The outcomes from the Team Leadership style range from greater productivity to better products and services (Northouse, 364). I find it interesting then, that a group of kindergartners does better than experienced business post-grad students in the leadership activity presented below (Ted, 2010). In this activity, individuals are split up into teams of four and asked to build as tall a structure as possible using one marshmallow, 20 raw spaghetti sticks, one yard tape and one yard of string.
In this activity, the older groups were outdone by the younger groups, according to Wujec, because the recently graduated business students were thought to come up with one plan- “the best”- where the kindergarten students focused on trial and error. Meanwhile, CEO’s outperformed everyone and CEO’s with Executive Administrators did even better than just CEO’s. Wujec attributed this to the fact that they have studied how to handle team situations and perform in a team under “pressure.”
This relates to the Team Style of leadership because in both situations you need; to be able to have a more effective use of resources, make better decisions (in this case it was to just “go” rather than spend too much time thinking) and have greater innovation and creativity (Northouse, 364). The fact that children are supposed to be more creative and imaginative could explain why they did better in the activity. They may not have developed the necessary “team” skills, but they make up for it in the other areas. Overall, those who overthink and have no set leader are apt to do worse on an activity such as this if their creativity is also lacking while those who have experience with performing under pressure in a team or are creative, will do much better. As Wujec showed in his slideshow; Incentives in addition to low skill have a poor outcome while incentives with high skill are likely to produce a great outcome.
Northouse, P. G. (2015). Introduction to leadership. concepts and practice. Los Angeles: Sage.
Wujec, T. (2010, February). Build a tower, build a team. Retrieved July 20, 2016, from https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower?language=en#t-306429