Five Roles for Team Leaders

On the other hand, Omar Bradley was tagged "The G.I.

General" for his dedication to and concern for the average soldier. He

managed to instill a sense of inclusion and value in his men. His stated goal

was to end the war as quickly as possible in order to minimize casualties, and

he was quite willing to subsume personal ego to achieve results.

How would four-star generals like Patton and Bradley fare in

today's corporate environment? In the wake of the global information explosion,

knowledge management has risen to become a core competency for many

organizations, so leading KM project teams becomes critical. In light of this,

it is instructive to examine the management styles represented by these two

icons of military history. Would Patton's march for glory and control drive

modern project teams to top performance? Would Bradley's emphasis on inclusion,

communication and building consensus enabled agile, high-performing teams?

THE ART OF THE PROJECT MANAGER

To glimpse the future of knowledge management, one need only

look at the growth of high performing teams in project management, where

knowledge is treated as a team asset to be shared and easily accessible. The

need for high-performing project teams was once limited to high-risk sectors -

the military, NASA, aerospace and construction industries - where consequences

for failure could include loss of life. In the IT world, survival is dependent

upon organizational speed and agility. High-performing teams present an ideal

operational model, and the skills required by the successful project leader

today may well be those of the CEO of tomorrow.

What is a high-performing team? Watch paramedics, firefighters,

US Navy SEALS, even a championship basketball team in action. They are fluid,

efficient and operate in concert. Each member performs a specialized job

exceedingly well, while being aware of the other tasks and ultimate goal. If one

stumbles, the others continue with no loss of time or diminished outcome. These

teams appear leaderless, yet unstoppable.

As projects become larger, cross-functional, global and more

complex, teams become comprised of a set of multi-skilled subject matter experts

(SME), brought together for their collective expertise. By their very nature,

SMEs have widely varying personalities and work styles. The art of managing this

collected expertise is in bridging these differences in a way that maintains

focus, yet allows innovation and creativity to thrive.

Building a high performing team requires the project manager to

wear many hats. In Team Leadership (Lore International Group, 1999) David

C. Kolb, Ph.D. offers a five-stage development model in which the leadership

roles and skill requirements of the project manager constantly change to best

serve the project.

Source: destinationKM

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