BOOK SUMMARY

THE LEADERSHIP OF TEAMS

Submitted To: Sir Farrukh Aslam

Submitted By: (Students of BS-VII)

 Areebah Mateen R# 06 (Chapter # 03, 13, 14, 15 & 17)

 Mohammad Wamiq R# (Chapter # )
 Saman Shahid R# (Chapter # )
 Warda R# 59 (Chapter # 10, 11, 12, 16 & 18)
SUMMARY BY: AREEBH MATEEN

Chapter 03 – The Stages of Team Development

Chapter 13 – Coaching the Team
Chapter 14 – Managing Challenging Behavior
Chapter 15 – Dealing with Conflicts
Chapter 17 – Dealing with Politics in Teams
 CHAPTER 3 – THE STAGES OF TEAM DEVELOPMENT:
Every team goes through five stages of development which helps the team leaders and team members to know where
they are in the development of the team and how they can improve the teamwork:

1. Forming: The group is just formed. Team leader needs to explore people’s motivation and preferences and tell
them the team’s common purpose. Each member is interested only to know the task, roles and responsibilities he has
to perform and do not know other team members and also do not think of how they will work together.
2. Storming: It involves conflict and jostling for position and power. Team leader must facilitate to resolve conflict
positively. Otherwise, the team’s creativity would be harmed if the conflict is fully avoided or if it keeps escalating it
will become personal and gets out of hand. Thus, the team would lack respect and trust; team members would not
listen or communicate with each other and will be incapable of working effectively.
3. Norming: A more cohesive group is formed. There is clarification of goals, roles and responsibilities and harmony
becomes important and disagreement is surfaced so that the groupthink doesn’t take place. Discussions about team
processes takes place. By forming subgroups, members work together and delegate the task based on team member’s
preferences and skills.
4. Performing: Team is working well and the leader has established his own leadership approach. The team has
tolerance for diversity, strategic awareness, a common vision, flexibility, autonomy, help and support. Achievements
are celebrated and the team purpose is constantly reminded.
5. Adjourning: The whole team breaks up or some member leaves. The leader must do two things – learning and
appreciation; to appreciate the contribution of the members and to share their learning with the organization so that
future team must benefit from it. Then the team must celebrate together to move on from the feeling of personal loss
as the teams break up and be able to enter new team with positive sense of energy and achievement.

The team would go through a reforming process if any new member arrives. A process of integration; introduces the
new member with other members, team’s purpose, objective, ways of working, and his role and responsibilities.
 CHAPTER 13 – COACHING THE TEAM:
Coaching helps employees to move into leadership positions by effective learning through talent development
practices and it is heavily favored by Generation Y’s management style. A team leader can benefit if he become able
to coach the team as a whole entity, and not forgetting to address the needs of individual members of the team.

The basic skills and processes of coaching, whether it is for the individual or the team, are:

1. Listening: The team coach must ‘listen’ to what is said and ‘understand’ what is not said by the team member. To
reduce the risk of missing on an important contribution and to avoid any negativity to prevail in the team.
2. Questioning: The team coach must use all questioning techniques to suit the situation and ask appropriate,
incisive open and probing questions to understand the team member’s opinions, suggestions, views and feelings.
3. Observing and Reflecting Back: Pay attention to the coherence between what is said and how it is said.
Carefully notice team member’s non-verbal communication – body language, paralinguistic’s or vocal usage.
4. Reframing: A coach must know his team’s frame i.e. a set of assumptions or beliefs about a particular situation.
5. Challenging: Team leader must challenge his and his team’s thinking. In order to deal with the wicked problems
that might come your way, these problems have no right or wrong answer, only better or worse options.
6. Supporting: The team coach must be supportive of team member’s participation, even if their ideas are not
always brilliant. This way the team members would express their thoughts freely without a fear of judgment.
7. Giving Feedback: Team members expect feedback from the team coach which must be given in an appropriate
way. To be successful, striking the right balance between appreciative and constructive feedback is important.

In order to have a structured approach, the team coach can use:

1. The GROW Model: Abbreviated as “Goals, Realities, Opinions and Will”. Firstly, the team coach finds out the
team member’s specific goals and objectives, and then explores the reality; what’s happening and who is
involved. Then asks the member to develop a number of different options/possibilities and asks what degree of
will and commitment would be required to take specific actions, by what date to follow up on these. There is a
modified version of this structure i.e. (GRRROW). After ‘Realities’ come, ‘Relationships’: feelings and
emotional realities within the team members and ‘Resources’: competencies/strengths required by its members.

2. Appreciative Coaching: Appreciative coaching can be done by inquiring into the team’s strength and resources,
helping them to integrate any past positive experience and feedback that they have to help them imagine a better
future and work through the actions and behaviors to achieve the desired state and ensure by reviewing how the
team is progressing in its goals and objectives.

3. Solution Focused Coaching: There are some basic assumptions underlying the Solution Focused Coaching:
 The team has all the necessary resources to change.
 Team coach must inquire the team of useful change made and must identify and amplify other useful
changes.
 There is no one ‘right’ way of looking at things. Team coach needs to challenge assumptions and perceptions.
 Detailed understanding of the problem is of little use. Team coach must ask good open questions to help the
team to reflect on and become aware of their issues.
 Team coach must probe into when things are well rather than bad to find any possibility of problem to occur.
 Team coach must encourage small changes made in the right direction to build up a desire to effect big
changes.
 Team coach must ask its members to imagine that a miracle has happened and to describe what is now
happening, to get the idea of the specific behaviors by them in that future.

In solution focused approach the focus is not towards the problem’s details but towards the solution development
for the team. This is achieved through finding a ‘Platform’ – What are we here to do today? Then you can move to
‘Counters’ – What strengths and resources do the team have to overcome their issue? Then you would ask ‘Scaling’
questions – Where are they on the scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being high? Then the coach asks; Where they would like
to be? What would they be doing? Saying? Feeling there? Then ask what small steps the team can take in the right
direction and then give some positive affirmations to them, before the next session.
Both individual coach and team coach are same, and are different to the extent that it looks at areas like team
strategy, team processes, systems and tactics. Team coaching is less about personal coaching (individual’s feeling and
emotions) and more about processes and individual’s role in the team’s purpose, strategy and goals.

There are three key transferable principles of team coaching:

1. Context: It is the climate and culture in which the team operates. The team leader needs to reflect on the existing
culture and create such a cultural climate that supports team’s goals and encourages it to perform effectively.
2. Processes: This is about developing a cohesive team through three sub-components of process.
 Relays: Especially in geographically dispersed teams; the team coach use respected senior team members to
act as a relay to remind team members of the team goals, values and ways of working and reinforce the key
messages to them.
 Relationships: Team coach must find what is the level of trust and differences between the team members?
 Shared Purpose: Team coach must initiate and facilitate conversations to discuss with clarity the team’s
shared purpose. What does the team want and how will it get there? Otherwise, despite the talented
individuals the team is always going to be less than the sum of its parts or different individuals might be
working at cross-purpose to each other or may sabotage what others are trying to achieve.
3. Contact: Teams are made of individuals and it is about managing individual needs, issues, preferences and
talents. Team coach must be aware of team goals and any potential clashes between individual goals and team
goals. He must be flexible to individual needs within the team and adapt style to the needs of the team members.

There are three essential aspects of a team:

 Task: The purpose of the team.
 Process: How the team will achieve its purpose.
 Relationships: Internal and External relationships.

For which there are five key disciplines, each with some useful questions that can be asked when coaching a team to
create better awareness of the team performance:

1. Commissioning: What does the team serve? What is its purpose? Why does it exist? How does this align with
organizational objectives?
2. Clarifying: what is its collective task? What are the core objectives? Is the team clear about roles? Preferences?
Is the team clear about working processes?
3. Co-creating: How is the team working together? How creative? How skilled at working together? How does it
partner internally? How does it manage the team dynamics?
4. Connecting: How does the team partner with the wider system and your key stakeholders?
5. Core Learning: How does the team learn? How does it continue to learn? How does it develop as a team?

Team coaching is more challenging and rewarding than individual coaching. The biggest challenge is to tell someone
what to do rather than encourage them to work it out for themselves. Another challenge is to actually find time to
coach the team, because in business all the focus is on the next deadline, next deal or next meeting. Team’s
performance will not suffer only if the pace of the work is slowed down or a quicker coaching process is developed.
 CHAPTER 14 – MANAGING CHALLENGING BEHAVIOR:
‘Challenging Behavior’ is the situation where people display unacceptable or disruptive behavior that presents
challenges to the processes and practices of the team. It affects team performance/success and must be speedily dealt.

A team struggles due to five dysfunctions:  Absence of trust.

 Fear of conflict.
 Lack of commitment.
 Avoidance of accountability.
 Lack of attention to results.

The difficult and dysfunctional behavior makes the individual disengaged, disillusioned and de-motivated. Due to:
 Personality clashes between the team members, team leaders or external stakeholders.
 When new members join the team and no time is devoted to integration and co-ordination.
 Social loafing; people are not committed to their work and therefore, not pulling their weight.
 Misunderstandings between the people; often because they are not working face-to-face.
 Organizational changes (such as ownership, mergers or acquisitions) create uncertainty and fear.
 Changes in work processes and procedures cause people to feel loss of control or fear of failure.

When these nine types of challenging behavior become more pronounced; extreme or overdone the problem arises:

1. Narcissism: These people are highly-energetic, focused and assertive when things go their way. But if they don’t
in team; they become competitive, argumentative, exploitative, aggressive, self-absorbed and also lacks empathy.
2. Complaining: Some people always complain, which, when left to foster can affect the morale of the team.
3. Dominating: It makes a person self-confident, direct and action-oriented. But it can be misuse to dominate
conversations and intimidate and bully others to their way of thinking.
4. Knowing it all: This behavior become annoying, overbearing and dismissive of other’s ideas as people knowing
absolutely everything, always have an answer and opinion to everything.
5. Pessimism: Pessimists tend to see the worst in everything. This constant behavior drags down the whole team.
6. Disengaging: Person loss interest in team’s work and people and their contribution become negative or cynical.
7. Lazy: The person has the skills to do the job, but is simply too idle, lacking drive and energy.
8. Undermining: The person stirs up trouble between team members and undermine team leader behind his back.
9. Fantasizing: The person tends to exaggerate, daydream, embellish and elaborate his experiences and ideas.

Determine, if the behavior is ‘occasional’, and then simply inquire the person. This way he will become aware of his
behavior which is affecting others so that they can reflect and adapt. But, if it is a ‘regular occurrence’, then people
might not be aware of the impact that they are having on the team. Thus, it must be dealt speedily and effectively as
some of these people will be surprised and willing to work things out. It can be by following the process as follows:

1. Have the courage to address the behavior: An effective leader must respectfully, empathically and confidently
tackle and discuss the individual and his behavior that is causing the issue within the team.
2. Clearly state the problem behavior: Make evidential notes to ensure that you remain on track and reflect on the
responses you get and help people recognize their potential by exampling their past positive contributions.

3. Work together to agree a solution: Ask the person to reflect on his behavior and give ideas to resolve the
issues. Team leader must explore how the person likes to work; what can motivate him to improve his level of
commitment. Then, develop a plan and set benchmarks of success – which should be achievable for him and
noticeable to other team members of the change.
4. Clarify consequences if no change: Make individual aware that the current behavior is not acceptable and if
changes do not occur then further consequences will be inevitable.
5. Review: Review how you dealt with the situation; learn from experience to handle similar situations in future.

While, some of these people will be trickier to deal with, demonstrate difficult and dysfunctional behavior. They are
unwilling or possibly unable to change their behavior because it is entrenched. Team leader must part ways from such
people or must work to reduce the negative effect of their behavior on the team.
 CHAPTER 15 – DEALING WITH CONFLICTS:
There is always a difference of opinion, personality, skills, experience, age, gender or nationality between people
working together that arises conflict. Thus, it must be resolve as it occurs or a much bigger issue would escalate.

‘Healthy Productive Conflict’ is when everyone in the team has a clear goal to work and encourages discussion,
debate and creativity to productively explore the best possible outcomes. Healthy conflict tends to involve: task-
focused issues, respectful debate exploring identified problems, genuine difference of opinions and differing values
or perspectives on an issue. ‘Unhealthy Dysfunctional Conflict’ is when there is an unproductive dysfunctional
behavior of the people and their relationships or work output is negative. Unhealthy conflict tends to involve:
personal attacks, blame being attributed, anger, manipulative or patronizing behavior and win/lose situations

By identifying symptoms and signs of conflict, it can be diagnose and dealt early. The visible symptoms and signs are
personality clashes; anger, arguments, absenteeism and development of win/lose situations. While, others are:

1. Subtle changes in behavior within the team:

 Some team members not engaging with others.
 Less general chit-chat.
 Increased periods of silence.
2. A general feeling of poor morale in the team.
3. Team member’s levels of motivation dropping.

‘Relationship Awareness Theory’ helps team leaders find what tips people into the conflict. Conflict arise when the
values that a person holds is threatened and in turn, compromises his self-worth. Other issues that trigger conflict are:
 Competence being challenged.
 Others being patronizing, dismissive or aggressive.
 My rights as an individual being challenged.
 Someone being personally hostile.
 Overly emotional behavior by others.
 Being exploited by someone.
 Dealing with intractable personalities.
 Being ignored.

A team leader’s ability to deal with conflict can be assisted by:

 Keen observation skills.
 Good knowledge of your team member’s usual behavioral pattern and motivation at work.
 Recognizing changes and dealing with things early.
 Adopting a conflict resolution process that works for you.

There is a seven-step process to diagnose whether the conflict is healthy or unhealthy and then work to resolve it.
Step 1 – Diagnosis: Team leader spots a conflict and observes how the situation arose by talking to people involved.
Step 2 – Reflection: Determine the type of conflict. If it is healthy, then the team leader might have to facilitate the
process to reach a healthy outcome and conflict resolution. But if it is unhealthy, then the team leader must intervene
to resolve the issue by not telling them what to do, but each person must come up with his the ideas for resolution.
Step 3 – Situation Clarification: Team leader must act as a mediator to listen everyone’s perspective, thoughts and
feelings involved in the conflict and understand without any judgment to find a resolution that is acceptable for all.
Step 4 – Solution Exploration: Begin with the possible solutions explored in the previous stage or brainstorm some
new with others to further develop a range of options and find a way towards a mutually acceptable outcome.
Step 5 – Decision: Make sure that everyone involved has understood and agreed to the decision and its mutual
benefits. Failure to get this stage right can lead to a re-ignition of the conflict as there is some degree of compromise.
Step 6 – Implementation: Implement conflict resolution process and assess whether it has been successful or not.
Step 7 – Review: Review process; learn and understand what worked, what didn’t and how to build on this in future.

The above information applies when team leaders are not involved in the conflict. However, it will still apply if they
are involved. But, the mediator must be someone completely neutral and acceptable to all parties involved.
 CHAPTER 17 – DEALING WITH POLITICS IN TEAMS:
Politics in organization is an everyday reality. However, some people believe that politics is a normal part of
organizational life while other sees it as something that should be avoided. An effective team leader should invest his
time and energy to develop his skills in this area. However, the team members are not aware of it so they must be
involved in the political arena for the team to work more effectively. Political awareness is largely about:

1. Getting to know how things are done and having the skill to work with the informal organization.
2. Being able to position yourself and your ideas to their best advantage.
3. Having an understanding of who holds power and influence in the team and wider organization.
4. Knowing how decisions are made and who makes them.
5. Not taking things at face value, recognizing that you must sometimes read between the lines.
6. Deploying your skills and abilities appropriately for the stakeholder group.
7. Knowing who in your organization deals effectively with the political landscape and learning from them.

Power is intimately connected to politics in organization. There are many types of power available to both the team
leader and team members to lead others in influencing people more effectively:

1. Legitimate Power: It is the formal power based on one’s position in the hierarchy.
2. Coercive Power: It uses threats to oblige people to do things. However, now it is less desirable but it still exists.
3. Reward Power: It is the power to reward people through money, favors, open doors, etc.
4. Referent Power: Popular people have charisma; a power of their character, to attract and influence people.
5. Information Power: People with information and knowledge can get what they are interested in and want.
6. Network Power: Power of having connections with beneficial people inside and outside the team/organization.
SUMMARY BY: WARDA

Chapter 10: Teams and Accountability

Chapter 11: Influencing the team
Chapter 12: Facilitating the team
Chapter 16: Change in teams
Chapter 18: Derailment
And finally, the future of teams
 CHAPTER 10 – TEAMS AND ACCOUNTABILITY:
High performing teams understand that taking responsibility and accountability leads to mutual trust, respect, high
levels of motivation, good morale and commitment to the goals and objectives of the team. However, creating such
an environment and building an empowered team where members are mutually accountable is an issue, which is
tackled in this chapter.

Accountability must be an inherent part of an organization to be truly effective. Truly effective accountability model
comprises of 3 C’s; Communication, Clarity and Consequences.

For a team to operate well, organization’s mission, vision as well as individual’s roles and responsibilities must be
clearly communicated, understood and accepted by everyone.

Since globalization, it is even more crucial to ensure clear understanding of responsibilities, goals and objectives; and
also to be clear about the level of individual vs. team accountability to explain where the level of authority lies. The
third C explains that the team leader must ensure that both individuals and the team as a whole know about the
consequences of not being accountable for goals, actions and behaviors.

To contribute towards building an effective culture of accountability, some practical steps can be incorporated into
your performance management process. Firstly, encourage discussion and involvement by enabling people to
contribute their ideas and thoughts so they feel truly empowered. Discuss the organizational vision, purpose and
goals to make them understand their role as an individual and as part of the team. Be clear about your expectations
and the consequences for both achievement and non-achievement. Be more specific about individual’s targets, goals
and objectives and identify how to measure progress. The team leader must have regular reviews with both
individuals and the team; of both the process and progress against targets. Lastly, the leader should give and receive
feedback as well as encourage peer feedback to build mutual respect, trust and self-awareness; particularly positive
and constructive feedback should be encouraged.
 CHAPTER 11: INFLUENCING THE TEAM:
To lead is in fact to influence, hence, a team leader needs to be able to influence ethically and effectively. The terms
persuading and convincing are different from influencing as one can influence people unconsciously, by the way they
speak or dress or by the posture. Influencing is a continuous process which depends on the situation, needs good
relational intelligence and must lead to movement in other person’s position to be successful.

Understanding how people like to be influenced is not easy. To be influenced effectively, the people need to be
involved in the team. The influencer should exhibit confidence and positivity as well as conviction about the issue.
The people must be appreciated for their contribution and maintained a positive relationship with. The influencer
must have sound knowledge and rapport to establish credibility. Influencers should be clear and concise and should
bring any relevant evidence to back up any argument. Lastly, influencer should exhibit passion and energy about the
idea. Whereas, a patronizing behavior, putting people under pressure, using authority to get things done, listening to
ideas but not involving them, and manipulating instead of influencing are things that make influencers ineffective.
Thus, the key to influencing is involvement, clarity and authenticity. To establish sustainable team leadership,
influencing style should be used instead of formal authority to get things done. Using formal power in a team
environment is neither effective nor efficient and could affect employee commitment. There are four major
approaches to influencing others: Assertive, Participative, Logical and finally, Inspirational; each with different
characteristics. Preferably, the team leader should be able to skillfully use these approaches according to the situation.

Few very effective tools for influencing are: Framing, Relationship, Credibility, Social Proof and Uniqueness.
Framing is about focusing on the perspective about something that we want to share with others. A leader must know
how to frame a situation and how the team members are doing so. Framing should be done in a non-judgmental way
and there should be a window for reframing effectively in case of any misunderstanding. Reframing means looking at
the situation from the influencee’s perspective; also called the SWIIFT perspective – so what’s in it for them?

Reframing failure as learning is an effective technique to influence yourself and others. Secondly, having a positive
relationship and high degree of trust helps in influencing better. To improve relationships, one needs to be more
empathetic and appreciative towards others being less critical. Using social proof in influencing means starting by
influencing the most popular and respected people of the team first which will eventually help in influencing others.
Influencers can use examples of social proof that resonate with the team. To influence effectively, the leader must
have credibility and expertise in the required area and hold a good reputation. Lastly, being unique and distinctive
helps a leader stand out of a crowd; particularly one’s knowledge, experience, thinking and their stories makes them
unique. In conclusion, a leader needs to be able to influence the team and be open to be influenced by it.
 CHAPTER 12: FACILITATING THE TEAM:
Facilitators are needed to make things easier for the team to work together. To facilitate means to be the change agent
and help to develop and improve performance. Since the team is only focused on finding solutions to the problems, a
facilitator is needed to look at the What, How, and Who of the team. The What is the task the team is engaged in, the
How is the process and the Who includes relationships between members.

Since the problems faced by teams are most likely linked to the process of how they work together, a facilitator is
required to specifically monitor these processes and make the teams aware of how they work together. The facilitator
looks at issues like whether all team members are equally listening to each other or not, the involvement of team
members, the degree of trust between team members, the influencer in the team and whether they use formal or
informal authority. The facilitator can bring out the introverted members to speak up as they often have more
interesting ideas. The facilitator could be external or any internal members that know how to facilitate a team and can
bind the members to work together as a team effectively.

An effective facilitator demonstrates a range of key skills: Listening, Challenging, Supporting, Noticing, Eliciting,
Including, Inquiring, Contracting, Checking progress, Understanding. The facilitator must be an effective listener and
should not only listen to the stated obvious things but also the unsaid feelings, emotions and assumptions. The
facilitator needs to be able to challenge the team members while maintaining the right balance between challenging
and supporting. The main role of the facilitator, undoubtedly, is to encourage, appreciate and support. The facilitator
has to notice everything, every obvious or hidden details, understanding non-verbal communications as well as tone,
language and emotions. The facilitator needs the ability to elicit members to speak up and create trust between them.
The facilitator must be careful about making sure that everyone in the team has a voice and no one person dominates
a conversation. The skill of inquiring is about being able to ask and investigate with being critical to the responses. It
is important for the facilitator to contract with the team to make sure everyone is clear about the purpose and process
of the team meeting; including details like timing, confidentiality or desirable behaviors. It’s also essential for the
facilitator to observe and check the understanding of team members by rephrasing or repeating the points. Lastly,
team facilitator needs to check team’s progress as well as inquire members about progress on certain issues, even
during meetings.

The few attitudes that a facilitator exhibits include: Empathy, Curiosity, Self-awareness, Self-control, and Patience. A
facilitator needs to be empathetic to understand, respect and work with the team members’ feelings to enable them to
perform well. A high degree of curiosity allows the facilitator to inquire showing interest. To develop self-awareness,
the facilitator must seek, and be receptive to, any feedback. To be able to defuse situation for others, particularly in
case of arguments, the facilitators firstly need to manage their own emotions. Finally, the facilitators often require the
patience of a saint to keep the whole team working well.
 CHAPTER 16: CHANGE IN TEAMS:
Change is the only constant but people are often resistant to it, hence, a team leader must know how to initiate
change, how to deal with resistance to it and how to understand the process of change. To initiate the change, the
leader should try to involve the team members to give them a degree of ownership so they choose to implement the
desired changes instead of avoiding or destroying it. If it’s not possible to let the members involve in the entire
process, allowing them some degree of input helps to avoid their resistant behavior. The most important thing while
initiating a change is to frame it effectively, by either looking at how it could be positive for the ones having to
implement it or looking at the change from the perspective of the clients, showing them how it would make their life
easier.

An effective model of change when working with management teams is William Bridges’ transition model of change.
For him, transition is the psychological process of adapting to change, and he identified three phases in transition:
Endings - letting go of the past, the neutral zone or area of confusions, and lastly, New beginnings - starting afresh.
The initiators usually are only focused on new beginnings whereas those being affected by the change are focused on
what they might be losing. Hence, when planning a change, the leader must acknowledge the emotional cost of
change, be more empathetic and understanding, and must reframe what the members are losing to what the members
are actually keeping to make the change easier to accept. The second phase is the neutral zone when the people are
confused about accepting the change or realizing what they could be gaining. Thus, they need constant support,
encouragement and reassurance throughout this phase, even if they don’t express their confusions. This is a crucial
step to keep the people in the team and move to the last phase which is new beginnings. If the confusions have really
been cleared and the change hasn’t been rushed, the people will see the new beginnings, accepting the matters and
will have more energy with a renewed sense of purpose.

There’s usually resistance to change if the change process is not handled well or due to the following reasons: Fear of
the Unknown, No Buy-in to proposed change, Insecurity, Self-interest, Complacency, lack of understanding. To avoid
resistance, the leader must understand the realities of the situation instead of handing down instructions,
communicate the change early for people to accept, and present facts and proofs about the need for change as well as
the ideas collected from clients, employees, etc. to show their support.

For effective change implementation, the leader must understand the psychological as well as physical process and
involve the people who are implementing the change.
 CHAPTER 18: DERAILMENT:
The team leader has to be careful about the risk of derailment for them as well as for the team. Usually, the qualities
that initially led managers stay on the fast track ultimately get them knocked off the course. Hence, the leader must
be aware of the potential derailers. A good track record, brilliance, commitment/sacrifice, charm and ambition are a
few sources of initial managers’ success. Unfortunately, these strengths can become overdone and turn into a
potential flaw. For instance, a good track record could have been achieved in a narrow field or by luck or by wrong
means, or just due to someone else’s efforts who hadn’t been given the due credit; all these things could blind the
people to the broader context of teamwork and leadership. Secondly, brilliance might make people too egoistical to
be valuing others’ ideas or their brilliance could intimidate others in the team. Thus, the team leader must observe the
behavior of brilliant people in the team and coach them to work efficiently, involving everyone to avoid derailment.
The third quality is commitment which is a good thing, but over-commitment leads to making the whole life about
work and expecting others to do the same. Over committed people would even use unethical activities to achieve
their goals and could burn out themselves, or worse, others by not maintaining a work-life balance. The fourth
quality, charm, could be used in a negative way as manipulating others to get work done or even bullying. The leader
must be careful about the way the charming behavior is used with them or others. Lastly, the leader must be careful
that their or others ambition doesn’t make them overambitious. Highly ambitious people often take more than they
can deal with and would do anything to achieve success, even at the expense of others,

Talking about the team members’ potential to be derailed, there are three key dynamics: Firstly, Strengths can
become weaknesses. Successful people can become arrogant and overconfident and cannot give up what worked for
them in the past. Hence, when they’re put into a different people or promoted to another post, their strengths don’t
change and can be perceived as weaknesses. Thus, not having the particular expertise in the required area yet taking
up a job due to overconfidence, instead of giving the deserving people a chance could lead to derailment. Secondly,
Blind spots matter eventually. Everyone has blind spots but the key is to acknowledge them and do something about
them if they are potential derailers. For instance, one such blind spot is being insensitive to others; while power and
intimidation provides compliance, insensitive behavior could lead to lack of support and trust. The team leaders have
a complex job to not only avoid derailment themselves but also figure out the potential derailers affecting the team
members and manage the team effectively. The third key dynamic is that Success can lead to arrogance or
complacency. Arrogance can blind people to notice one’s impact or potential, make people overoptimistic about their
expertise, blind them to the reality of their dependence on others and make them achieve things even by wrong
means. Thus, arrogance is eventually self-defeating from the organizational perspective.

People often miss out on their weaknesses as they haven’t been negatively affected by them yet or they’re in denial
about them. That person needs to develop self-awareness and the team leader is responsible to give them feedback,
make them aware about their weakness and coach them to work on them. This time of support and development
shouldn’t be overlooked as a waste of time as it is important to take time, with your team, to reflect out and learn
from the events to prevent derailment. The following guidelines help in preventing derailment. The leaders must
intervene and point out the consequences of people’s actions. They should coach and develop their people along with
regular feedback effectively. The leader needs to analyze their own and their team members’ strengths, weaknesses
and potential derailers. They should also have a trusted colleague to give honest feedback and criticism about them
and encourage the team to tell the truth. The leader shouldn’t be a control freak and trust their team more. To be an
effective leader, one needs to have be more understanding, cooperative, tolerant and relationally intelligent for
maintaining trust and respect with the team. The leader should help the team and solve problems instead of focusing
on their own promotion.

An exercise that helps the leader to reflect about their own or their team members’ potential derailers is to list down
their five strengths, then note the situation where they could be overdone, figure out the strengths that need to be
managed effectively and the significant weakness and finally, reflect over those weak areas and find out ways to
modify the behavior.
 AND FINALLY, THE FUTURE OF TEAMS:
Since the hierarchical approach to organizational structure is becoming outdated, effective teams will have an
important role to play in the future of work. There are some major influences affecting the future. Firstly, since the
impact of millennial generation, the generation Y and them both have been demanding their work to be more
challenging or interesting, a friendly relationship with colleagues while mentoring relationship with the boss, flexible
working patterns, public acknowledgement of success and technology-driven communication. These factors are
important to bring out the best from the generations and help them become effective leaders. Secondly, teams in
future will be composed of different cultures and generations. It will be a challenge for the leader to incorporate them
into an effective team with shared values and purpose. The older generations would have to adapt new ways of
working, new technology and new roles while the younger generation would need to work on skill development
particularly interpersonal and leadership skills. Thirdly, Holocracy will influence many organizations, though it will
not be adopted by all. Holacracy is a method of decentralized management, defined by Brian Robertson, in which
roles are defined around work, authority is distributed to the teams, small and rapid changes are made regularly in the
organizational structure and lastly, rules are visible and transparent for everyone including the CEO. In future, the
teams will need to have the ability of both lead and to follow. Every team member will be required to learn processes
like facilitation and change to keep up with the rapidly changing environment. There will be more cross-functional,
multi-cultural, virtual and multi-generational teams in the future and people will have to work in a network of teams.
They will need skills to collaborate with different types of teams and different kinds of people. The reward systems
would be more team-based rather than individual, which will require more understanding in teams. Since engaged
teams work more effectively, team leaders will have to keep team members engaged through communication,
listening, valuing, supporting, and empathizing while focusing on the strategic vision and goals.

Lastly, more teams will be required in the future that will be created to perform effectively and will be disbanded
right away. The skills will be required to form, work and disband teams rapidly. The need for psychological safety for
the team members should also be taken into account by the team leader. Conclusively, the teams and leaders will
have to deal with all the challenges but ultimately they will find working in the team more satisfying and rewarding.