Leadership of a Consultancy Group: Project Planning and Organising

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Main Body
Conclusion
Reference List

Introduction

Background Information

Effective coordination among the group members of a consultancy team is indispensible for working out effective strategies for managing change within an organisation. Being a leader of a consultancy group, the rational allocation of responsibilities and obligations among the team members was highly important to facilitate the problem identification aspects and understand the drawbacks of the organisation’s performance.

While preparing the group for the project accomplishment, I realized that being a leader implies possessing a wide experience in allocating roles within a team and making important decisions connected to planning and organising subsequent steps of project accomplishment.

Identifying the Key Concept and Rationale

Judging from the above-presented evaluation of our team performance, specific reference has been made to the importance of roles allocation, the conceptual framework presented by McClelland Need Model – introducing the basis for exploring the main needs of a manager. Hence, greater analysis of the model guides effectively the group members to understand the people’s driving force, including their behaviors and different situations.

The model greatly contributed to understanding psychological needs of group members. Apart from the above-presented framework, the team cooperation and interaction was achieved through understanding the 5 key variables of team performance, which are team leadership, mutual control of performance, back up behavior, adaptability, team coordination and orientation, and mutual trust.

Main Body

Introducing the Basics of Corporate Strategy and Analyzing Techniques and Strategic Options

It is important for a leader to learn the main aspects of effective performance management within a project team. In particular, specific psychological, ethical, cultural, and motivational theories and backgrounds should be carefully considered to achieve the highest results.

Regarding the team functioning, it should be stressed that a team leader should provide approaches “…to improve strategic focus and organisational effectiveness through continuously securing improvements in the performance of individual and teams” (Pilbeam and Corbridge, 2006, p. 289).

While working within a team, the diversification strategy has been introduced, which is also an important element of effective team performance because can significantly foster the goals accomplishment.

In particular, “…establishment of priorities between projects, periodic review of project team members’ performance and the existence of planning and control processes” are among the main attributes of fruitful cooperation within the team (Saee, p. 261). In this respect, the strategic options proposed by the Project Board were not fully directed at optimizing the work of the organisation’s team, which hampered the process of option implementation.

Introducing Theoretical Frameworks

Discussing McClelland Need Concept

While applying to McClelland Need concept, I was able to evaluate the motivations and needs of each member of the team, including my abilities and needs. Judging from the results, most of the group participants had higher need for affiliation, but less need for achievement. In contrast, my achievement need was higher than the affiliation which struck the balance between the team members.

More importantly, greater control of performance was carried out through a strong need of power, a tool necessary for enhancing behavior of other people. In the course of project management, I realised that fruitful cooperation within a team was possible to achieve if appropriate behavioral limits were established (Chapmoux, 2010, p. 160). However, a team leader should be more oriented on expressing personal dominance through interpersonal influence and persuasion.

“Big Five” of Team Functioning

While taking into consideration the framework within which the main team leadership variables were identified, there were five key components of successful team functioning, which are team leadership, mutual performance monitoring, back up behavior, adaptability, and team orientation.

Looking from the perspective of team leadership, the team motivation was sufficiently developed through introducing a competition element within a team. At the same time, the team worked toughly in cooperation with each other. According to Zaccaro et al. (2001), “a team failure may reside not only in member inability, but also in their collective failure to coordinate and synchronize their individual contributions” (p. 451).

In this respect, team management should first be considered as a process, but not as an event. Apart from team interpersonal communication, teams should pay closer attention to external factors revealing dynamic and complex environments. In this respect, the need for member coordination was the core for successful accomplishment of team goals.

Back up behavior and adaptability are closely connected concepts. Porter et al. (2003) believe that a back up behavior model should be based on team inputs focused on the nature of team’s goals, as well as the team composition. Being involved into the decision-making process, the team introduced effective collaborative techniques to make important decisions and solutions to the existing problems (Marks et al., 2000).

Adaptability, in this case, is one of the techniques contributing to fostering the decision-making because it enhances the group ability to modify behaviors. Because a team is a group of individuals undertaking specified roles and interacting dynamically and adaptively toward a common goal, the matter of adaptability contributes to recognizing changes within the team and defining the team member roles.

Team orientation is more associated with the analysis of individual efforts within a team. Being a team leader, I realized that I could not effectively manage the team project without assistance provided by my team members. In this case, the effective allocation of roles contributed to greater effectiveness of the project accomplishment.

Evaluation of Team Working and Decision Making Capacity

Judging from the result of project management, our team has succeeded in producing sound solutions to the problem through effective cooperation. The effectiveness of the team’s work was marked by the rational allocation of responsibilities. In particular, because the main project perspectives were identified, I believe that our team corresponded to the existing requirements.

It also implied that I managed to effectively allocate the responsibility and give orders to the group participants. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the decision-making process during the project accomplishment, the team managed to analyze the interview materials to define the gaps in management and identify the problem by the rational decision-making model.

Conclusion

An overall evaluation of team performance has revealed that our team has succeeded in implementing its decision-making models and strategic management concept. While leading the group, I have also realized the major shortcomings of leadership. In particular, more emphasis should be placed on striking the balance between coordinative working and individual efforts implementation.

On the one hand, project management requires effective coordination and monitoring of effective team functioning. On the other hand, a leader should provide other group members with a space for creating and analytical thinking. In such a manner, it is possible to creative a sound competition within a group and foster goals accomplishment.

Reference List

Chapmoux, J. (2010) Organizational Behavior: Integrating Individuals, Groups, and Organizations. UK, Taylor & Francis.

Marks, M., Zaccaro, S. J., & Mathieu, J. (2000). Performance implications of leader briefings and team interaction training for team adaptation to novel environments. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85, 971–986.

Pilbeam, S., and Corbridge, M. (2006) People Resourcing: Contemporary HRM in Practice. London, Pearson Education.

Saee, J. (2007) Contemporary Corporate Strategy: Global Perspectives. London, Routledge.

Zaccaro, S. J., Rittman, A. L., & Marks, M. A. (2001). Team leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 12(4), 451-483.

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