Communication of Organizational Vision and Strategy
Importance of Common Purpose
A team must share a purpose to attain success in its endeavours for various unexceptional reasons. First, it cannot be disputed that team members have diverse attitudes, beliefs, and capabilities that influence their preferences and priorities. As a result, each member possesses personal goals that are distinct from those targeted by other colleagues.
Therefore, a common purpose harmonizes members’ personal objectives and mentalities towards a common course that establishes a sense of direction (Green, 1999). In addition, it forms the basis of creating a legal framework since the team leaders can evaluate the members’ decisions and actions in accordance to the team’s purpose. Actions that are inconsistent to the common purpose are considered inappropriate while the consistent ones are right.
This legitimacy enables a team to set the standards of performance so that the common purpose is used as a reference point. The performance of each individual and the entire team can be evaluated according to members’ ability of satisfying a common goal (Green, 1999).
In case a team does not have a common purpose, it does not exist because members could be acting according to individual preferences that cause confusion. This could be equivalent to a situation where members invalidate the essence of creating a group by conducting their activities individually. Furthermore, the team could run without a legal framework because missing of a common purpose legalizes all decisions and actions.
Roles of Communication in Establishing a Common Purpose
In a team, the establishment of a common purpose involves conception of the objective, embracement of the purpose, and development of strategies that help in achieving the objective to validate its existence. Communication is applied during implementation of these three aspects that assist to establish a common purpose.
When the team is conceiving the common purpose, all members must provide ideas on what they consider as the primary objective. This triggers the team leader to communicate with the members in order to call for their contributions and correct feedbacks. In the second step, the team must discuss all individual contributions and embrace one of them to define their common purpose. This ensures that all members of the team agree unanimously with the decision to show their conversance with the purpose.
Lastly, communication purports the third step by ensuring that members discuss the strategies applicable in achieving their common purpose. In this light, continuous communication and listening help the team leaders to coordinate the members during implementation of those strategies and inform them about changes that occur. This implies that poor communication could lead to partial agreement during conception of a common purpose, lack of coordinated performance of duties, and partial embracement of the objectives that disenfranchise some members to cause resistance and adverse failure.
Motivating and Developing a Team
Motivational Factors
There are various motivational theories that articulate the factors of motivation. These theories are exemplified by Herzberg’s theory, McGregor’s theory and Maslow’s theory. Herzberg argued that there are hygiene needs misconceived to be the factors of motivation such as salary, security, working conditions, and good rapport with administrators among others.
He contended that the needs result to temporary motivation which dies after a short period (Beck, 1978). Furthermore, he argued that the real factors of motivation in a team include achievement, advancement, recognition, work, and responsibility among others. For instance, increasing the salaries of team members does not offer permanent motivation because they will seek for more salary. On the other hand, a team member who has passion for his work will always be motivated to contribute compassionately.
In his theory, McGregor (1960) splat people into two groups incorporating people who are reluctant to work and those who are enthusiastic. Then, he suggested that the team members who are lazy can only be motivated by putting up measures to punish them after ignoring their duties. On the contrary, ambitious people are motivated by giving them rewards after performing their duties well (McGregor, 1960).
For example, an employee who performs better than his colleagues can be promoted from the current level into a higher one. Alternatively, the employer can increase the employees’ salaries to acknowledge their extra efforts. These rewards motivate other team members to work hard and achieve the same rewards. In this case, the main factors of motivation include legal measures, rewards and loyalty programs.
Maslow theory suggests that people are motivated by a progressive advancement comprising of various stages which offer distinct satisfaction (Beck, 1978). In this light, people are motivated to move from one stage to another in order to pass through various stages that include attainment of physiological safety as well as social and self-actualization needs. In this case, team members are always inspired and motivated to advance from one stage to another (Beck, 1978).
Importance of Motivational Leaders
Leaders with the capability to motivate the team members are important according John Adair’s theory of leadership. This theory involves identifying a task, building a team and satisfying individual needs. In this light, a leader motivates members to identify the task by satisfying the needs of the individuals participating in the team’s activities (Beck, 1978).
When their individual needs are satisfied, John argued that the team becomes cohesive and united enabling members to adopt a common purpose for their team. Additionally, this unity helps them to pull their talents and capabilities in order to make a collective approach towards their challenges.
In this light, I balance the three aspects by ensuring consideration of individual needs, unity of the team, and right definition of their task for realization of the achievements. Additionally, motivational leaders set the pace for other team members since they lead by example rather than giving orders and authority. Lastly, they connect the team members to the critical long lasting ideologies rather than temporary needs. For example, a motivational leader seeks to show the importance of completing a task rather than working for money.
Leaders’ Role in Supporting and Developing a Team
In his theory, Ken Blanchard articulates adaptive style as one of the most crucial styles that can be used to support and develop a team. This case argues that the style enables the leaders to embrace flexibility which allow them to tolerate flaws of their colleagues in a team.
This enables them to study and improve the members’ weaknesses and strengths that can be tapped to achieve a common purpose. Consequently, the style enables leaders to form a strong foundation for the team since they do not rush into making conclusions and dismissing members rather than improving their behaviours.
On the other hand, Bruce Tuckman described four stages of developing a group which were forming, storming, normalcy and performing stage. Bruce showed the contribution of the leaders at each stage of development (Beck, 1978). During formation, the group relies entirely on the leader for directions because it is not yet coordinated. The second stage and third part the leader facilitate the establishment of a purpose and formation of consensus in a respective manner.
During the performing stage, leaders’ involvement is minimal because the team is aware of the objective and the organizational autonomy is established. Personally, my team is at the normalcy stage that approaches the performing stage. This stage has been developed mainly through adapting the flaws and afflictions envisaged by the team members until the attainment of a mutual understanding.
References
Beck, R 1978, Motivation theories and principles, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs.
Green, P 1999, Building robust competencies by linking human resource systems to organizational strategies, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Hargie, O 1997, The handbook of communication skills (2nd ed.), Routledge, London.
McGregor, D 1960, The human side of enterprise, McGraw-Hill, New York.