Importance of Leadership in High Performing Work Teams

Running head: BUSINESS MANAGEMENT 1
Business management
Name
Institution
Word count: 1556

BUSINESS MANAGEMENT 2
Business management
Introduction
A high performing work team is a group of goal-focused people who have specialized
expertise and complementary skills. The team innovates, collaborative, produce compatible
results. The team pursues achievement through collaboration, open communication, shared
leadership, communication, clear team rules and expectations, a strong sense of accountability,
and easy conflict resolution. The high performing work team has features that keep its operations
running. The first characteristics are team goals, purpose, and roles. The team s work together to
achieve both short term and long term goals. The teams’ members perform well when there are
clear roles. They start by recruiting and retaining their best talent while assisting low-performing
members. The common types of high work perfuming teams include work teams, parallel teams,
project teams, management teams, and virtual teams. Therefore, for a high performing work
team to function best, it needs a leader as discussed below with the aid of three theories which
include behavioral, path-goal, and relationship theory. This essay will discuss the importance of
a leader with a high-performance work team and the second part will analyze the three leadership
theories in relation to high work performance teams.
Leaders are always important people in organizations. However, different leadership also
influences the performance of an organization. Leaders contribute to the choice of the right talent
for the right job requirement (Barnwell, et al., 2014). On the other hand, a leader in a high
performing work team assists team members in attaining the best fit between the people and the
job. Every organization has a culture that should be followed. The presence of a leader in such a
work team will facilitate the right culture for the team and high the right people who suit into the
culture (Wang, Waldman & Zhang, 2014). The leader will contribute to the mutual climate, open

BUSINESS MANAGEMENT 3
communication, collaboration, and trust which will lead to the successful achievement of the
organization’s goals. In order to encourage this state of interdependence and collaboration, the
team leader should give the members the required support and structure for the team through
grouping the right people together.
A leader will assist in selecting the team members and assigning tasks since not every
member of a high performing team is capable of doing every job. A leader should ensure that the
members have enough resources that will assist them to develop their skills that are needed to
handle different tasks in the work environment (Langfred, 2007). The leader facilitates cross-
training. This type of training gives members an awareness of how jobs are interdependent,
raising the team’s flexibility and enhancing response. However, the response of the team is
highly based on how fast a leader gives the team feedback. Timely feedback is important to the
effectiveness of a team (DeVaro, 2008). The leader, therefore, ensures that the feedback reaches
the general team on its metrics and goals as well as feedback that gets to each team member.
Delayed feedback may be useful in future planning but it may delay immediate corrections that
are supposed to be made. Therefore, a leader is important in ensuring that the high-performance
team gets feedback on time.
A leader will create an environment that encourages problem-solving. Poor organization
or team structure may lead to the creation of negative and ineffective behaviors in members
which may impede communication. When members see mistakes as chances for enhancing the
teams’ process and results, it shows that the leader had successfully developed an environment
that encourages problem-solving (Bernstein, et al., 2016). The leaders should guide and allow the
members to create their own solutions rather than dictating solutions for them assists the team
members to become more involved and proactive. The presence of a leader encourages problem-