One of the better books (although not necessarily the easiest to read) on leading teams was written a few years back by Professor Richard Hackman of Harvard University.
The book "Leading teams: Setting the stage for great performances" (Harvard Business School Press, 2002) emphasizes that it is not so much what a leader does once the team is in place that is important. Rather, it is how the team is constructed in the first place that counts the most.

Think about it for a minute.

There must be hundreds of books out there that talk about "how to lead" in terms of how to treat people, what to have as day-to-day priorities, how to create effective communication, trust, honesty, ethical conduct, etc. But barely any books out there on how to structurally set up a team to help it succeed.

Professor Hackman's points are fairly simple & straightforward, yet often neglected in real time.
In order to have a successful team, you need to design the team properly up front, not focus on leading it once it is established. Proper team design focuses on issues such as:

• Does the task actually require a team? Does the team have a goal that will compell and motivate people of itself, or is it simply drudge work?
• Does the team have the right people? Do the team members have the skills, knowledge, and authority to accomplish the task? Are the members on the team from the beginning, or is membership constantly changing - forcing the team to re-justify all of its decisions every week?
• Does the team have a supportive structure? Are people rewarded for team work? Do they have access to information, and are they encouraged to learn from and teach their team members? Do they have access to technical resources & coaching when needed?

If you design a team properly, it is much less dependent upon the leader than a poorly designed team. Consequently, the team leader is able to spend more time focused on other team issues such as suggesting performance strategies and working the relationship between the team and its external environment (gaining resources, minimizing political interference, etc.). The team members, in turn, benefit from this increased independence by having a greater sense of their own accomplishment, and being able to really push the use of their own abilities (individually and collectively).

Again, its not always the easiest read (as opposed to many of the personality-based, popular leadership books). However, if you can begin to act upon these principles, your teams will get off the ground much sooner, have far fewer authority conflicts, and ultimately will be more productive.

Check it out!

Transparent leadership for the future

This link takes you to another blog, but a really interesting post about the growing need for leaders to act in a transparent manner.
The authors main point is that with the proliferation of social networking and nearly everyone having an online presence, the old days of ruling from behind a curtain are pretty much over (so much for the Wizard of Oz!).

Very interesting: check it out.

http://weblogg-ed.com/2009/leadership-transparency/

The importance of goals

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit an award celebration for a Boston area non-profit called "Social Capital Inc." (really cool organization if you're interested in non-profits helping develop capacity in urban areas - check them out at www.socialcapitalinc.org ).
As some of the award recipients were speaking, it struck me how inspiring their stories (and consequently their activities) were. I drove back to NH thinking to myself "how can I come up with an inspiring story like that to tell about myself, or teach my students to create such inspiring stories for themselves?"
The reality is, most of us who work in the business world rarely get to deal with truly "inspiring" goals. We are handed goals such as "increase profits by x%", "cut costs by $x", or "complete this project within the next 3 weeks". These don't exactly inspire most of us to climb up to the rooftop and yell "look what I do!"
So how can we translate our relatively mundane organizational goals into something that will get people excited?
The old MBO (Management By Objective) philosophy still applies - even though it has been forgotten by many as a "fad". If you can tie someone's work directly into a larger (strategic level) goal, it often gives the goal more weight and more inspirational appeal.
One of the best examples I know of is a DOD contractor who has their headquarters relatively close to us here in NH. Their company motto is "we protect those who protect us"; and indeed that is precisely what they do. Their products make for greater safety among U.S. pilots, sailors and infantry. They get the wonderful benefit of periodically having servicemen and women come back from overseas, pay the organization a visit, and talk about how a particular piece of equipment saved their life. Now *that's* a goal!
How can the rest of us get this sort of excitement out of our jobs and our goals? When you start a project, make sure you have a good idea of what its potential impact could be. How does it tie in to strategic imperatives at the organizational, divisional or even departmental level? How will it impact the lives of others (both inside and outside the organization)? The more things you can tie into your goal, and the more expansive you can be in describing it, the better able it will be to inspire motivation among your team members.

A model for "perfect teamwork"?

A recent commentary report in the United Kingdom's Telegraph proposes that a rowing crew (in particular the "light blues" of Cambridge University) is a model of "perfect teamwork". (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/rowing/5044937/Cambridge-University-Boat-crew---The-perfect-team-model.html)
Having spent over 8 years as a member of collegiate and post-collegiate crews, and also having spent many, many years studying teams, I am largely in agreement.
However, the rowing crew lacks one thing that *most* teams are in sore need of - individual accountability. In a rowing crew, all members of the crew (with the lone exception of the coxswain) perform the exact same role, and there is no measurement of individual performance when the boat is on the water. (yes, I know, there is a huge amount of individual performance measures before the crew is assembled - I am well aware of erg scores, seat races, etc. - but once the crew is set and on the water, there is no individual measure).
Rowing crews make up for this lack of individual accountability through countless hours in training and competition - both as a collective unit and as individuals. This extensive period of practice allows the members of the crew to develop trust that each member will perform to his or her highest levels, despite the fact that there are no individual measures of performance.
Business organizations do not have the luxury of spending hundreds of hours in "practice". Their imperative is to get the team up, running, and in performance mode as soon as possible. They don't have the time to build up huge levels of trust between team members.
However, business organizations put teams together to take advantage of individual differences. Therefore, these teams not only can have individual roles (and thus individual accountability) but *should* have those individual roles and accountability.

However, we need to remember that teams are a technology that we have imported (imperfectly) from the sports world. Therefore, we need to make sure that we *adapt* this technology to our own needs, rather than simply adopting it unthinkingly.