Team-building and its relation to the individual Essay

Team-building and its relation to the individual - Essay Example that of leadership. While a view holds that executive and policy determining managers should assume and nurture leadership roles; it is the view here that management and leadership are two distinct functions and should be developed as such. This paper looks at definition of leadership function in the any organization's management milieu and in the direct context of team building, at the same time keeping intact applicability of drawn constructs to broader organized units such as nation and government. In order to do this the paper draws from the examples of biographies and writings of Franklin, Emerson and Melville and discusses how the responsibilities as a leader can be met in order to develop an effective team for the accomplishment of the organizational goals that in the presence of dissent and disagreement. The paper rests its theoretical arguments on the three important conceptual frameworks i.e. of the leadership authority, empowerment of people, and the quality imperative ass umed by the leadership. In course of discussions the leadership function is distinguished from the management function and theoretical types of leaderships are summarized. A view holds that leaders are people oriented and their main task is to inspire people. Here the leaders are somebody who is responding to a call to serve and motivations limiting altruistic expanse of usual executive managers are bounded only by the limitations of such leaders in respect of their personal abilities. The primary functional output for leaders is a change and their capabilities are assessed in terms of controlling the process of this change. This is the approach theme to leadership assumed in this paper. That is to mould and control change to suit organization's objectives. Whereas managers are task and process oriented and their main task is to organize such tasks and processes. Management's main output is task done in target time at target cost. In plain language Management is assigned the task of producing and maintaining a degree of predictability & order. Leadership on the other hand assumes the function of producing change under a constantly updated schemata of direction and vision. According to Bennis "They(leaders) offer people opportunities to create their own vision, to explore what the vision will mean to their jobs and lives, and to envision their future as part of the vision for the organization," (Bennis, 1997). Leadership is the process of motivating others to work to meet specific goals and objectives. This direction and motivation are the practical steps that a leader can take to empower others and develop a high-performance workplace. Leadership is deliberately causing people-driven actions in a planned fashion for the purpose of accomplishing the leader's agenda which is often a superset of the organizational agenda. In the fast paced information technology based changed commercial scenario the leadership role is best summarized by (Vaill, 1997) as," One is looking at a human being (Leader) facing in real time a condition that is problematic for the organizational objectives the person is pursuing. The objectives themselves ma y be changing, and the problematic condition may be changing as