Article Directory

Summary
The distinction between management and leadership
Source of influence
The right team leadership
Related blogs

Summary

How to build an efficient team (1)-Team structure
how to build an efficient team (2)-Android platform team structure examples
How to build an efficient team (3)-Leadership

The previous two blogs discussed how to build an efficient team from the perspective of team architecture by sharing the book Team Topologies and my understanding of the content in the book, as well as an example. This article will start from the perspective of the leadership of the team leader and discuss how to bring out an efficient team. This article first discusses the difference between management and leadership theoretically, and points out that the core of leadership lies in influencing others. Then introduced the source of influence theoretically. Then I discussed how to build effective team leadership. I think that effective team leadership needs to be tailored to local conditions and people. It also needs to use strengths and avoid weaknesses to find a style that suits you. Finally, I gave some common best practices.

However, the article will definitely be limited to my own cognition and vision. It is an inspiration, and everyone is welcome to discuss it in the comment area.

The distinction between management and leadership

Before we discuss more about leadership (Leadership), we should first distinguish between the two concepts of leadership and management:

Types of	Management
Leadership (Leadership)	Leadership refers to the ability to influence others to achieve goals. The ultimate goal is generally change and movement, and the key word is influence.
Management	Management refers to a designated position with specific rights, generally for the purpose of maintaining consistency and order.

A team tends to have two types of leaders:

Assigned leadership: Arrangements from the company, such as manager positions.
Spontaneous leadership (emergent leadership): Informal leadership comes from the ability of spontaneous leadership at work to influence others. For example, the best technical classmates in the team can often influence the choices of others and even the team Direction, but he is not the assigned leader.

This article only discusses leadership. Of course, there are many overlaps between them. For example, many managers (such as managers) are team leaders, and team leaders often become managers, but as mentioned above, the two are Different concepts also serve different functions. However, good leadership is normally conducive to team management, and it is hard to imagine that the team’s managers can lead the team without good leadership.

Source of influence

The core key word of a good leader is influence . Influence refers to the ability to influence the behavior of others. It may be rooted in rights and status, or it may be rooted in other aspects that are not related to rights and status, such as personal charm. According to French and Raven's theory ¹ , there are six sources of influence:

source	Explanation
Mandatory rights	Based on a person’s ability to force others to obey (for example, through punishment, threats, etc.)
Reward rights	Based on someone’s ability to exercise rewards and use rewards to influence others
Legal rights	Based on a person’s position and the rights granted by that position in the company’s organizational structure
Indicative	Based on the respect, love and recognition of others
expert	Based on someone’s level of awareness of a certain field in the eyes of others
Information rights	Based on direct or indirect information that someone has

The right team leadership

I believe that good team leadership must be suitable for the team and the company and for itself, including the staffing of the team, the company’s culture, what the team does, the team’s resource constraints, the challenges the company faces, and personal preferences and Values and so on. Therefore, this article discusses from the following aspects:

Adapt to local conditions
Varies from person to person
suit myself
Finally, share some common best practices

Adapt to local conditions

Good leadership must be tailored to local conditions. From a big point of view, which country you are in, what is your company culture, what is the way your team accepts, and so on. Generally all companies need leadership, but the performance of leadership is indeed very different, or even the opposite. For example, Study ² shows that people in different regions have distinctly different tendencies towards leadership:

Leadership style	Most popular area
Participatory leadership, emphasizing the participation of members in decision-making	West or Latin America
Autonomous leadership	Eastern Europe
Serving the team leader, emphasizing cooperation and team atmosphere	worldwide
Self-protective leadership, emphasizing position, face, rank, etc.	The overall tendency of the Middle East, Asia, and Eastern Europe; the overall rejection of the West and Africa
People-oriented, not only caring for employees' work, but also for their lives	Popular in some collectivist countries, such as Turkey and Mexico; but in other countries, it may be considered intrusive into the lives of others, such as the United States and the Netherlands
Charismatic/inspiring leader, planning vision, inspiring, decision-making and courageous	Almost all cultures advocate this type of leadership, but the definition of charisma varies in different cultures

The overall environment and the company’s culture are one aspect. The relationship between you and your subordinates, the type of tasks you are responsible for, your position and whether your rights are strong or weak will also affect the leadership that suits you. For example, Fiedler's contingency management thought ³ :
Insert picture description here
Low LPC ⁴ represents that a leader is task-prioritized, and High LPC ⁴ represents that a leader is relationship-first. From the above figure, Fiedler's contingency thought can be seen that different types of leaders will behave differently in different situations. For example, in a team with a good subordinate atmosphere, a task-prioritized leader is more suitable; but in a team with poor subordinates, a task-priority leader is also more suitable; but in an intermediate state, a relationship-first leader There will be better performance.

Therefore, good leadership must be tailored to local conditions. You can use the model mentioned above to analyze your company and team, and find the leadership that suits your environment to focus on training.

Varies from person to person

Good leadership must also vary from person to person. The core of the team is people, who you have determines what strategy you need to adopt. For example, whether there are more junior engineers or more senior engineers in the team, what is the relationship between you and everyone in the team, whether you are new to contact or have worked together for many years and cooperate with each other, these will affect the choice that suits you. Here I will focus on two models and one project.

1. Situational leadership model

The situational leadership model advocates that team leaders need to adjust their leadership style according to the situation of employees. Generally speaking, there are two main points that companies need employees, one is competence, and the other is commitment. For team leaders, there are two main types of interventions for employees: direction and support. To make employees competent, they may need more guidance; to make employees have a higher commitment, they may need more support:

Staff needs	Competence	Commitment
Leadership style	Direction	Support

Looking at the breakdown, according to the staff’s needs for guidance and support, we list the horizontal axis and the vertical axis, and the following leadership styles can be divided:
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area	Employee needs	Corresponding leadership style
S1	Need more business guidance and less motivational support. For example, a new employee who is very motivated (commitment) but lacks the corresponding knowledge and experience	Directing: The corresponding leadership style should be based on business guidance
S2	The demand for guidance and support is relatively high. For example, a new employee encounters a setback after working for a period of time. Although the business is more familiar than before, he still needs a lot of guidance; at the same time, the morale of the setback is lower	Coaching: Train employees through a guided approach, improve ability and morale
S3	Need less guidance but more support. For example, employees have already started, but they can’t find a sense of accomplishment at work	Supporting: such as the description of the vision, more communication, the improvement of salary and benefits, etc.
S4	The need for guidance and support is low. It means that you have run into a better state, and the employees are both capable and motivated	Delegating: You can safely deliver the live

Therefore, as a team leader, you can carefully consider the situation of the members of your group and adopt different strategies. At the same time, it should be noted that everyone will change at different times. For example, an employee can grow into a state where he can be alone in the group through newcomers (S4), but may want to seek new challenges and lack motivation for the current work (S3); At this time, you may give him a brand new field, and then return to S1 or S2. At the same time, even a person will be in a different state in the above figure in different projects at the same time.

This model can help you clearly realize which leadership style you need to adopt in the current situation. Personally think this is more of a passive model, focusing on awareness and response, which can help you respond quickly to the current situation. But it's not an active model-to help you plan actively. The next model I want to share is an active model.

2. The demand triangle

One of the core issues in leading a team is to assign tasks, which is related to the team's delivery ability, the growth of the members and the happiness index of the team. The growth of the team is related to the growth of the team, whether the team can solve problems well, and whether it can be responsible for greater responsibilities. The satisfaction of the team is related to the retention rate of the members.

When assigning tasks, I often use the following demand triangle for analysis:

The most important of these is the team needs, which must be met. If the other two can satisfy one of them, then the allocation is considered relatively successful. It is best if all three are satisfied.

3. Project Oxygen

Google has introduced ten characteristics of good managers. Although they are talking about managers, many of them are related to leadership. If you are interested, search it yourself, such as this article

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suit myself

Finally, the most important point is that the leadership style you choose must be suitable for you. To be able to manage others well, you first need to manage yourself well. The first thing you need is to understand yourself, what your value is, how you like to treat others, what will irritate yourself, and what will excite yourself. Only by understanding yourself can you understand others, and only by understanding others can you lead others well. Of course there are also models, such as the following Big-5 Personality ⁵ :