Team Leadership Theory and Application

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Team Leadership and Application

Team leadership involves the provision of guidance, direction, instructions, and leadership to a team, purposely to achieve desired results. A leader monitors both the quantitative and qualitative achievements of his team. This paper will discuss leadership theory and its application at Amazon by Jeff Bezos.

Leadership Theory

Many theories explain how leadership is exercised and the relationship between leaders and employees. Leadership theories explain why and how people become successful leaders. They usually stress on the behaviors and traits that people adopt to enhance their leadership capabilities. Some studies have argued that leadership skills are special abilities that people are born with (Paunova & Lee, 2016). However, recent studies have tried to refute the idea that leaders are born by suggesting that leaders can be made. Leaders are essential for the success of a team. They organize and direct the members of a team to ensure that they complete tasks at hand in an orderly manner. Without a team being directed and coordinated by a leader, nothing would run smoothly no matter how qualified the team members are. The reason some leaders are elected as presidents and appointed as managers and the rest remains their followers can best be explained through leadership theories.

Leadership is a Conversation

In recent years, the command and control approach applied by organizational leadership has become less viable. The technological advancements, globalization, and shift in the way firms create value and interact with its customers has a directive and top-down leadership less efficient and uncommon. Nowadays, leaders are required to manage communication within their firms by understanding how to handle the flow of information among their followers (Paunova & Lee, 2016). The type of corporate communication used in the past should give way for a more sophisticated and dynamic conversational process that will allow leaders to manage the flow of information among employees.

According to research, smart leaders engage with employees within their organization in a way that resembles an ordinary person-to-person conversation (Erdogan & Bauer, 2014). They usually initiate and foster practices and cultural norms that enable a conversational sensibility throughout the whole organization. Organizational communication has four elements that reflect the vital attributes of interpersonal conversation. They include intimacy, interactivity, inclusion, and intentionality. Intimacy means getting closer to each other. Leaders need to ensure employees are figuratively and close to each other. They should also minimize the distances that separate them from the employees. Interactivity enhances dialogue in which leaders talk with employees. Interactivity makes the conversation to be open and fluid instead of being closed and directive. Inclusion means expanding the roles of employees to become involved more in the organization’s matters (Erdogan & Bauer, 2014). Employees in the organization have different cultures and values. When being included in all organizational issues through open communication, they help create the content that makes up an organizational story. The open conversation should not be pointless but should be done with the hope of achieving something such as learning from each other, entertaining, or persuading each other.

Leadership-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory and Follower

According to an informal observation of leadership behavior, leaders’ actions are different towards different subordinates (Erdogan & Bauer, 2014). Leaders in a team have varying relationships with the team members. The leader’s relationship with the employees is based on mutual trust, respect, loyalty, obligation, and support that the leader gets from the employee (Erdogan & Bauer, 2014). Therefore, leaders form different types of relationships with different groups of subordinates. One group of subordinates is favored by the leader (in-group) and another that is favored by the leader (out-group). Those subordinates who are in-group receive more consideration and organizational resources from the leader. In contrast, out-group subordinates are disfavored and, as a result, receive minimal valued resources from the leader.

Leaders categorize in-group and out-group subordinates based on similarities or dissimilarities of personal attributes and characteristics such as gender, age, or personality of an employee. A competent follower can also be granted an in-group status. The relationship between leaders and followers follows two main stages, which include role taking and role making. Role taking occurs when a new employee joins an organization (Erdogan & Bauer, 2014). The leader usually evaluates the capabilities of the new employee and gives them opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities. It is from there that an employee will be categorized as in-group or out-group depending on if the employees show being competent in carrying out tasks or they are incompetent. Role making involves the leader and a new member having an informal conversation to see if the member has the same characteristics. A betrayal at this stage results in the new member being categorized as out-group (Erdogan & Bauer, 2014). In-group members act as assistants and advisers to the leader, who, in turn, gives them interesting tasks, delegates’ responsibilities, shares information, and allows them to participate in making certain decisions on how the organization should be run.

Influence and Networking

Both influence and networking are developmental challenges that all leaders must address. Both involve creating personal contact fabrics that will give insights, support, resources, feedback, and information (Rossi et al., 2016). Leaders can embrace three types of networking, namely, operational, personal, and strategic. Operational networks involve building strong working relationships with people who can assist leaders with their jobs. They usually are internal, that is, within the organization. Operational networking is vital to ensure cooperation and coordination among people who trust each other to accomplish tasks. Operational networks include superiors, direct reports, and peers, among others. Leaders create personal networks from external contacts who have an orientation towards both current and potential interests (Rossi et al., 2016). Such networks enhance professional and personal development while giving referrals to useful information and contacts. Finally, leaders can create networks strategically. Strategic networks are created internally and externally, and they are oriented towards finding out possible future challenges and priorities. Through network creation, leaders achieve powerful influence because their followers trust in them, which yields effective results at the workplace (Rossi et al., 2016). Therefore, leaders should leverage each of the elements from the network domains into a constituency. Such elements could be their colleagues, personal contacts, or even strategic counselors.

Virtual and Multicultural Environments

Technology has enabled managers to manage team members while they are far apart. Managing a team from a distance is not an easy task as managers need to be careful in each stage and take care of their team by providing them a timely solution to any problems that they may be experiencing (Lilian, 2014). As a result of technological advancements, it has become a trend for managers to work in multicultural virtual teams. Many global leaders are now managing workers virtually with a lot of balance and flexibility (Lilian, 2014). They can manage the teams virtually and try their best to prevent language barriers and miscommunications that may lead to issues within an organization.

There are many reasons why managers prefer a multicultural workforce. Managers prefer to have a multicultural workforce because it leads to cross-cultural competence. The multicultural team enables managers to have precise and deep knowledge of products and markets as well as get many experiences and backgrounds of the customers and suppliers within the market (Rossi et al., 2016).

A culturally diversified workforce is also considered as more lucrative and productive. According to Lilian (2014), racial and ethnic multicultural top management were 35% more active when it came to the organization’s financial returns than the industry average (1253). Also, a multicultural workforce enhances innovation in an organization. The study indicated that organizations with a culturally diversified workforce in an organization were able to develop innovations compared to the homogenous workforce. This resulted from more news ideas and solutions for issues from the multicultural team.

Multicultural teams also enable satisfying customer experience as a result of increased knowledge, timely delivery of services, and improved business capabilities through different cultural ideas (Lilian 20). As a result, customers can get the best experience of the products or services offered by the culturally diversified team. Having a multicultural team and managing it virtually has become a trend. Therefore, organizations need to embrace culturally diversified groups to improve cross-cultural competency, increase innovation, and create satisfying customer experience anytime, anywhere.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the ability of people to understand and manage their emotions as well as recognize and influence others’ feelings. There are four components of emotional intelligence, which include self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, and relationship management (Serrat, 2016). The self-awareness component is the key to everything. It explains one’s ability to understand their strengths and weaknesses and recognize their emotions and their impact on the team’s performance. Social awareness is someone’s ability to recognize and respect the feelings of those around them (Serrat, 2016).

The self-management component is one’s ability to manage emotions, especially in stressful circumstances, and maintain a normal and positive outlook despite the challenges they are facing. The last component of emotional intelligence is relationship management, which means leaders can coach, mentor, influence, and effectively resolve problems facing the team (Serrat, 2016). For leaders to realize the effectiveness of emotional intelligence, all the above components need to be considered.

Self-managed Teams

The leadership role in self-managed teams is very different from traditional hierarchical teams. In a hierarchical team, the team leader only allocates tasks to the team members. In self-managed teams, the team leader performs a supporting role by identifying the long-term career and personal development of the team members within the context of the whole company. Self-managed teams mean that leaders work together with the team members to motivate and monitor the team’s accomplishments (Paunova & Lee, 2016). They also need to discuss with the team members about the standard of work, objectives, aims, and the goals that the team has to accomplish within a specified period. The leaders of self-managed also create channels of communication for the team to be able to link with the rest of the teams within the organization. Self-managed teams enable members of different teams to use their skills and experience outside their area of specialization. This allows them to have greater freedom to complement their skills with other members from various teams within the organization (Paunova & Lee, 2016). The interactions of different teams lead to greater motivation and enhanced performance as a result of discretion over their work and freedom to interact and apply their skills to contribute to the company’s success.

Application of the Leadership Theory

Description of the Company and its Leadership Needs

Amazon is an e-commerce company that is situated in Seattle, Washington. It is one of the largest and distinguished organizations that sell their products over the internet. The company was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, who is still the CEO of the company up-to-date (Blazek, 2016). The company was first established as an online bookstore and then later diversified by adding more products such as clothing, electronics, video games, and electronics. The company corporate culture is customer-centered as they believe that if they do not listen to its customers, then the company would fail.

Amazon has many leadership needs that should be addressed as quickly as possible to improve employees’ performance. First, the company does not care much about its employees. The company’s management only cares about its customers by pushing the employees to deliver without any motivation (Blazek, 2016). For instance, whereas other e-commerce firms are focusing on creating fun and relaxed environment for their workers, Bezos is coddling his 164 million customers and does not care much about his employees (Blazek, 2016). Although customers determine the success and failure of a company, it is the employees who create the products and create value for them in the market. Therefore, not taking care of employees by creating a fun and relaxed environment can affect the long-term success of an organization due to increased employee turnover rates. People are social beings, so they need to be appreciated, respected, and treated well for them to be productive and loyal to the organization. Employee recognition is one thing that Amazon needs to work on before employees start looking for jobs elsewhere.

The company also needs to focus on multicultural management teams. The company’s Board of Directors comprises nine members with a lot of experience in a wide range of business industries. Three main committees assist the Board of Directors: the Leadership Development and Compensation Committee, Audit Committee, and Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee and Leadership Development and Compensation Committee (Blazek, 2016). Despite strong leadership, the top management at the company lacks a diversified workforce with almost all the senior executives at the company’s consumer-facing business, such as hardware, retail, and cloud-only consisting of white men. Only four of the 48 executives are women (Blazek, 2016). Having a diversified workforce helps teams to improve the cross-cultural competency, increase innovation, and create a satisfying customer experience. Due to a lack of cultural and gender diversity within its top management, Amazon may miss many benefits connected to having a diversified workforce. As a result, the company needs to diversify its great management workforce in terms of ethnicity, race, and gender.

Competencies and Effectiveness of Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos is the founder of Amazon, and he has shown to be a competent and capable leader time and time again. Although many people have accused his leadership style as being pragmatic, his competencies and effectiveness in leading his employees cannot be denied. First, Jeff Bezos is an unbelievably a big thinker. Whenever there are new ideas from the different teams within the organization, Jeff makes them look at the ideas they have suggested from different perspectives. All he wants is for the employees to be capable of thinking bigger and advancing the ideas beyond their thinking and creating something unique.

Another competency for Jeff Bezos is that he is a man of high standards. Jeff leads his employees by setting high standards for every employee to stretch and aspire to be like him. From the way Jeff carries his duties as a CEO to the way he relates with the employees, he has set standards that everyone in the company would like to emulate.

Jeff Bezos is also very thoughtful about being strategically patient and tactfully impatient. He always has a conviction on long term vision of the organization and is not easily discouraged by people who tell him that his vision is unrealistic. However, he understands speed matters in operations and inspires his employees to act quickly and discharge their duties (Blazek, 2016).

He prefers having a backbone in leadership where leaders can disagree and commit to doing their work without necessarily empathizing with their profession. Amazon’s culture is always against social cohesion, as Bezos argues that without the freedom to state and dispute opinions, there can be no invention in the organization (Blazek, 2016). Emotional intelligence is integral for all professionals; the backbone and boldness of Bezos have served Amazon very well in delivering the best products to its customers.

Theory-supported Success Factors Exhibited by Jeff Bezos

Bezos’s success factors can be analyzed through the prisms of contingency leadership theory. Contingency leadership theory states that “leader’s effectiveness is contingent upon how his or her leadership style matches the situation.” (McKenzie & Love 12)The success factors of Bezos have been characterized by a leadership that is demanding, cutthroat, and harsh. His leadership style has been seen to be autocratic and only customers matter to the Amazon CEO. The contingency leadership that Jeff exhibits in his leadership is applicable in many situations; it was best suited when Amazon was strengthening its position on a gradually expanding e-commerce business industry.

Conclusion

Leadership theories explain why and how people become successful leaders. Most of the theories are based on how to manage employees; therefore, team leadership is essential in determining effective leaders today. LMX theory explains how leaders relate with team members with members being categorized in in-group and out-group. Multiculturalism, emotional intelligence, self-managed teams, and networking are core attributes that a leader should possess. Jeff Bezos has shown an autocratic leadership style, and his leadership is based on contingency leadership theory. Bezos gives preference to the customers, but not his employees. As a result, his leadership has been criticized time and time again. However, he has severally refuted the claims that the organization’s workplace environment is toxic.

References

Blazek. (2016) “Jeff Bezos: How His Unique Leadership Style Set Amazon Apart” (2016). https://www.truscore.com/resources/jeff-bezos-leadership-style/.

Erdogan, B., & Bauer, T. N. (2014). Leader-member exchange (LMX) theory: The relational approach to. The Oxford handbook of leadership and organizations, 407-434.

Lilian, S. C. (2014). Virtual teams: Opportunities and challenges for e-leaders. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 110, 1251-1261.

McKenzie, L., & Love, K. 15 Contingency theory of leadership.

Paunova, M., & Lee, Y. T. (2016). Collective global leadership in self-managed multicultural teams: The role of team goal orientation. Advances in global leadership, 9, 185-208.

Rossi, F., Caloffi, A., & Russo, M. (2016). Networked by design: Can policy requirements influence organizations’ networking behaviour?. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 105, 203-214.

Serrat, O. (2017). Understanding and developing emotional intelligence. In Knowledge solutions (pp. 329-339). Springer, Singapore.