Team leadership activities in different project phases

Abstract

Most any industry is experiencing increasingly fast-paced competitive environments with profound and abrupt changes in technologies and markets. This development puts increasing demands on businesses as they aim to adapt to changing conditions, with more and more organizations transforming to team-based structures, where project teams, often with members from different functional areas, are charged with providing the necessary flexibility to react quickly to technological and market changes.The proliferation of such team-based organizational designs, however, has profound implications for the enactment of leadership in organizations. Whereas dyadic relations between leader (mostly an individual) and followers (an individual or a group) could in the past be clearly recognized, these respective roles become more and more blurred today (Manz and Sims, 1987). Particularly since the 1980s, scholars have defined team leadership in terms of roles and functions that are shared and commonly performed by multiple or all team members (Hackman and Walton, 1986;Manz and Sims, 1987). It is argued that team managers can perform leadership functions by themselves; however, that it is unlikely that they incorporate all the skills necessary (Mohrman et al., 1995). The merit of this functional approach is that it: . . . leaves room for an indefinite number of specific ways to get a critical function accomplished (Hackman and Walton, 1986, p. 77).

HRM in project groups: The effect of project duration on team development effectiveness

“…For example, Weinkauf and Hoegl (2002) identified seven types of team development practices: controlling, securing information flow, conflict resolution, coaching and development, rewarding, granting of autonomy, and feedback. The PMBOK (PMI, 2008) suggests six tools and techniques for team development: interpersonal skills, training, team building activities, ground rules, co-location, and recognition and rewards.…”

“…There are three phases in development of project teams (Weinkauf and Hoegl, 2002). The first phase is referred to as the ''conceive phase".…”

“…For example, the PMBOK (PMI, 2008) identifies four project HRM processes: develop human resource plan, acquire project team, develop project team, and manage project team. This paper focuses on team development, as the existing literature recognizes it as critical for organizational and project success (Kerzner, 2009;Weinkauf and Hoegl, 2002). Team development is under the direct responsibility of the project manager, who is expected to engage in activities such as training, and rewarding.…”

The Project Team Features Effectiveness and Leadership

“…Constrained by, cost and quality, the very nature of the project team's work underpins a collective task much more complex than that assumed by other types of work teams [1]. Each member usually has a series of unique skills related to a particular field of exepertise, the connection of the knowledge of all members being required.…”

Towards a framework for Knowledge Management in Project Management

“…Project teams are often charged with providing necessary flexibility to react quickly to changes and due to the mix of team members from different functional areas, leadership is constrained to manage various capabilities to achieve project objectives. The emergence of project-teams and groups places different kinds of constraints on leadership (Weinkauf and Hoegl, 2002) as opposed to past PM management styles. Leaders are now required to be flexible, adaptive, approachable, innovative, visionary, inspirational, situational (Lee-Kelley, 2001), creative and motivational (Barber and Warn, 2005).…”