain areas to enjoy the full benefits that teams provide. A average score of 4 (or anything above it) on the statements for a total of 140 would mean that good leadership exists in the organization and they should experience most if not all the benefits that teams provide. And of course an average score of 5 on the statements would be the ideal leadership for teams. So hopefully if the organization does not get the score it wants, it can use the statements as clues to find out where the leadership is not working. The Leadership Readiness Scale is just an attempt to measure leadership but I believe with further studying and experimenting with the scale it can be proven to be useful to companies in determining how good their leadership is for teams.

Since team members must eventually become leaders themselves, they too must learn leadership skills. Therefore I also attempted to create a Team Member Leadership Scale which determines whether a team member is ready to assume a leadership role in the team. This scale consists of 17 statements and has a 5 point rating scale like the pervious scale. The statements are about the team member being assessed for leadreship, and should be rated by the other team members and the current team leader if the organization chooses too. Statements 6,9,10,12 require reverse scoring. Once the scale is completed the scores should be summed up like in the pervious scale. Also similar to the previous scale, if the average statement is rated as a 3 or better then I would assume the team member needs some improvement but is ready to lead. Anyone who receives an average below 3 would need more training and development.

Good leadership is the key to the success of teams. But leadership is not just the leader’s responsibility. Leadership is a relationship between three parts: the leader, the team members, and the organization. Having good leadership can help an organization attain the numerous benefits from having self-managed work teams. Teams bring together people with different skills and experiences that allow the organization toquickly respond to innovation, changes in the business environment, and changes in the customers need faster and more effectively than anyone person can do. Teams also solve problems quicker because of increased communication (Katzenbach & Smith, 1999). Teams help build trust and collective accountability in organizations. This increases the team’s sense of ownership in the organization and improves the workers intrinsic motivation to work harder. Teams also reduce absenteeism, turnover, and increase productivity, quality, cost savings, and morale (Vecchio, 1997). With the increasing need to adapt faster and faster to the rapidly paced technology environment, the benefits of teams are well worth the effort to create the correct leadership to make teams work. Leadership has been the key to organization’s success in the past and it’s now more important than ever to the success of organizations in the future.

References

Bass, M.B. (1990). Bass & Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership. New York, NY: The Free Press.

Bennis, W. & Nanus, B. (1997).Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Bens, I. (1998). Team Launch. Toronto: Participative Dynamics.

Cangemi J.P., Kowalski C.J., & Khan, K.H. (1998). Leadership Behaviors. New York: University Press of America.

Hollander, E.P. (1978). Leadership Dynamics. New York: The Free Press.

Katzenbach, J.R. & Smith, D.K. (1999). The Wisdom Of Teams. New York: HarperBusinees.

Stewart, G.L. & Manz, C.C. (1995). Leadership for Self-Managing Work Teams: A Typology and Integrative Model. Human Relations, 48, 747-767.

Vecchio, R.P. (1997). Leadership: Understanding the Dynamics of Power and Influence in Organizations. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Appendix A  
Leadership Readiness Scale

Rated by leader in question. Rank on a scale of 1 to 5. One being not at all, 5 being I fully support the statement.

1. I provide information and resources to my team.
2. I have good upward communication.
3. I encourage all members of the team to participate.
4. I involve team members in decision making
5. I am comfortable to giving up responsibilities to my team.
6. I believe teams work more effectively than one person.
7. The most valuable asset in the company is our employees.
8. I do not believe employees have the capability to lead.
9. I do not believe employees can grow or learn leadership qualities.
10. I believe the people closest to the task know most about it.
11. I believe employees are capable of making quality decisions when given the necessary resources.
12. I have all the answers and do not need my employees to succeed.
13. I do not think long about the mistakes I make but move on.
14. When a mistake is made I find the person who did it.
15. I do not believe the organization wants teams to succeed.
16. The organization is structured to support teams.
17. I look at leading teams as a challenge.
18. I fear losing my job to teams.
19. My goals and objectives match that of the teams.
20. I am trusted and respected by my peers.
21. I am a very patience person.
22. I prefer working by myself than with others.
23. I trust my employees
24. I provide objective data and not evaluative statements during feedback.
25. I ask my employees for feedback.
26. I know our customer.
27. I know the needs of our customer.
28. I know what our business is.
29. I know what our business wants to be.
30. The organization’s goals and objectives do not align with the team’s.
31. The organization’s vision is not structured for teams.
32. I feel like I’m held responsible for the teams mistakes.
33. The organization rewards me for team development.
34. Team members come to me to ask for advice and to discuss problems.
35. I am comfortable with change.

Add up the numbers (reverse scoring for items 8,9,12,14,15,18,22,30-32) to get the total score.

Rated by team members:

1. My leader provides information and resources to us.
2. My leader gives me access to upward communication.
3. My leader encourages all members of the team to participate.
4. My leader involves all team members in decision making.
5. My leader is comfortable with giving up responsibilities to us.
6. I believe teams work more effectively than one person.
7. My leader is a valuable resource to the team.
8. I do not have the capability to lead.
9. My leader does not have the capability to train and teach me new skills.
10. If given the chance I could suggest ways to improve my job.
11. If given the necessary resources I believe I can make a quality decision
12. I have all the answers and do not need my team members to succeed.
13. I do not fear punishment when making mistakes.
14. When a mistake is made my leader usually blames someone instead of finding the root cause of the problem.
15. I do not believe the organization wants teams to succeed.
16. The organization is structured to support teams.
17. I look forward to working in teams.
18. I fear losing my job to teams.
19. My goals and objectives match that of the teams.
20. I am trusted and respected by my peers.
21. My leader is very patient person.
22. I prefer working by myself than with others.
23. I trust my leader.
24. My leader gives me objective feedback and not evaluative statements.
25. My leader asks me for feedback.
26. I know our customer.
27. I know the needs of our customer.
28. I know what our business is.
29. I know what our business wants to be.
30. The organization’s goals and objectives do not align with the teams.
31. The organization’s vision is not structured for teams.
32. My leader gets blamed when the team fails.
33. The organization rewards me for team efforts.
34. I go to my leader regularly to ask for information and discuss problems.
35. I am comfortable with change.

Add up the numbers to get the total score (reverse scoring for items 8,9,12,14,15,18,22,30-32).

Rated by other members of the team (including current leader)

1. Team member knows his/her fellow team members’ weaknesses and strengths.
2. The team member has good feedback skills.
3. The team member is organized.
4. The team member knows the team’s operations.
5. The team member has good planning skills.
6. The team member does not have good communication skills.
7. The team member knows the technical skills for the job.
8. The team member encourages everyone in the team to participate in team meetings.
9. Team member does not encourage everyone to participate in problem solving.
10. Team member rarely compliments fellow team members verbally for a job well done.
11. Many team members use the team member in question as a resource to get things done.
12. Team member does not have good interpersonal skills.
13. Team member knows the future plans of the team and anticipates future situations.
14. Team member knows the skills needed to be a leader.
15. Team member tries to get everyone involved in team functions.
16. The team member is well liked and trusted by others in the team.
17. The team member is comfortable with change.