First Class Skills: Enhancing One’s Own Leadership
While supervision and management are of great importance, the actual building of a team is the paramount task of executive leaders. Kouzes and Posner emphasize building a team to accomplish the work at hand: “A one-word test for differentiating between leaders and managers that came through loud and clear in case studies was the use of we instead of I.
FORMING & STORMING
We can learn from the past. Past leaders. Past events. Past lessons. Several years ago, the National Research Laboratories examined successful teams from World War II to determine if there were common dynamics that contributed to their success. Their research defined four stages of successful team development. The first stage for team development is forming – the time when a team first comes together. The second stage of team development is called storming – the time when team members struggle with identifying their place within the team.