Blog four

Leadership experience: Team and leading

In this forth reflective blog I am going to look at my experience of how groups come together and how leadership style needs to be changed in order to complement the group’s change in dynamics. Tuckman’s 1965 theory on teams is that in order to have a successful team first they must go through four stages of ‘team development’. The first stage is the forming stage where the team starts to work together for the first time. Individuals are unsure of other team members and perhaps uncomfortable. This stage allows members to push the boundaries and find their role within the team. The second stage is the storming stage, also known as the conflict stage. This is where the team members start to fight for positions of power and control. Communication within the team breaks down as team members are interested in their own agendas to get ahead and the position they feel comfortable in. If the team does not reach a the third stage, the norming stage then they will have to go back to the forming stage where boundaries are re-established and positions are re-negotiated. The team can then move forward again. Eventually the team will come to the ‘performing stage’. This is when the team members start working effectively as a team. They know each other better and know exactly what their job role is. There are no disagreements and if there are any, they are resolved quickly and the team is able to move forwards. All tasks are well-organised and completed with little or no hassle as the team is much more concentrated by this point.

The particular experience I feel this relates to was whilst leading a group up Ben Nevis. Initially the leadership style was ‘Laissez-faire’, there was no need for a designated leader as the group was relatively comfortable with each other and there were no major issues with making decisions until getting to the halfway point on the mountain. At this point the group had to make the decision on as to whether it was worth carrying on, the weather was getting increasingly bad and one of the group members was starting to struggle. After deciding to carry on the group managed to reach the summit. Close to the summit on the decent it was clear that group members were starting to disagree and motivation was dropping. I think the bad weather played a key role in this and the slow pace of a struggling team member was grinding on morale. In order to spear-head the group back down the mountain I changed to a more autocratic and possibly a charismatic style of leading. To do this I instructed the struggling team member to give their bag/equipment to a stronger team member in order to speed the group up and make it easier for themselves. I also lead from the front to inspire and motivate the group to move forward and complete the walk. (Mind tools, Leadership styles - http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_84.htm).

Blog three

Leadership experience: roles in a team

In this third blog I am going to look at how a leader does not necessarily have to lead the way and can learn what their group’s strengths and weakness are by standing back. This particular experience was whilst walking up Ben Nevis, Scotland. At the start of the walk the group were focused and seemed relatively confident with the task at hand. This prompted me to take a more relaxed approach to leading completely taking the backseat and to some extent let them lead the way. This style of leading is known as ‘Laissez-faire’ leadership and can be used when there is no need for a designated leader. The group or team can simply do it in their own time. It can also help groups form their own roles amongst themselves. For example, the group in this situation took up roles for themselves perhaps without even consciously knowing it. Some of the responsibilities naturally taken up in this instance were; some individuals liked to navigated, some would like to make dissections based on information they had been given from small issues like when to have a break to important decisions like which direction to head off in, some individuals were highly motivated and were driven to get the task of ‘getting to the summit and back down’ successfully, some of the team would simply be supportive of others and help out in that sense.

A theorist, Dr Meredith Belbin came up with nine team roles that are widely used today in organizations/teams to identify individual’s behavioral strengths and weakness. In the experience I talked about previously I can see that members of the group naturally took up roles that played to their strengths. The nine team roles Belbin came up with are as follows;

Plant - creative team member.
Monitor evaluator - this team member can take everything into account and can make a decision in a ‘dispassionate way’.
Coordinator – a team member that is confident and able to delegate tasks out to team members.
Resource investigator – a team member that has contacts outside the team, provides inside knowledge on the opposition and has links to the world outside the team.
Implementer – the team member that that can plan real world workable strategy and put it into action.
Completer finisher – team member that is a perfectionist and likes get the task done without any errors.
Team worker– team member that is a good at bringing the team together and can identify what needs to be done.
Shaper - highly motivation team member and wants to achieve their goal, they bring drive to a team and keep everything on track.
Specialist – is a team member that has a lot of knowledge in the specific area that the team is working in.

(Dr Meredith Belbin, 9 team roles - http://www.belbin.com/rte.asp)

Blog two

Leadership experience: Motivation

On one of the days, during my trip to Snowdonia national park, I took a group of three students on a long distance ridge walk; taking in various summits. It was down to me to find a way to continually motivate the group and find purpose for them to complete the walk. This was going to be a challenge as the group I took was of lower fitness and low esteem. Before the walk I was honest with my group and explained to them exactly what we were going to do. I believed it was important that the students were aware, so they could find their own intrinsic motivation during the walk, along with the extrinsic motivation I was going to provide for them.

During the walk I used the motivational technique of Robert House, “House’s path goal theory” (Journal of Contemporary Business. 1974.). He states the most important thing for leaders to do is to clarify the path of the various goals to the subordinates (students), and therefore gaining a connection between the student’s goals and the organised goals. It was important during the walk that I made sure that everyone on the team was happy and satisfied, as this would lift their performance and motivation. I needed to make sure I painted a clear picture to the students of how they will gain rewards based on performance, through inner satisfaction.

As it states in House’s theory I needed to make sure I remained concerned with four different kinds of leadership behaviour, and enforce them at the correct times. Such as the directive behaviour I enforced at the start of the walk, telling the students what was going to happen and exactly what I was expecting from them. This was also imposed during the walk, telling the students we had to complete it fast, as we did not want to be up on the mountains in the dark. However I also made sure I showed a supportive behaviour in my mannerism, as this would make me more approachable and therefore a more pleasant experience due to interpersonal relationships formed with the students. One way I showed this supportive behaviour was being supportive of the students, setting little goals which they could see where achievable, rather than making them take on the challenge as a whole.

One leadership behaviour I found difficult was participative behaviour. This is when a leader consults with their students, and considers their opinions. I was already aware of the task in hand, and knew what was expected from them. However I was respectful to them when they asked to stop for a rest, understanding it was easier for me than them. Although most of the time I used achievement-orientated behaviour instead. I tried to encourage my students to strive for more, pushing themselves so goal was accomplished faster. This showed the students that I had confidence in them, and believed that they were able to reach these goals.

Since returning from the trip and doing research for this blog I came across a quote by Ralf Nader which I agree with: “I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” (cited in Leaderships and Motivation article http://www.ibrd.gov.nl.ca/regionaldev/lm.pd)

Reflection, Snowdonia

Over a two day period I joint led a group of four in the Snowdonia nation park, Wales. I gained valuable leadership experience and also developed my navigational skills in different weather conditions. On the first day myself and another leader led a group and completed a route up to the highest peak in Wales, mount Snowdon. It is important when leading a group that the person in charge tailors their leadership style for the needs of the group. For example sometimes it is best for the groups dynamics to let them make their own decisions, and sometimes the group simply need to be told what to do. There is not an exact science on ‘how’ to lead a group but, there are identifiable traits of different leading styles that can be used for different situations. A psychologist called Kurt Lewin (1939), researched and discovered that there are three different types of leadership styles, democratic, Laissez-fair and autocratic leadership. On the first day of leading the other leader and I adopted the autocratic model of leadership which had a positive effect on the group as a whole. Due to our style of leadership and clear view on what we were going to achieve, the group appeared to have full confidence in us as leaders. However, it could have been very detrimental to the group’s confidence if we as leaders made navigational mistakes. Fortunately the route chosen was well known to both leaders and relatively ‘easy’ in the weather conditions that we experienced on the day. An interesting effect our leadership had on the group was, a short way from the summit, at 1050 meters, the wind speed increased and within the distance of 10 meters it had gone from relatively calm 15 mph to strong 35 mph winds. This could have been quite daunting for the group, but because their confidence levels had been built up from the beginning of the day they were able to cope with the change to their environment, and they we’re all operating well within their comfort levels. I feel it is important for people to stay within their comfort zone whilst experiencing a completely new activity, this is because if they do not they will associate the experience with ‘fear’, and they will not want to experience it again.

The Learning zone model by Senninger, 2000, is a good way to understand how to teach people, and combined with the right style of leadership can produce effective results

http://social-pedagogy.co.uk/concepts_lzm.htm

The group in this situation seemed to be excited by the change in weather, and for some members of the group they were enjoying a completely new experience. The group completed the walk with no problems and I think that due to having such a successful first day, they all looked forward to the rest of the week. Over the course of the second day we moved from autocratic leadership to a more relaxed democratic style of leading. The group carried their confidence over from the first day which helped them to adjust to new mountain terrain, in this instance a scree slope. Due to the group being relatively familiar with being on a mountain they were mow able to move into their learning zone and focus on learning the technique for walking on scree, they showed confidence with this new skill. This allowed them to focus more on their navigational skills, and they were able to be more involved a navigational aspect. They seemed to enjoy working out where we were on the map and relatively confident in making decisions for themselves.

Area for Development

Over the course of the first year in mountain leadership I have developed in various aspects however there is always room for improvement. The areas in which I am going to focus on are:

to develop my soft skills, in particular my ability to communicate with people confidently and precisely.
I want to work on my map reading ability, I feel I could be faster to find and relay information from the map.
I want to develop my leadership skills, I feel I do not come accross as confident when leading a group and I think it is important to show confidence in order for the people you are leading to have confidence in your ability to keep them safe.