Abstract
At any rank of a firm, leadership and teamwork are crucial for success. Where leadership does not have the expertise or competence to handle teamwork productively, the team lacks the zeal and confidence necessary to work together successfully. The aim of this study is to ascertain the manner in which triumphant leadership is significant for ensuring victorious teamwork. This research used qualitative technique of collecting and analysing data. Data was collected from Levi’s company’s store in Abu Dhabi. The sample for the study was comprised of twenty workers. The findings of the study were that both leadership and teamwork are vital in an organization and are major determining factors in the success or failure of an organization. The study recommends that the leadership of organizations incentive team that exhibit excellent performance as an approach of promoting valuable teamwork. Other recommendations given in the study are that leaders should improve teamwork by making the staff members know one another, ensuring that they are at ease discussing a range of concerns, and through outlining apparent responsibilities for every team memb
Leadership and Teamwork
1. Introduction
1.1 Background
In all organizational operations, processes and structures, leadership and teamwork are necessary for organizational success. Leadership and teamwork are vital to organizations especially in the current times marked by increased uncertainty, modification, and transformation in the business environment. Leadership, the mobilization of individuals towards achievement of set organizational objectives, is not limited to top managerial positions; it is diversified to include each rank of management within the organization for effective and efficient achievement of success. With such modifications, the proficiencies of collaboration and team building have been interlaced with the abilities of leadership within teams. In the modern world, nearly every demanding task is achieved by working in teams through successful leadership (Yang, Huang & Wu 2011). Big companies normally employ teamwork in projects some of which have international scope. Small firms employ teamwork to make sure that their services and supplies get to the maximum possible number of clients. Learning institutions have enhanced teamwork element in different lessons as learners work jointly to generate documents, resolve difficult problems, design presentations, and accomplish projects. The primary benefit of operating in teams is the capacity to merge expertise and abilities. With successful leadership, a team benefits from the broad scope of proficiencies that no single person could possess alone, such as analytical proficiencies and marketing abilities.
1.2 Problem
Successful leadership and teamwork enhance the professional connections involving the workers, leaders, and the management. Promoting teamwork boosts the confidence in the leaders and has a constructive influence on productivity. Nevertheless, there are hindrances to creating a successful team setting, and having the capacity to identify the challenges to teamwork is a significant task of successful leaders. In cases where leadership does not have the skills or capacity to handle teamwork successfully, the team lacks the enthusiasm and confidence required to work together as a single entity. Long-term objectives require subdivision into smaller targets to make the group capable of recognizing its successes or failures and create any vital modifications to its course of actions. Where there are no evidently set objectives for the team to accomplish, the members of the team do not have a means of exercising their proficiencies or bringing together the talents toward accomplishing a common goal.
1.3 Aims, Objectives, and Scope
The aim of this study is to establish how successful leadership is critical for ensuring successful teamwork. This study is proposed to target businesses where tasks are accomplished through teamwork. The objectives outlined below have been set with the purpose of meeting the aim of the research:
- To determine the influence of leadership on the outcomes of teamwork
- To establish the aspects of leadership vital for successful teamwork
- To develop conclusions and practical recommendations for effective leadership and teamwork
1.4 Research Questions
- In which way does leadership influence the outcome of teamwork?
- What characteristics of leadership are necessary for successful teamwork?
2. Literature Review
Though leadership and teamwork tend to represent dissimilar desirable qualities, they are strongly connected with business and other sectors (Tannenbaum, Weschler & Massarik 2013). A team denotes the gathering of individuals that have complementary proficiencies and that are dedicated to a common intention, performance objectives, and advance for which they make themselves jointly responsible. Moreover, a high-performing team is the team that carries its undertakings excellently and yields outcomes that exceed both anticipations and the outcomes of other groups; such a team is outstanding (Yang, Huang & Wu 2011). It is simple to affirm that a leader directs while the team follows the leader with the intention of accomplishing the set goals. However, high performing teams have their successful leaders as affiliates. Successful leaders are the individuals in an organization that others desire to follow, and the most dazzling leaders are as well equally proficient team members (McIntyre & Foti 2013).
The influence of leadership varies from one organization to another with many companies flattening their hierarchies and creating work teams, with command and control leadership paving way for enhancement and endowment (Goetsch & Davis 2014). Some complex tasks in the workplace could be difficult to be undertaken by a single person, particularly when they require being accomplished within a given timeframe. Teamwork with poor leadership is not fruitful. Leadership requires establishing the strategies that lead the group and assist it attain its objectives (Yang, Huang & Wu 2011). For teams to be successful, they require excellently defined objectives. Through undertaking the overall accountability for the practice concerns, the facilitative leaders offer the team the chance to be fully engrossed in the activities of the team. In spite of the numerous kinds of challenges that teams encounter, if leadership assists in handling the challenges, the teams could realize excellent outcomes (Meredith Belbin 2011).
Pulling a team of different people to operate through teamwork is a difficult task. Challenges inherent in teamwork include violent territoriality, motivation systems that recompense an individual instead of shared accomplishment, and distrust generated by an acquirement, unification, or key internal reformations (Reynolds 2012). Nonetheless, at a period when firms are greatly depending on cross-functional groups at each level to create novel initiatives, it is critical to utilize the innovativeness and creativity that teams offer. Because teams act as the fundamental building blocks of many firms, transforming groupings into high-performing players is crucial (Bush 2012). Some of the factors that aid in the creation of effective teams include facilitative leadership, which has the greatest influence.
Facilitative leadership is dissimilar from the manner in which leaders could be taken as the conclusion makers, organizers, administrators, or the people at the peak of the organizations (Cooper et al. 2011). The task of a facilitative leader is to create a significant section in the leadership practice. Such a leader adds significance through controlling the difference between practice and content. This allows the team to operate despite the various challenges and conflicts the team may face. Through performing their tasks successfully, the facilitative leaders considerably decrease the probability of the team going off target or encountering hindrances to fruitful teamwork (Lussier & Achua 2015).
2.1 Conceptual Framework
The literature review assists in the generation of a conceptual framework establishing the impact of leadership on the success or failure of an organization. Challenges in teamwork could arise in different forms, encompassing a high-status task, a process-enhancement struggle, an opponent to be conquered, or an opportunity to turn into the appealing underdogs. A predicament and pressure to accomplish an overwhelming undertaking in a rigid time frame (for instance, establishing a new information technology system or instigating a brand promotion) denote other forms of difficulties. An intricate policy or uncongenial time limit makes the teams have inadequate time to discuss, evaluate, and implement ideas. Handling the challenges and motivating the teams to accomplish their objectives requires great leadership abilities (Reynolds 2012). On this note, facilitative leaders have to be significantly, indisputably concerned with assisting individuals shine. Such leaders have to realize that switching from individual task to joint effort is not an intellectual progression, but an emotional practice. In this regard, facilitative leaders have to meticulously convince people to give their best while working as a team.
Challenges Leadership and Teamwork Result
3. Methodology
3.1 Research Technique
This research work applied a primary means of collecting data, in addition to a qualitative technique of analyzing data. This allowed the excellent evaluation of the influence of leadership on the outcome of teamwork. The data for this study was collected from a Levi’s store in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Levi’s is a privately owned American clothing corporation reputed across the globe for its Levi’s product of jeans.
3.2 Sampling
To begin with, the data collection process was undertaken through unofficial discussions with the workers at the Levi’s company such as the store operators and supervisors. Such discussions were also held with the store manager who authorized the researcher to select some workers in the store to take part in the interview. The justification for the intensive conversations was the stipulation of a comprehensive realization of the experience backing the study. The absolute study sample consisted of twenty employees that were selected to take part in the study. The participants were thirteen male and seven female workers in the Levi’s company.
3.3 Data Collection
Once the participants for the study were selected, semi-structured interview questions were utilized as they let the researcher create perceptiveness into the explanation of the participants and how they perceive leadership and teamwork in the company. Before the participants had began answering the interview questions, the researcher deemed it fit to provide an explanation of the significance of the study, the sort of the inquiries, the privacy of the responses given and the liberty to take part. After this, the researcher created room for the interviewees to ask for more explanation on any issue before embarking on responding to the interview questions whose duration was roughly an hour. The participants were then appealed to consent to the application of a tape recorder. The tape recorder played a key task in enhancing the exactness of collected data and ensuring a lasting documentation for future reference if need be. After the collection of the data, the recorded information was transcribed thus creating a constant source for verification. All the participants attributed the success of teamwork and the company at large to the facilitative leadership in the company.
4. Data Analysis, Main Findings, and Interpretation
There is a broad scope of forces that make leaders in Levi’s company to perceive the requirement for change and ensuring effective teamwork unavoidable. Such forces encompass the changing expertise, information outburst, swift product obsolescence, the excellence of working environment, and the varying form of the labor force. Attributable to effective teamwork and facilitative leadership, the Levi’s company has been triumphant and fast rising. The modular production practice, which makes use of teamwork, has been implemented in Levi’s for more than ten years. The rationale behind this practice was to operationalize ideals via accomplishments planned, for instance, to execute total quality and offer monetary and non-monetary incentives for anticipated conduct, to enhance productivity, and to encourage and recompense excellent teamwork with the help of standards set for assessing personal and team performance while highlighting that each person is anticipated to maintain excellent values to retain Levi’s in the leading position.
The responses by the interviewees have altered the ordinary evaluation of organizational psychology, which emphasizes on groups and interrelations amid groups. From the responses by the participants, the leaders in the company put more weight on personal training and growth, which plays a key role in leading to the success of the teams and the company in general. It seems that a wider view is required to consider individual input to the success of the company while taking into consideration the organizational, team, and personal contributions and establishing strategies to advance the entire structure. Advancements in the Levi’s company have been actuated in particular by the requirement to have an effective teamwork that facilitative leadership develops with the purpose of ensuring triumph.
Habitually, a successful team requires leaders that exhibit powerful leadership to ensure that every worker has a team-anchored approach. To fruitfully handle teamwork, an organization needs successful leaders. Greatly skilled and practiced leaders generate more knowledgeable decisions. The application of unsurpassed leadership strategies allows leaders to make sure that their teams work proficiently. This enhances quality for clients since the employees are well trained to address the needs of the clients. Success leadership will as well enhance team triumph and assist better the performance of the organization. Leadership characteristically signifies the capabilities of people to motivate, guide, and lay down the goal for other people to pursue. Triumphant firms depend on having leaders that create ideas and then direct their subjects in carrying out tasks that are aimed at the realization of the ideas and achievement of objectives (Goetsch & Davis 2014). Leaders could have official administration or supervisory responsibilities and could ascend informally in a work team.
Facilitative leaders offer practice expertise that effect their understanding of tools and operations then choosing to apply the skills that are suitable for the condition or the team at hand (Tohidi 2011). Facilitative leaders employ directives and ensure best practices to further decrease the effect of the hindrances to high-performing teams. Teams in an organization gain from the facilitative leader’s direction of relations in the grouping through the administration of the team functions and the natural dissimilarities existing amid individuals when they are resolving difficulties and handling change. Through focusing on the manner in which individuals forming a team interrelate, the facilitative leaders can constructively influence the environment in the team. The fact is that the things that facilitative leaders require knowing to realize the significant function that they undertake are as many and diverse as the misunderstandings people have regarding the task itself. In this regard, successful leaders should seek to entail individuals in the task through comprehending and offering the strategies and guidance that teams require to be effective.
6. Conclusions and Recommendations
Leadership and teamwork are fundamental to organizations. They have a new meaning in the modern times characterized by numerous challenges, risks and uncertainties in the business environment. In the contemporary world, virtually every complex task is completed successfully through working in teams and having successful leadership. With triumphant leadership, a team profits from the extensive scale of proficiencies that no single person could acquire alone, such as investigative proficiencies and marketing capacities. Facilitative leaders greatly decrease the likelihood that the team will go off target or be overcome by hindrances to productive teamwork. In spite of the plentiful kinds of challenges that teams could come across, if leadership is committed to assisting handle the challenges, the teams could attain outstanding outcomes. Successful leaders should entail individuals in the undertaking through knowing and offering the strategies and assistance that teams require for effectiveness. Future studies should demonstrate the effect of unsuccessful leadership to the outcomes of teamwork through the application of a company that failed as a result of bad leadership.
.1 Recommendations
- Rewarding Excellent Performance
The leadership of an organization should reward teams that demonstrate excellent performance as a means of promoting quality teamwork. This could be possible through the creation of motivation to excel as a team by offering recognition and giving monetary enticements of appreciation. Such an undertaking ensures a sense of importance and worth into the kind of the task thus enhancing teamwork amid team members (Meredith Belbin 2011).
- Promoting Social Actions
Leaders can enhance teamwork by helping the employees know each other and ensuring that they are at ease discussing a range of concerns. Creating such a sense of comradeship can be achieved through the formulation of team activities by holding unofficial events such as arranging to visit game parks and having some time to interact outside the place of work.
- Outlining Clear Functions
Leaders could enhance fruitful teamwork through outlining clear roles for every team member (Tannenbaum, Weschler & Massarik 2013). Prior to the start of a project, a leader could discuss with the team members to set down proficiency sets and deadlines while delineating the tasks in proportion to one’s capability. This would play a vital role in reducing stress emanating from unrealistic anticipations.
Reference List
Bush, T 2012, ‘Enhancing leadership density through teamwork’, Educational Management Administration & Leadership, vol. 40, no. 6, pp. 649-652.
Cooper, J, Singer, S, Hayes, J, Sales, M, Vogt, J, Raemer, D & Meyer, G 2011, ‘Design and evaluation of simulation scenarios for a program introducing patient safety, teamwork, safety leadership, and simulation to healthcare leaders and managers’, Simulation in Healthcare, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 231-238.
Goetsch, D & Davis, S 2014, Quality management for organizational excellence, Pearson, New York City.
Lussier, R & Achua, C 2015, Leadership: Theory, application, & skill development, Cengage Learning, Boston, MA.
McIntyre, H & Foti, R 2013, ‘The impact of shared leadership on teamwork mental models and performance in self-directed teams’, Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 46-57.
Meredith Belbin, R 2011, ‘Management teams: Why they succeed or fail’, Human Resource Management International Digest, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 94-99.
Reynolds, S 2012, ‘Management, leadership and teamwork: Three suggestions’, The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association, vol. 94, no. 9, pp. 28-28.
Tannenbaum, R, Weschler, I & Massarik, F 2013, Leadership and organization, Routledge, London.
Tohidi, H 2011, ‘Teamwork productivity and effectiveness in an organization base on rewards, leadership, training, goals, wage, size, motivation, measurement and information technology’, Procedia Computer Science, vol. 3, pp. 1137-1146.
Yang, L, Huang, C & Wu, K 2011, ‘The association among project manager’s leadership style, teamwork and project success’, International journal of project management, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 258-267.
Appendix: Interview Questions
- Explain the kind of leadership approach exercised by leaders in Levi’s company
- Discuss the leaders-employees and employee-employee relationship in the company
- Explain the attributes of leadership in the company
- Discuss the contribution of leadership in the company to the success or failure of teamwork
- Define and explain the recommendation that you would give to the leadership in the company for a more effective teamwork