[600] in magellan
THE DELICATE BALANCE BETWEEN LEADERSHIP AND TEAMWORK
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Anderson)
Thu Feb 22 15:55:39 2001
Message-ID: <3A957D4B.73961266@mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 15:57:47 -0500
From: Greg Anderson <ganderso@MIT.EDU>
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Good afternoon,
I thought you might enjoy this piece from Tomorrow's Professor on
Leadership and Teamwork. The content actually comes from the site:
AdvancingWomenNetwork.
Greg
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Folks:
The posting below is from an excellent webiste,
AdvancingWomenNetwork. [http://www.advancingwomen.com/index.html]
Among other things, the site has some great material on work-life
balance issues that should be helpful to all of us.
© 2001 Advancing Women. All Rights Reserved. Used with permission of
Advancing Women.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Just-in-Time-Teaching
Tomorrow's Academic Careers
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THE DELICATE BALANCE BETWEEN LEADERSHIP AND TEAMWORK
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It is impossible to overestimate the importance of a team approach.
First, both the complexity and the velocity of business today, which,
for any business on the Internet, is, at once, technical, global and
24/7, carried out in a couple of dozen different time zones, have
eclipsed one person's ability to control it all. A leader must rely
on his team. He must also seek answers, feedback, collaboration and
leadership in others, to be infused into his own leadership.
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Depending on your disposition and training, to be a leader is either
a natural, almost effortless role or a daunting and impossible task.
To be both a leader and the person whose vision and actions mold a
team-- to become both a team
leader and a team player at the same time-- is a challenge of the
highest order, but one which can make or break your company.
To Be A Leader You Must Both Inspire and Rely on Followers
The first demand of a leader is to take charge and establish the
objective. When John F. Kennedy established the objective that the
United States of America would put a man on the moon within the
decade, he inspired and led us. He did
not sit down and design the spaceship which would carry the
astronauts, weld it together, fire up the engines or create a process
to allow foods to be consumed in a weightless environment. For all of
that and the myriad thousands of details and processes, large and
small, he relied on teams of people in the government, in large
defense organizations; he relied on Congress to appropriate the
money, on the public to support the program and on the technicians
and personnel at
NASA, down to the people who drove the trucks and cleaned the
spotless cabins and helped the crew don their space gear. Each and
every man and woman who was involved in the mission was an integral
piece of it and responsible, in part, for its success.
Most projects, whether large or small, require teamwork.
The Communication Imperative
Think of any compelling leader, however controversial, from Winston
Churchill to Martin Luther King, Jr., from Joan of Arc to
Representative Barbara Jordan, and ask yourself what it was about him
that transfixed you, captured your attention or shaped your actions.
Great leaders have only one thing in common: the ability to
communicate their vision so clearly, with such feeling, that many are
moved to follow it. The same is true of ordinary leaders, like heads
of business. And those who aspire to be
heads of business or even to rise through the ranks, must learn, on
the most basic level, how to communicate.
The Ability And Willingness To Act Boldly and Decisively
Leaders learn to "spend" their popularity to accomplish their goals.
A 65% popularity rating is akin to a landslide. So leaders learn to
accept that about half the people won't like the course they're
pursuing, no matter what it is. They simply proceed, doing as best
they can, what they think is right, not worrying too much about
stepping on any toes. Leaders learn that harmony comes not from
keeping quiet and avoiding communication but as a positive
achievement, from putting differences on the table and working
through them.
Leaders choose to be bold and decisive and dominate the situation.
And at the same time, a delicate balance is required: leaders must
use all the skills they possess to inspire and lead a team, and but
they must never lose sight of the fact that they themselves are a
member of the team, subject to its rules and dynamics, responsible
for its short falls as well as its successes.
The Importance of Assembling And Working Together As A Team
Even if you're not the president seeking to ignite the imagination of
the nation and put man on the moon, even if you're a smallish
company with modest desires, like surviving the dot com maelstrom and
maybe someday reaching the 401 K stage, you must still lead a team.
Make it a good one.
When you go through the process of hiring people, you should remember
you are putting together the intellectual capital which will form
your company. This is the area that investors, bankers, analysts and
the public will look at when
attempting to decide how capable your company is, and how much money,
or confidence they should invest in it.
It is impossible to overestimate the importance of a team approach.
First, both the complexity and the velocity of business today, which,
for any business on the Internet, is, at once, technical, global and
24/7, carried out in a couple of dozen different time zones, have
eclipsed one person's ability to control it all. A leader must rely
on his team. He must also seek answers, feedback, collaboration and
leadership in others, to be infused into his own leadership.
More starkly, any one person could be run over by a bus, heaven
forbid. Or stuck in an elevator between floors in a power shortage
when decisions must be made, emergency generators must be cranked up,
juice must flow, somehow. Or a crisis could strike, and a genuine
crisis usually outstrips one person's ability to solve it because it
must be viewed from many angles and may have many components. And
speed counts.
Inspiration and Cohesiveness
Leaders inspire by articulating and evoking a vision of a goal
everyone in the organization wants to work to achieve. Individuals
may differ on how to achieve a particular goal, but in successful
organizations, a leader is able to inspire consensus on the goal.
Shared goals in organizations, where people are encouraged to "buy
into" and "own" the vision, foster greater teamwork and cohesiveness.
Research has proven that teams produce better results than
individuals, even geniuses. Teamwork maximizes individual strengths
and compensates for weaknesses. Cohesive groups also outperform
groups which lack cohesion with more talented members coaching the
less talented, and all pulling together for the common good, rather
than individual glory, a more successful approach to achieving group
goals.
Lead By Example
If you aspire to be a leader, it is you who must take the initiative
and lead the charge. You be the one to burn the midnight oil; you be
the one to test the new system, to take responsibility for the
corporate decisions. If this crop of decisions doesn't seem to be
working, either make them work or get them ditched. You take the lead
and your team will follow, and within that delicate balance, both you
and your team will assure success.
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