Leadership

In the first few months of this project, the group had functional leadership – (whose position is achieved by virtue of their expertise) – This was quickly accepted by the group as the most efficient means to start this project, with a clear leader to drive the work effort.

Peters and Austin (1986) identified a list of characteristics of a ‘leader’ and ‘non-leader’. Below are some of the relevant characteristics to this projects leadership:

• Cheerleader – Often said encouraging words during meetings

• Arrives early, stays late – correct in the majority of meetings.

• Decisive and Persistent

• Straightforward – To the point.

• High Commitment to the project

• Good communication skills

However, some of the leadership characteristics not present in the group leader where:

• Delegates whole important jobs – only in rare cases to those with special skills.

• Prefers discussion rather than written reports

• Gives honest, frequent feedback

• Has a high level of trust, tolerance and respect to team member’s opinions.

Initially, leadership was very important in establishing a group structure amongst ten unfamiliar individuals. The advantages of a clear leader at the beginning of this project, was that work was able to start quickly and a lot was achieved in the first few months. However, the disadvantages were that many group members did not fully understand the purpose of the work and how it fit into the overall structure of the module. A more integrated and informal start could have been less productive however it may have created a better understanding of the objectives and the meaning of work to be undertaken in the long-term.

The main role of the leader in this group was to:

• Gather updates from different group areas such as primary research team, secondary research team, creative team etc.

• Delegate new tasks between group members

• Head meetings and decide on group deadlines for work tasks.

Overall, this was not a ‘perfect’ leadership style as suggested through theory, however I believe it was very successful in regards to our team and the project.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 8:33 pm and is filed under Online Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.