The topic of team leadership immediately intrigued me as I have experienced a lot of team leadership throughout sports teams and other school extra curriculars. One team in particular that stood out me when reading the chapter was my THON organization, Eclipse. The definitions of a team vs. a group varies, as a group comes from interactions and influences while a team is more interdependent with a shared goal. There are three important aspects to a group – size, stages, and roles. Group sizes can impact the possibility of shared leadership and encourage cliques within the group or social loafing. My THON group was one of the larger special interests’ groups so the size definitely impacted the outcomes of the group. There were many different cliques within the group, especially as people started to hang out and build relationships outside of THON meetings and fundraisers. It was fairly common for this THON organization to have people social loafing throughout the year as some students wanted meet people and make friends but was not interested in the effort that THON required throughout the year and during THON weekend.
Group stages consists of four stages of development that go in the order forming, storming, norming, and performing. Every year my THON organization went through these four stages as new members joined and old members graduated. We start with introductions while forming, the board of the organization often went through storming with new members, and then norming starts when all members have developed group norms. Finally, the performing stage occurs on THON weekend when all members come together to stand and dance for what we have been working towards all year. Group roles consist of expectations within the group regarding positions or jobs, such as task, relationship, and dysfunctional roles. My THON organization had a board of student leaders that all shared leadership positions, some dealt more with task roles like setting up fundraisers and ensuring THON weekend plans, and others were more focused on supporting relationships within the organization and encouraging team development. There were not any dysfunctional roles that I would say I recognized in my THON group which was what I think helped with the effectiveness of the group.
There are many critical functions within team leadership to be effective and ensure successful outcomes, including task functions, team development and performance. Leaders of teams are most successful when they have networking and data splitting skills. Throughout my experience in this THON organization I was always impressed by the skills of the leaders on the board as they were able to network with many different businesses to donate towards THON and even support the dancers during THON weekend. According to Hackman and Walton (1986) there are three components to an effective team, clear engaging direction, an enabling performance situation, and adequate material resources. Within these components there are many factors to consider such as results driven structure, unified commitment, collaborative climate, standards of excellence and many others that help improve a team. In my THON organization I felt as though our team had a lot of these components considering the event we were raising money for. THON weekend is one of the biggest Penn State events, drawing people from all over to help raise money for pediatric cancer. This shared goal and commitment helped our group have results driven structure to raise a certain amount of money, unified commitment to the families we were supporting, external support and recognition from all over the country. This approach on team leadership is an interesting way to prepare a team and guarantee successful outcomes, just as my THON organization was successful as compared to this approach.
References:
Hamel, R. (n.d.). Lesson 9: Team Leadership, 2021
Hello! I love the fact that you use your THON experience to apply what we learned. Using your THON experience is a great thing because THON being a big and important event in Penn State, people will relate and understand the lesson more through this example. I am in the student events programming at Penn State and we have to have multiple meetings and budgets to get the celebrities that we want to perform for our school. Even though it is different, however my experience and yours both show the team spirit and what we learn in the lesson. Great post!
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog post, and learning more about your leadership role through your THON organization! You applied several different topics covered in this week’s lesson, and drew parallels that honestly helped me understand the lesson material better! It is interesting that most team experiences have commonalities, such as social loafing, as you mentioned. Obviously the size of the team, and commonalities teammates have with one another, and the general purpose of the team influence the success and dynamics of the team.
You also mentioned that commitment was one of the most important factors that drove the success of your THON organization, which stood out to me. I think I can also say this for all the teams I have been on, and have lead in my life. The more the team is committed to a certain goal, the better the outcomes are, and the more cohesive the team is. I have taken away better experiences from teams who abide by the components of an effective team as written by Hackman and Walton (1986). Thank you for sharing your experiences, and I am glad you saw success in your THON org!
Reference:
Hamel, R. (n.d.). Lesson 9: Team Leadership, 2021