Do Leaders Matter?

 Part 1 consists of six essays structured as case studies. What two essays are most relevant to you and why? And what essay did you find to have the least relevance and why?

I had high expectations for the six essays that began the Salas et al. (2013) book on developing and enhancing teamwork in organizations but found myself disappointed by the first, third, fifth, and sixth essays. The second essay, written by Haskins, Do Teams' Leaders really Matter, and the fourth essay on Making a Difference with Health Care Teams by Buzachero both resonated with me.

Having a background in the military, I saw myself in the experimental design that Haskins discusses having within the military; teams with similar types of soldiers, similar training, similar age, etc. I was a part of that cohort and saw first-hand what Haskins describes, how leaders would come and go within our team and little changed about our effectiveness but our morale was affected, especially by poor leadership. I also could identify the different leaders I had in the military and placed them on a bell curve and thought about the outliers specifically. There were a couple on the far end close to positive and it made me thankful for the opportunity to work with them. 

The essay by Buzachero on Making a Difference with Health Care Teams described a situation of leadership that is similar to what I experienced at my non-profit training organization. The Team of Equals he discusses is similar to our organization's board, then the command and control, our executive leadership, the small expert-dominated teams, and the teams with multi-faceted leaders and groups. All of these, including the co-management teams, are and can be found at our organization. So this seemed to have the most relevance to my work and understanding of the dynamics and groups we have in place.

The essay that had the least relevance was the fifth essay on Developing Leaders on Any Team written by George O'Leary. There are aspects of truth to his statement that "you can generally categorize everyone on your team into three groups: winners, losers and followers," (Salas et al., 2013, p. 18). What O'Leary doesn’t focus on is that leaders can emerge from any of these categories based on circumstances. In my own organization, we have developed leaders from the ranks of followers and changed losers into winners.

Reference

Salas, Eduardo, Tannenbaum, S., Cohen, D., & Latham, G. P. (Eds.). (2013). Developing and enhancing teamwork in organizations: Evidence-based best practices and guidelines. John Wiley & Sons.