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Leaders set vision, strategies, goals, and values in order to guide for desired action and behavior. Leaders are characterized by certain traits which distinguish leaders from non-leaders includes Drive, desire to lead, honesty, cognitive ability, self-confidence and knowledge. Effective leaders must have two major qualities: knowledge and communication competence. Leader needs knowledge of issue and the ways of effectively leading a team. This knowledge will enable leader to identify alternatives available. He also needs to be an effective communicator as equally listener and speaker.
Leaders should acquire qualities f flexible, openness, empathetic, courage, interactive, and positive attitude. ( http://www. writingservicescompany. Com/free-term-papers/leadership-term- paper. HTML). Leadership is about inspiring, influencing and motivating people to achieve change (Class notes). A leader is a person who guides others toward a common goal, by example and showing that you are a good listener, focused, organized, decisive, and a confident person (http://www. Separators. Com ‘scholarship-essays-22/leadership-football-college-family-14721/).
Introduction:- This case study is about an incident where I had to work as team leader of group of six people. It’s about successful leadership in forming a team. It’s discussed that how you can achieve your goal by working effectively and by using your leadership skills in a team. Sometimes you get leadership skills and style by the person who inspires you. In first nature of the incident and context in which it occurred has been discussed. The processed involved has been has been analyses and it is critically analyses further in which feelings and emotions of the people have been discussed.
It’s been commented shortly and conclusion has been written at last. The nature of the incident:- In my college, I was a member of INS (National Service Scheme). I worked as a volunteer in this organization for one year. The INS was formed in 1969 with an aim to “inculcate the social welfare thoughts in the students, and to provide service to the society without any prejudice. Their motto was simple – “Not me, but You”. There are various camps that the INS conducts and each of them broadly fall into one of these four categories: 1. Cleaning 2.
Forestation 3. Stage shows or Procession creating awareness on social problems, education, cleanliness etc 4. Inviting doctors for health camps. Most of these camps are conducted in rural places or sub-urban areas. (http://YMMV. Differentiate. Com/140/national-service-scheme-ins/). Camping forms an integral part of National Service Scheme. It has special appeal to the youth as it provides unique opportunities to the students for group living, collective experience sharing and constant interaction with community (http://ins. Inc. In/seascape. Asp).
In my college, I was not only a student, but I was very active in taking part of National Service Scheme (INS) camps. As I was growing up, my older cousin sister was a big influence on me, since she used o be a volunteer of the National Service Scheme. At first, I thought that this could be a quick and convenient way of obtaining my required community service hours. I wanted to get it over with as soon as possible, and leave as soon as possible. However, I grew out of my selfish ways, and I began to see that volunteering has many mutual benefits.
Now I am reluctant to leave every time volunteer anywhere. Volunteering at INS slowly changed my view of life. The most significant leadership experience I’ve got while working as a Team leader in a campaign of INS in my college. Always remember that 10-day apical INS (National Service scheme) campaign which took place in my college during summer holidays. The theme of the camp ?? which was inaugurated by the Principal, Dry Racer Sings ?? was “Computer Education”. In this campaign mainly have to give computer education to the patients of a government hospital.
My job’s description was to help the patients who wanted to learn to use computers and support basic IT questions. There were totally seven members in my team which was headed by me. But it was not easy for me because this was the first time when I was chosen for the leader of a team. I was o excited to show my leadership skills I got and I was not nervous at all despite this was the first time that I was going to lead a team because I had seen my cousin so many times to work as a team leader. She always used to tell me how to work in a team and how to lead in a team. She was an inspiration for me as a leader.
The processes involved Next day I started my campaign outside the government hospital. Saw all the team members were on time. I knew that being a leader I had to take care that every team member was getting the things properly. I had to clear that my team member were getting every single thing and understood the hangs. Communication can be described as “CREATING UNDERSTANDING” Communication is very important for a leader. The leader communicates effectively because effective communication decrease resistance, and encourage moving through the change more effectively and positively.
The bottom line with all of this is if you screw up communicating with team members, even the smallest changes can result in ugly problems. (http://work 1 . Com/articles/coachman. HTML). Through words, actions, body language, voice tone, and other processes you send many messages about yourself, the changes, and your organization. This constitutes precisely one-half of the communication process. The second half consists of verifying that the message you intended to send was actually received and interpreted the way you intended (http://work 1 . Com/articles/coachman. Tm) During that campaign, had many discussions with my team members. I usually came across discussing major issue related to computer education, how could we convince patients to learn computers, how we had to deal with them because it was difficult to teach people specially if they are aged and sick. Despite being a team leader I did not insist my team to do the things according to me. In every meeting I asked them their opinions and suggestions. So focused on my team. And according to (http://www. Headmistresses. Com/l net/ AN/menus/Knowledge term if you focus on team members, so will everyone else.
I listened their suggestions carefully. Genuine listening generates respect, rapport and trust between talker and listener. In particular, employees like, and respond better to, supervisors who they think are listening to them (http://www. Businessperson. Com/leadership_listening-skills. PH). Listening is a skill that we can all benefit from improving. By becoming a better Sistine, a person can improve productivity, as well as his/her ability to influence, persuade negotiate. It also avoids conflict and misunderstandings which is very important for a leader to increase the number of his followers (http://vow. . M . Middleton. Com/Communal/Strengthening. HTML). Then after coming on a decision in the meeting, me and my team member worked according to that. When followers feel they are being supported, and they have the ability to remain in control of their workplace, they stay motivated. Leaders can foster this feeling by allowing employees to take on added responsibility and accountability for asking decisions (http://www. Money-cine. Com/Career-Development/Leadership -Skill/Motivation-Theory-and-Leadership/). So we discussed about the strategies which we could use to make our campaign successful.
We made plans, had discussions, and generate ideas. It’s always a good idea to get feedback from your team members and check about their feelings on the task or project. And its good to make sure the reaction you’re looking for (http://www. Money-cine . Com/Career-Development/Leadership-Skill/Motivation-Theory-intermediaries/). My job out there as a team leader was to design the agenda, set priorities, follow- p the discussions, and made our campaign meaningful. At the same time I performed simultaneously role of interacting, motivating group members, solving conflicts as they arise.
During our sessions we set vision, developed strategies, targeting goals, and evaluating our past performance in order to guide ourselves for desired action and behavior. My challenges: Being a leader I had so many responsibilities to organize and develop a culture of unselfishness. A failure of my team member was the failure of me. I had to do my work selflessly and biggest challenge for me was to get my team members also work selflessly for the campaign. Each of our team members felt as he/she was the important part of the team and we worked for the campaign.
It is good for a leader if he/she allows the team to be part of the planning and problem solving process. This helps with the development and allows you to coach them. Secondly, it motivates them ?? people who are part of the decision making process become the owners of it, thus it gives them a personal interest in seeing the plan succeed (http://www. Unlink. Com/-download/leader/leaders. HTML). The hardest job for me was to set myself as an example for my all fellows. On my first day at the campaign, I was expecting a lot of people. Surprisingly, no one had attended.
It was strange and disappointed at the same time. I talked to the patients and asked them if they wanted to participate in any kind of activities related to computer. The majority was intimidated and didn’t know anything about computer due to the reason that 70% – 80% of patients in the facility were from the slum areas with the age ranging at from 60 and 70. At first, I did not know what to do. Nobody came to class on the first day. The entire team was losing confidence as time went on. So that was a challenge for me to hold my team not to lose confidence.
Because confidence is so important. It is one particular component of leadership that is so important, so necessary, that without it, leadership cannot exist. But before making them confident first I had to trust on my confidence. It is said that self-confidence is the fundamental basis from which leadership grows (http://www. Inc. Com/resources/leadership/articles /20080301 /dad. HTML). As a leader, you need to cultivate your team’s confidence. Your team should have confidence in themselves as well as confidence in your leadership skills.
The best way to create confidence is through a series of victories. In general, people will judge the probability of future success based on past performance. As you work with your team you will build a history. If you maintain a good track record of SUccess, you will create a sense of optimism that future, proposed projects will also be successful. If you have a record of failure, your team will probably view any new projects as having a high chance of failing. Because this was my first project as a leader so I wanted to do my best and did not want to let my team down.
To be effective, the team should be ere confident in their abilities to achieve success and in your ability to choose projects that will be successful. If an individual doesn’t feel like what they are working on is going to be successful, it is very unlikely that they will invest themselves entirely in the project. Sometimes, they will even start trying to plan ahead in order to have a good excuse for the project’s demise. At times, this means ignoring obvious obstacles that will provide an excuse for their failure.
When an individual believes a project will be successful, they are able to put themselves behind it 100%. Instead of looking for obstacles that can function as excuses in the future, they are proactive in eliminating obstacles that would cause a failure of the project. A team full of people looking for solutions will have a much higher success rate than a team of people looking for things to use as excuses later on (http://vim. Leadership. Com/creating-confidence/18/). Not only does confidence allow you to make the tough decisions that people expect from a strong leader but it’s reassuring to your team members.
It allows you to lead meetings with authority, to accept candor and open communication, ND the greater they perceive your force of will, the more faith they will have in your company and its mission. As a leader, consider how well you deliver a company speech. If you deliver it with confidence it inspires your team as intended, but the same speech delivered with doubt becomes a point of mockery (http://www. Inc. Com/resources/leadership/articles/20080301/dad. HTML). At the end of first day of campaign, I realized that we couldn’t get any results, unless the task is conducted in an orderly and organized manner.
Despite not knowing what to do, I had to trust in myself and my other team members to ensure that we would be able to made this campaign successful and would teach them something about computers. It is necessary for a good leader, he/she has to trust his/her instinct (http://www. Victimizer. Com/importance-confident -leadership/). In that situation, I asked my team members, not to lose confidence. Finally, I decided to discuss to my team members about different ways in which we can recruit the patients and encourage them to participate in the computer activities so that the program wouldn’t be terminated.
After the discussion, I got so many suggestions from my team members and I cited to divide everyone into groups of three, and told all of them to talk to the patients and try to convince them to learn computers by telling them the benefits of that. So the leadership style I showed was participative. Participative leadership style involves the leader taking into consideration the opinions of some of his employees before arriving at the final decision. This leadership style earns the leader immense respect and loyalty among his subordinates, as they feel that their opinions matter too.
This leadership style is useful for the leader as he gets to see a given situation from all directions, before deciding on he final course of action. This leadership style works really well in situations when the leader does not know everything and he relies on his subordinates knowledge for taking decisions. The biggest advantage of this leadership and management style is, that it helps in ascertaining and identifying future leaders among the subordinates. Also, it keeps a team’s spirit and morale high, as the team members feel that their opinions are valued by their leader (http://www. Guzzle. Com/articles/leadership-styles-and-examples. HTML). There are also many benefits of participative leadership style. As employees are given the bribery to suggest their views and opinions for deciding on some specific aspects, it can render motivation to the employees, with the employees thinking that the management is seriously considering their suggestions as well. And this certainly has a very positive impact on teamwork and employee performance. In addition, it also contributes to a good, productive work environment.
According to the participative leadership, there are many minds which are used in the decision- making process, and hence the decision is certainly well-thought upon from all angles, ruling out the possibilities of the decision not being suitable for that tuition (http://www. Puzzle. Com/articles/participative-leadership-style. HTML). Knew had to think of a way to encourage potential participants. For the next several days, I talked to the patients to understand their interests and linked them to computers. Told them about current events, stories, and articles that could be read online.
After talking to many of patients I came to know that many patients had their children and relatives in foreign countries. So that was a strong point could give them in order to convince them to learn computer. I told them the benefits of keeping in contact with their friends and family through he internet. And after that, six patients signed up for the class immediately after listening the benefit of internet. Then I asked my team members to come for a meeting immediately after lunch. In that meeting I told them to say the similar kind of benefits I did in order to make the patients convince.
The meetings and our discussions in a team shows that was more relationship oriented but it’s not. I was trying to make a relationship with my team member but I was more focused on task. That’s why I discussed every single step with my team member if I feel it would be helpful in my task because I wanted to make my campaign successful. Task-oriented leaders are focused on accomplishments. And I did the same. Initial success depends upon the leader’s ability to demonstrate competence and commitment to the team’s members.
Faced with an initial uphill challenge, a task-oriented leader can help the team understand their challenge by providing a coherent series of steps that structure their initial meetings. These steps include creating a persuasive challenge; ensuring that the team has the right skill sets involved; developing a shared understanding of their interdependent relationships; and providing strategies for getting started. Each tepee fosters a collaborative culture in which the team members trust each other and their leader, carry out quick wins, and begin the pursuit of long-term work (http://centralizes. Mom/? Task-Oriented-Leaders,-Relationship-Oriented-Leaders ,-Or-Both? &id=3012024). The best leaders are skilful at both task completion and creating effective team relationships. In the beginning, they recognize the team’s need for structure and create a foundation that is both firm and flexible. Once the task-oriented building blocks are in place and members begin to take risks by sharing information and speaking honestly about the task, the leader can haft to a relationship orientation.
When this shift is successful, the leader strikes the right balance between leading and following the team’s emerging leaders; knowing when to make decisions and when to yield to the team; and ultimately placing the emphasis on the team, not the leader. Consequently, the members’ evolving competence and interpersonal commitments drive them to become more courageous and influential with each other and within the organization When you build relationships across the organization you get to know what is really going on.
Subordinates who directly report to you ill often be tempted to tell you what they think you want to hear, rather than the reality. When you build relationships across the organization, people will get to know you and more openly share ideas and concerns. If you want to achieve success as a leader, make the time to build relationships across the organization in order to set yourself up for success (http://centralizes. Com/? Leadership -Success—The-lamentation-of-Building-Reactionaries&id=2187442). So First there were six people who signed up for the class. Ad to get the teaching material from the internet mixing with some exercises from books I’ve took in college. It was hard for them at first because many patients suffer from short-term memory loss. My team members were facing a lot of problems in teaching them but I asked them to keep trying. I was mainly focused towards achieving my goal and same I was trying to keep this thing in mind of my team members. I tried my level best to help them in convincing the patients and tried to sort out their problems they were facing in achieving the goal.
This is related to the path goal theory. According to this theory, leaders encourage and support their followers in achieving the goals they have been set by making the path that they should cake clear and easy. In particular, leaders: Clarify the path so subordinates know which way to go and Remove roadblocks that are stopping them going there (http://changing’s. Org/disciplines/leadership/styles/path_goal_leadership . HTML). But still it was very difficult for my team in teaching them computers.
I had them practice moving the mouse over to open a program and close it for at least 25 times. Usually by then, they could remember some of the exercise. However, the next day when I asked them to perform the exercise again, they had forgotten everything. So I learned that these are special people. The teaching quinine had got to be different. At college, students have to catch up with the professor’s speed, but in here I had to go according to how fast they absorbed the materials.
The class got bigger and new people joined. It had got easier for me because the experience students could help me demonstrating the new ones how to do certain tasks. Some of them even gave tips and tricks and shared their experiences. They learn it better from peers than me in some situations. I worked there for about a year. When I left, a total of 60 people shared the computer room. Each of them had his/her own schedule when to use the computer. All of them knew basic computer operations.
I didn’t think of anything, but right now it feels satisfying thinking back that I could at least changed partial of people’s life. Conclusion:- Volunteering at INS has changed me, from turning my selfish attitude into a person who will not rest until the job is done. Even though the challenge seemed to be overwhelming, nothing is impossible until you try. I learned many things that a textbook cannot teach such as leadership, organization, and communication skills, and I hope that my efforts at INS will take me further in other areas of my life.