Our team comprised three members and I act as the team leader. We run a sole proprietorship business with an annual turnover of $10,000 and a profit of $3,000. Our goal is to exceed previous profits and sales. Our work involves retail business where we sell various merchandise to people. Being a leader, I have to always try my best so that we can achieve our annual goal. According to Chemers (1997) a leader is defined as one who uses social influence to seek support of others to achieve a common goal. I understand that we have to work closely as a team in order to realize our goals. At the end of the year, we close our business for a few days and take time to analyze our annual performance. At the beginning of the year, we hold a meeting. In the meeting, I guide my partners to divide the work according to each member’s capability, skills, knowledge, and experience. Since we are only three, I also have to assign myself some tasks. I have to ensure that the work is divided fairly among all the members. We do all these while keeping in mind Hackman’s view who pointed out that effective work team exhibit collective skills, shared commitment, and task-relevant coordination strategies (Hackman, 2002). In the meeting, I also communicate clear goals that we need to achieve at the end of the year and how they contribute to the overall goal of our business. Then we set milestones to help us track progress on quarterly basis to ensure that we meet our objective. Besides doing the work, I am also involved in monitoring to ensure that every member is proceeding well with his/her task and that each have sufficient resources to complete their work successfully.
Through collaboration, engagement, and effective monitoring of progress, we manage to record impressive performance. However, we did not reach our target. We sold just enough to make a reasonable profit. One of the weakness we have is lack of strategic plan. In the next financial year, we plan to draft a strategic plan to guide us in achieving our mission and vision. Another weakness is that we lack sufficient training to run a successful business. We intend to attend more training on how to effectively run our business. But one positive thing about working as a group is that we share a lot of ideas and experience on how to run our business. We also managed to deliver the best work with minimum cost. As a leader, I usually asked my partners to go on a short retreat as part of celebration of our success.
When leading my group, my approach can be best described as that of style leadership. According to Northouse (2013), style leadership is a leadership approach which is composed of two general behaviors of a leader: relationship behaviors and task behaviors. I combine these two behaviors to help my team achieve our goal. Task behavior helps our group to achieve our goal while relationship behavior help my group members to be comfortable with themselves, the situation, and with each other. Of the various categories of leadership of style approach, my leadership is synonymous with team management. This is because I place a strong emphasis on both interpersonal and task relationships. For example, I promote a high level of teamwork and participation in my team. Every member has to be involved and committed to do his/her part. In summary, I am a leader who enjoy working, getting issues into open, stimulating participation, behaving open-mindedly, and making priorities clear, determined, and following through.
References
Chemers, M. (1997). An Integrative Theory of Leadership. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Hackman, J.R. (2002). Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing.
Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Washington DC: SAGE Publications.
O’Rourke, J. & Yarbrough, B. (2009). Leading Groups and Teams. Mason. OH: South-Western Cengage Learning
