In the last two decades of the 20th century, leadership in work groups has become one of the most important areas in leadership research. The competitive advantage that Japan reached in the 80’s was a key motivator for this to happen. Quality teams, bechmarking and continuous improvement were the focus of the studies. In the 90’s the focus shifted towards organizational strategies, in order to maintain competitive advantages.

“A Team is a group of people who are interdependent, who share common goals, and who must coordinate their activities to achieve those goals”. (Northouse, 2004)

Organizations have become flatter, and more responsive to faster changes in the markets and customer needs. But there’s a long way to go, with even faster trend changes and ever growing market demands, with shorter life cycles of the products , organizations have to respond to the new scenarios that will face in the near future.

Teams within organizations are the response to face those changes. Thus leadership is essential to make those teams effective.

To understand the functions of leadership in teams, and the complexity involved in those functions is extremely important because it will set a foundation to develop models and structures to improve performance of the teams.

Understanding Team Leadership

Scholars have divided the team leadership functions in team performance and team development. In simple terms, getting the job done and encourage the team to get better. An effective team leader it’s always focused in both functions.

In the same line, but with different emphasis, McGrath developed a model with two variables: monitoring versus taking action, and internal group issues versus external group issues. The next figure shows up the model:

As seen in the figure above, the leader has to move in each of the four quadrants to keep the team work stable and in great shape. But what’s most important is that these critical functions may or may not be performed by the leader. Experienced team members can be of assistance to the formal leader in performing some of the functions. A great leader, knows what he or she can delegate.

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