When I think of effective team leaders, the best example that comes to mind from my own experience was actually a classmate with whom I did a group project. This was during my undergraduate experience; she was an undergraduate like me, but she seemed to really have a handle on things. She took charge very quickly, which the rest of us in the group were actually grateful for (especially since we weren’t particularly excited about having to do group work). But it wasn’t just that she took charge quickly; she was also a very effective leader. She had already begun to formulate a plan for executing the project and was able to communicate this plan to us in a way that made sense to all of us. This correlates with the ideas shared by Cheryl Lacasse (2013) on nursing leaders; she asserts that strong leaders have “a clear vision” and are able to communicate it “clearly and passionately” which actually inspired us to be “willing participants in the collaborative process of realizing the vision” (p. 431).
This correlates with notions of transformational leadership, in which the “inspiration and intellectual stimulation” provided by the transformational leader “will appear most effective in teams that promote innovations and transactions of knowledge” (Zawawi & Nasurdin, 2015, p. 24). That is to say, the stimulation and encouragement she gave us in turn encouraged us to encourage one another, engage in productive discussion, and exchange ideas more freely. She was able to promote dialogue and listen to our different ideas and opinions and help us reach consensus (Kilpatrick et al., 2014).
She also listened to us in a such a way to understand our interests and strengths, the things which we all brought to the table for the project which the literature would refer to as personal and intellectual resources (Lacasse, 2013). She coordinated the tasks of the project in such a way that we all equally contributed in a way that most appealed to us as individuals, with our individuals strengths, to make the most of our shared resources.
- Kilpatrick, K., Lavoie-Tremblay, M., Ritchie, J. A., & Lamothe, L. (2014). Advanced practice
nursing, health care teams, and perceptions of team effectiveness. Journal of Trauma Nursing, 21(6), 291-299. doi:10.1097/JTN.0000000000000090 - Lacasse, C. (2013). Developing nursing leaders for the future: Achieving competency for
transformational leadership. Oncology Nursing Forum, 40(5), 431-433. doi:10.1188/13.ONF.431-433 - Zawawi, A. A., & Nasurdin, A. M. (2015). Knowledge, transformational leadership,
identification, and task performance of teams: A review of its theoretical underpinnings. Annamalai International Journal of Business Studies & Research, 23-26.
