Productivity – Team Leadership

[Anonymous]

I want to share my thoughts about team leadership.
When we talk about the role of leader or leader’s leadership, it seems that it’s easy to understand or describe, because their job function, the title, the impact, the competence are clear in front of us. But when we talk about team’s leadership, it sounds like a system’s leadership plus individual’s leadership. What kind of behavior shows in this kind of leadership, which we can be seen or sensed? If the team members don’t know what is team leadership and its impact, why we need team leadership, how can they show up? Is the team leadership showing up consciously or unconsciously in the team now? Does the team leadership’s competency only be limited on effective communication within the team and with stakeholders, or more? When I think of “team leadership”, really lots of questions in my mind.
Firstly let me compare the role of team leader and team leadership:
Team Leader: individual, clear role, clear job function, clear responsibility and accountability, clear expectation from all stakeholders.
Team leadership: team (system) + individuals, consciously or unconsciously, calling from unseen urge from the team, no concrete expectation from the team, no clear or standard responsibility or accountability, somehow not a obligation. (uncertainty)
So Team leadership has uncertainty. Why we need it? It’s the urge or calling from team for the whole system’s improvement, development and result, especially to meet the need of unseen team calling or unfulfilled team calling. We need to let the team know it’s the team leadership once it’s showing up and honor or reward or acknowledge the team leadership, at that moment, the team can also feel the strong impact from team leadership.
I want to mention the newly US film “ Hacksaw Ridge”. The famous soldier Doss saved 75 lives in the war without weapon. He was not a leader, but showed team leadership. The official leaders were thinking about the strategy, logistic, how to defeat the enemy and how to win the war, but a normal soldier based on the humanity nature and belief responsed the team calling, namely saving lives as much as possible. And his comrade in arms who had conflict with him in the barback before, used his gun to shoot enemy for protecting Doss in the field, because Doss had no weapon. The other comrades who didn’t know Doss, even didn’t see Doss, but supported to transport the wounded to safety place. All showed team leadership, without every involved people’s effort, there were no 75 lives saved. They haven’t intention to show team leadership, but naturally showed up, based on value, belief, alignment and more and more. So team leadership showing-up has foundation and need to be impacted on each other and be honored, then more and more team leadership will arise.

[Author]

Posts