Leadership styles need to be adapted to the characteristics of the team members and to the situation at hand. This paper examines the appropriate leadership styles for a group of individuals that are primarily extroverted and that have a series of qualities, including an analytical approach to things. The situation is not urgent, but involves a long-term development of the market and of the team. As such, the paper proposes styles such as a democratic and participative approach.
Ref: Leading My Team
As you know, a new department has been formed to match our need to develop a new market segment. A team of three people has been assembled with that purpose in mind. In order to be successful, a proper leadership strategy has to be identified and implemented, one that would match different leadership approaches with each of the team member's personalities. The purpose of this memo is two-fold: (1) to analyze the personality of each of the team members, according to the approach that will be described below and (2) to propose leadership approaches that, according to theory, will match these.
In order to analyze the team members' personalities, we have used the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), proposed by Isabel Myers-Briggs and Peter Briggs (1995). The indicator proposes several typologies, namely extraversion vs. introversion, sensing vs. intuition, thinking vs. feeling and judgment vs. perception. Depending on the way these different traits of personalities are combined, we have a resulting personality.
Analysis of Personality Results
There were three personality assessments, corresponding to the three members of the team. These will be labeled as team member 1, team member 2 and team member 3, to avoid any nominal reference to them.
Team member 1 has resulted as a ENFJ indicator, which means extraverted, intuitive, relying on feelings in the decision making process and on judging. The latter reflects his preference for information that is well organized, but he is someone who moves away from pure logic in his thinking, taking into account feelings as part of the decision making process.
Team member 2 had a ENTP indicator, namely extraverted, intuitive, thoughtful and perceptive. It is interesting to note that team member 2 is both thoughtful, namely he is an individual who makes decision following a significant analysis and evaluation process, but he is also perceptive: he is flexible in his interpretation and open to new ideas that he can incorporate in his analysis.
Team member 3 resulted as a people-oriented, creative and highly optimistic individual. His MBTI was ENFP, namely extraverted, basing his decision on intuition and feeling, as well as very perceptive.
Leading the team
This part of the memo will focus on identifying different leadership theories and applying them for a successful management of the team. The leadership style will be based both on the characteristics of the team members, as previously analyzed and described, and the situation in terms of urgency and culture.
The latter will be addressed here. Entering and developing a new market segment is a medium to long-term endeavor. The main objective is a sustainable development of this new segment rather than a quick, skimming approach. For this, and also taking into consideration the analytical skills of the team members, the focus will be on creating an environment that will stimulate creative ideas and long-term commitment.
The first thing that needs to be done is decide upon an overarching method that will govern the relationship within the team. The choice was for a democratic style of leadership and the main reason behind this was the size of the team, as well as the personalities of the individuals making up the team. The size of the team is small, there are only three members in the team. This means that these individuals will likely work together for a long period of time and will influence one another in this process. A democratic style of leadership will allow them to be involved and participate more actively in the working mechanisms, as well as in the decision making process (Robbins, Coulter, 2012).
A democratic style of leadership will also likely stimulate the members of the team, who appear, according to the MBTI, to have qualities that fit this type of leadership style. All of them are extraverted, which will likely stimulate their involvement and participation. The democratic style of leadership will also be combined with an employee-oriented approach: the team is likely to be more effective if interpersonal relations are emphasized and if the company is keen to look for the needs of the members of the team.
Looking at the characteristics of the members, looking for their needs will likely address things like self-esteem: given that opening a new market is going to be a long-term process, we need to make sure that we motivate the members by showcasing their success and by ensuring that they are properly rewarded for their efforts.
Looking at Hersey and Blanchard's Situational Leadership Theory (Robbins, Coulter, 2012), the approach proposed here is a combination of the high relationship styles, namely selling and participating. This memo has already established the need for a participative style of leadership that seems to best match the characteristics of the members of the team. In this leadership theory, participating means that all the members of the team, including the leader, are part of the decision making process. This style of leadership also reflects the role of the leader: he or she will act as an interface between the top management and the team, communicating bottom-up and top-down the instructions (top-down) and the feedback from the team (bottom-up). At the same time, the "selling" leadership style emphasizes the need for a supportive approach from the leader towards the members of the team.
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