This week’s lecture is about teamwork in leadership. All teams are group but not all groups are team. The benefits of teamwork are having synergy, avoiding major errors, make a better decision, having improvement, innovation, motivation and greater satisfaction and fulfillment. There are also disadvantages on teamwork which create more pressure to conform the group standard, member tends to avoid responsibility, members tend to agree with other even though they aren’t satisfied, teamwork can also cause inter-group conflict. There are 9 team leader’s roles to create an effective team which are emphasizing group recognition, identifying team’s strength, develop trust, develop team capability, empower team, inspire the team, recognize the team, encourage team as well as provide challenge. There are 3 types of teams which are functional team, cross-functional team and self-managed team. Functional team is formed by same department, cross-function team is formed by different field and self-managed team is form by different department who take responsibility of supervisor. A high-performance team require a set of skills including technical skills, problem-solving skills, decision-making skills, interpersonal skills. Training can be done if member is lacking on the skills. To have a good creative team, there must be adequate resource, recognition and reward, flexibility on different member and supportive member. Several practice can be done too to enhance team creativity, the member have to match, there must have autonomy for members, the member must not have creativity restriction and adequate of time and money. Since team decision take longer time to make a decision, the leader have to understand if the decision is important or urgent. To conduct a meeting, the objective has to be identified, the time and venue has to appropriate, the agenda has to cover but not story-telling, the duration has to be punctual and on time, and lastly, a conclusion has to be made. Meeting minute is important and has to be completed by secretary before the next meeting. A leader should also be able to handle member who are silent, talker, wanderer, bored and arguing. To handle the silent, wanderer, bored member, a leader can get everyone to involve, ask question. To handle the talker and arguing, a leader can try to stop them politely.

In this week, I learn about leader-follower is not a boss and worker but a team. Although there are cons of teamwork but most of the time a team leadership always create the best agreed result. Team leadership can also lead to self-managed team which can improve follower leadership skill. If follower is lack in skill, training can also be done to enrich the follower skillset.