PUBH 8400 - Team and Servant Leadership: Challenges & Approaches

This discussion post focuses on team and servant leadership, analyzing the characteristics of effective team leaders, challenges faced by teams (such as work overload and poor organizational culture), and the effectiveness of team leadership approaches. It includes responses to peer posts, evaluating their insights on team leadership skills, roles, responsibilities, and the impact of challenges on team members. The discussion emphasizes the importance of communication, decision-making, and strong morale in effective team leadership within public health organizations. The student provides constructive feedback, highlighting areas for improvement and acknowledging well-analyzed aspects of their peer's contributions.

Team and Servant Leadership
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Table of Contents
Part 1................................................................................................................................................2
Part 2................................................................................................................................................4
References........................................................................................................................................6

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Part 1
Team leadership plays a significant role in setting the tone of the staff members and executing
the vision of a business. The effective team leaders make sure that the employees are motivated,
and the team morale remains high to perform well. Team leadership influences morale by
developing a collaborative environment among the team members that helps them to work
together and achieve success (D’Innocenzo, Mathieu & Kukenberger, 2016). The function for
team leadership involves achieving goals, making plans, adapting to changes, solving problems,
making decisions and getting the job done. However, there possess certain characteristics of
team leadership; they are as follows:
Self-confidence
Self-confidence is determined to be the foundation for leadership where a leader believes the
team members and their ability to make appropriate decisions. By doing this, a leader builds
confidence within the team members.
Decision-making skills
A team leader is entirely responsible for making relevant decisions that will be beneficial not
only for the organisation but also for the team members. Thus, before making decisions,
effective leaders evaluate the options and choose the best one.
Strong Morals
A team leader needs to build strong morale that helps in practising qualities like integrity,
humility and accountability.
Courage
The team leaders must have the courage to take risks, question the norm and execute the work
accurately.
Effective communication skills
Effective communication skills help a team leader to explain their feelings and thoughts to the
team members (Lyubovnikova, Legood, Turner & Mamakouka, 2017). This particular skill leads
to collaboration, which is a significant aspect of leadership and teamwork.

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Challenges of a team
While leading a public health organisation, the teams have to deal with various challenges
among them, two of the significant challenges are, work overload and poor organisational
culture.
Work overload
According to the perspectives of the teams in public health organisations, the nurses experience
challenges due to a heavy workload. As a result, it leads to the occurrence of turnover issues as
the team members have to carry extra responsibilities beyond their comfort zone. Thus, it results
in job dissatisfaction and brink of exhaustion.
Poor organisational culture
Poor organisational culture is a significant challenge faced by the team members within the
healthcare sector. The team members are restrained from gaining opportunities such as flexible
work schedules, autonomy in an employee position and innovation (Sweeney, Clarke & Higgs,
2019). Most of the team members are unaware that the public health organisation in which they
are working provides incentives and development.
Team leader an effective approach
Moreover, it can be said that team leadership is an effective approach as it understands the nature
of leadership and implements to lead teams. Effective team leadership emphasises upon
problem-solving skills and behavioural flexibility applicable to teams and determines the
necessary interventions of a leader (Hoch & Dulebohn, 2017). Team leadership is an effective
approach as it analyses the external and internal activities of the organisation and monitors and
takes relevant actions to resolve the issues. A team leader is also responsible for enhancing the
performance of the team.

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Part 2
Response to Debra Ware post
Hi Debra, I have gone through your post, and I liked the way you have defined team leadership.
You have better analyzed the skills required by a team leader in order to execute a task and
communicating efficiently with the team members. However, as per my understanding, you have
discussed less regarding the roles and responsibilities of a team leader. I think it is an important
aspect of the discussion, and you should have focused more on this aspect. You must have seen
that in my post, I have provided sufficient information regarding team leadership as per the
requirements. To discuss the characteristics of team leadership, it is important to discuss the roles
and responsibilities of a leader (Koeslag-Kreunen, Van den Bossche, Hoven, Van der Klink &
Gijselaers, 2018).
On the other hand, you have mentioned the characteristics of team leadership in a well-organized
manner. But according to my opinion, it would have been better if the characteristics were
explained a little bit more for providing a better understanding of team leadership. Whereas, I am
impressed with the challenges that you have discussed within your post. I believe that both the
challenges presented by you are relevant and relates to team leadership. It is important and would
have been better to demonstrate the impact of these challenges on the team members (Sommer,
Howell & Hadley, 2016). However, the most interesting part is the team effectiveness that you
have explained well. It provides much understanding of the approaches used to enhance team
leadership.
Response to Sue Ballato post
Hello Sue, after reading your post, I have observed that you have included and discussed all the
relevant aspects regarding team leadership. After analyzing your post, the thing that attracted me
the most is that you have not only discussed the importance of team leadership but also explained
the characteristics in a well-organized manner. It will help the readers to gather appropriate
knowledge regarding team leadership and its roles and responsibilities within an organization
(Barnett & Weidenfeller, 2016).
However, as per my perspective, you could have done a little research on the skills required by a
team leader and discuss regarding it within your post. Leadership skills play a significant role for

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a team leader as it helps in managing the organizational activities efficiently and effectively
(Maduka, Edwards, Greenwood, Osborne & Babatunde, 2018). I also liked the way you have
discussed the significant outcomes of effective leadership on the team members.
You have well analyzed the challenges faced by the team leaders while interacting with the team
members and at the time of accomplishing a task to achieve the organizational target. I believe
that apart from presenting the challenges, it is also important to discuss its impact on the
organization as well as on the team members. Thus, in your post, you must have provided
information regarding the impact of the challenges on the organizational members. At last, you
have well analyzed the aspect of team leadership as an effective approach. This section provides
useful information regarding the effectiveness of a leader and the approaches that need to be
applied by a leader.

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References
Barnett, R. C., & Weidenfeller, N. K. (2016). Shared leadership and team
performance. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 18(3), 334-351.
D’Innocenzo, L., Mathieu, J. E., & Kukenberger, M. R. (2016). A meta-analysis of different
forms of shared leadership–team performance relations. Journal of Management, 42(7),
1964-1991.
Hoch, J. E., & Dulebohn, J. H. (2017). Team personality composition, emergent leadership and
shared leadership in virtual teams: A theoretical framework. Human Resource
Management Review, 27(4), 678-693.
Koeslag-Kreunen, M., Van den Bossche, P., Hoven, M., Van der Klink, M., & Gijselaers, W.
(2018). When leadership powers team learning: A meta-analysis. Small group
research, 49(4), 475-513.
Lyubovnikova, J., Legood, A., Turner, N., & Mamakouka, A. (2017). How authentic leadership
influences team performance: The mediating role of team reflexivity. Journal of Business
Ethics, 141(1), 59-70.
Maduka, N. S., Edwards, H., Greenwood, D., Osborne, A., & Babatunde, S. O. (2018). Analysis
of competencies for effective virtual team leadership in building successful
organisations. Benchmarking: An International Journal, 25(2), 696-712.
Sommer, S. A., Howell, J. M., & Hadley, C. N. (2016). Keeping positive and building strength:
The role of affect and team leadership in developing resilience during an organizational
crisis. Group & Organization Management, 41(2), 172-202.
Sweeney, A., Clarke, N., & Higgs, M. (2019). Shared Leadership in Commercial Organizations:
A Systematic Review of Definitions, Theoretical Frameworks and Organizational
Outcomes. International Journal of Management Reviews, 21(1), 115-136.