Leadership, dual leadership and team effectiveness

Transcription

1 Leadership, dual leadership and team effectiveness Niclas Unnervik, David Everlöf February 14, 2012 Abstract Shared leadership is gaining ground in both the industry and public sector as a model for leading different levels of an organization. This paper aims to gather some key ideas about leadership, distributed leadership and dual leadership; and present an easy approach for using dual leadership in small (student) agile teams. We have also looked at whether dual leadership seems to increase performance and efficiency within the team. The research has been done via a literature study and the existing literature agrees that dual leadership indeed is a way to improve performance in teams but that much is required of the leaders to achieve this, mainly the leaders have to complement each other. Dual leadership in itself will not increase performance. When the ideas presented in literature (mainly the Bales-Parsons leadership model) is applied on a student project team in the courses EDA260/EDA270 we have found that dual leadership indeed has potential, but that it requires a deep cooperation and extensive communication between the coaches. 1

2 Contents 1 Introduction 3 2 Leadership models 3 3 The role of the team leaders 4 4 The Dual Leadership The Bales-Parsons Model on Dual Leadership The Bales-Parsons Model Applied on Solo Leadership Work Distribution Models for Co-Leadership Pros and cons brought by shared leadership The selection of dual leaders Leadership in relation to agile teams 9 6 Discussion Leadership in general Leadership roles in EDA The impression of Dual Leadership in EDA Summary 11 2

3 1 Introduction Ideas concerning dual leadership has been around for decades but has been ignored to a large extent for most of that time. This has now begun to change and research regarding the pros and cons of this leadership form is now being done on a more regular basis. This area of research is interesting since shared leadership is gaining more and more acceptance, both in the public sector and in the industry [8, 6]. There exists little concise material formalizing an easy approach to the dual leadership, the focus and main objective of this paper is to to summarize some of the existing research on team leadership and coordinated leadership and to make it applicable for use on the small XP teams in the LTH courses EDA260 and EDA270. We will also relate the presented research with our own experiences coaching a team of eight developers(taking the course EDA260). The research method used for this paper is literature study. The course, EDA260, has two main parts. Part one has lectures and labs with the purpose of educating the participants in Extreme Programming (XP) methodology and practise. The second part consists of seven 8-hours laboratory sessions and seven two-hour meetings with the purpose of developing a smaller software system using Extreme Programming. During the second part of the course the participants gets assigned to a 8-12 person group and each group is assigned two coaches from the course EDA270 [2, 3]. XP is an agile method for developing software. The method is based upon the idea of iterative development and a set of core principles (pair programming, refactorization, shared code ownership etc.) [1]. The findings in the researched literature indicate that dual coaching indeed is a way to increase productivity in groups, but that it is not the sole reason for success as numerous other factors also contribute to eventual success or failure. Such factors include what kind of leaders that has been given the formal leadership function, how these leaders work together and what kind of work is done within the group. The acceptance of the leaders formal power by the group members is also of importance to the groups performance. 2 Leadership models There exists many models for leadership; the most common and conceptually simple being the center oriented model (see figure 1 on page 4). In this model the leadership revolves around one person that all decisions has to be approved by. Another model is the distributed model (figure 2 on page 5). When using this model the leadership is shared within the group and each members shares equal responsibility and power. Two models incorporating a finite number of leaders greater than one are the dual leadership model (figure 3 on page 6) and the coordinated dual leadership model (figure 4 on page 7). These models represent the two cases where leadership over the entire group is shared (figure 3) and when the two leaders have responsibility for different parts of the group (figure 4). In the courses EDA260/EDA270 the actual case is the one with two leaders sharing equal responsibility for the entire group (figure 3). 3

4 Figure 1: Traditional solo leadership. 3 The role of the team leaders The role of the team leader(s) is to create an effective team with high team performance, and the idea has long been that this is a one leader one team - problem between the leader and the ones led by the leader [8]. Using this perspective one might say that there exists four important dimensions to the leadership function (note that the items below are citations from [9]): 4

5 Figure 2: Fully distributed teamleadership. Information search and structuring. Information use in problem solving. Managing personnel resources. Managing material resources. The first point targets the need for the leader(s) acquisition and evaluation of information relevant to the team. This includes information about team goals as well as team activities. The second point refers to the use of the information gathered in the previous point. The aim is to form reachable goals for the team and, after these goals have been formed, a plan that uses team resources in a way that will lead to goal fulfillment. The third and fourth points deals with personnel training, personnel scheduling, coordination and so on [9]. This top down view on the leadership process is a bit naive as it assumes only one formal leader, but in reality that is rarely the case, since there usually exist multiple leaders (both formal and informal). This does not, however, diminish the importance of these leadership functions and there also exists theories about multiple leaders increasing participation in group activities and information sharing and thus increases the team performance levels that way. The results from research dealing with this idea isn t unambiguous and the sheer introduction of multiple leaders to a team that previously had only one leader can not be said to increase team performance by itself. A key factor regarding team effectiveness in teams with some form of distributed leadership (such as dual leadership) is instead that all leaders (formal and informal) recognize the other leaders authority and the leaders ability to coordinate their efforts appropriately [8]. 5

6 Figure 3: The model used in the EDA260 and EDA270 courses. 4 The Dual Leadership The introduction of dual leadership in an organization often aims to tackle a series of problems solo leadership is associated with; including, but not limited to, the conflict between personal and professional life (or roles) caused by a great work burden (relate this to Zaccaros four leadership functions [9]), decreased levels of job satisfaction among solo leaders. The solo leadership originally comes from organisations with a traditional top-down hierarchy, a organizational model that has lost much of its former glory and influence [6]. There may be several reason for an organization to implement a dual leadership model. The most popular reasons, in popularity order is: 1. The size of the organization demanded more than one leader. 2. Because of sudden vacancy in the leadership. 3. Replicate a model used by a neighbour organization. 4. Having leaders working as a team, because if the member should work as a team, so should the leaders[6]. 4.1 The Bales-Parsons Model on Dual Leadership The earlier mentioned view, that the the leaders must be coordinated and support each other, is also supported by the Bales-Parsons model on dual leadership. The model is largely based on experimental studies and it is suggested that all leaders can be divided into two groups, the expressive leaders and the instrumental leaders. The expressive leaders are more qualified in interaction 6

7 Figure 4: Distributed coordinated teamleadership of the type showing solidarity and asking for suggestions whilst the instrumental leaders ranks higher when it comes to interaction including giving suggestions and showing disagreement. The expressive leaders can be said to be social-emotional leaders and the instrumental leaders task-oriented [7]. When a leader is trying to adapt to the two roles mentioned above simultaneously, a conflict, or at least a tension, regarding roles might arise. An example mentioned in [7] is about a foreman, who can go out and take a beer with his colleagues without affecting her authority. This is something that increases her relational commitment, but then when management increases the demands on her and her subordinates performance she will be forced to choose between meeting their demands (staying loyal to the instrumental commitment) or keeping the good relation to the subordinates and ignoring the demands from the management (staying loyal to her expressive commitment). The two types of leaders also seem to draw different types of followers; the instrumental leaders draw people anxious to be respected, that are able to cope with hostility within the group and who act aggressively within the group. The expressive leadership attract the opposite; people anxious to be accepted in the group, that are less aggressive. Some research show that groups will be most effective, both in terms of task achievement and members satisfaction, when the leaders of the group are both expressive and instrumental. Even though one leader can command both of the abilities two leaders tend to be needed for this to be achieved [7]. The increased team members satisfaction is the primary reason for the increased productivity and performance but the strongest predictors of dissatisfaction is ambiguity and conflicts concerning personal and professionell roles. Since the dual leadership aims to tackle exactly these predictors it in the long term also will increase productivity and performance as well as decrease role 7

8 ambiguity and conflict [6]. 4.2 The Bales-Parsons Model Applied on Solo Leadership The Bales-Parsons model is of course also applicable for solo-leadership groups where it gives support to the idea that certain types of leaders are more suited for certain companies performing certain tasks. Task oriented companies, for example floor work in a warehouse, line manufacturing and lower level (platoon level and lower) military institutions, will be better of with instrumental leadership due to the instrumental leaders instructive approach to leadership. In socialising organisations, including health care, schools, some government agencies etc. an expressive leader is instead most suited [7]. Another important factor regarding the solo leaders success is the natural ability to lead a group, merely possessing positional power is not enough. A person with only positional power is more of an official than a leader, whilst a person with no positional power but with the natural ability to lead becomes a informal leader. The ideal leader is the one with both positional power and natural ability; the formal leader. If a person lacks both formal positional power and natural leader abilities she is a follower. These relations are decribed by figure 5 on page 8 [7]. Personal Power - + Positional Power + - Formal Leader Official Informal Leader Follower Figure 5: The matrix of leadership. 4.3 Work Distribution Models for Co-Leadership There exists mainly two ways of distributing the workload; the full time model where the leaders serve full time and share equal authority and responsibility and the part time model where the leaders are not present at the same time, with split responsibilities. In addition to these two models, there of course may exist alternative mixed models comprised of the two other models. These mixed models might include, for example: One full time leader, one part time leader 8

9 One full time leader, two part time leaders Three part time leaders According to the research of [6] the full time model is the most common among distributed leadership teams. 4.4 Pros and cons brought by shared leadership The biggest upsides with shared leadership, according to [6] is the shared responsibility in decision making, problem solving and ease of workload. The frequency of bad decision taken by the leader is definitely decrease due to the ability to bounce off ideas between the co-leaders. By having two leaders the leadership can be equally shared between the genders as well and many participants of the research also liked not being lonely at the top [6]. The most frequently mentioned weakness was that the leaders felt that that they were played off by one another [6]. Shared leadership also requires a lot of trust between the leaders and requires the co-leaders to really get along well, some described it as they had to get along as well as a married couple [6]. 4.5 The selection of dual leaders The earliest approach to understanding what makes good leaders tried to identify different traits among leaders, such as appearance, intelligence, self-reliance and persuasiveness. No such profile for defining the optimal leaders was found, so instead of trying to find th traits of the leaders, studies of their behaviour was conducted. No optimal solution to the problem of what good leaders were made of was found during this time either. Since both of these studies proved nothing significant, another theory, by Fielder (1967), came up called the contingency model. This model suggests that the needs of a team is situational and one specific leader doesn t suit all teams. What kind of leader needed is specified by what kind of task is to be performed by the team [5]. If a dysfunction exists in a leadership pair this might greatly reduce the efficiency of the leadership pair. Examples of this includes if a pair of leaders have to spend a great amount of time discussing and debating only to be able to keep a unified front to the team and if the team members can play the leaders against each other because of issues in communication (ie. one leader is unaware of the others actions and decision) [6]. 5 Leadership in relation to agile teams The leadership function in agile teams is a bit different from the leadership function in more traditional teams, since the leaders main role is to provide a guiding, mentoring role. There are notions of Manager and Coach where the manager is the one forming the teams, obtain resources and other managerial duties while the coach is the one keeping the group in track. Since the coaching role is no full time job there exist little reason for these to roles to be separated (even though this can be the case). Often in agile teams, the coach has good knowledge in the field as well, he might even be an expert. This gives the team comfort and they do know that 9

10 if they were to run into too much trouble, the coach would be there for them, even to help them solve task-oriented problems [4]. 6 Discussion This discussion will cover how we have approached the leadership roles in the course EDA270/EDA260 and some reflection and implications of the results, as well as our thoughts of the findings in the research of leadership and dual leadership. 6.1 Leadership in general Thoughts about leadership and how leadership best is performed has been around for a long time and earlier we have made a brief summary of that history. We do agree that every type of team calls for a very situational-specific leader, and this can probably vary a lot depending on the group composition and if the the team members change, especially if the it s an informal leader entering/leaving. If we were to face a situation where one of the leaders was sick, the other leader would have to try to take both roles, expressive and instrumental, and that would be kind of hard challenge. We both agree that it would be a not so trivial task, and one would probably not succeed at first. 6.2 Leadership roles in EDA270 We have tried to apply the Bales-Parsons model throughout the course. In our case David was the instrumental leader and Niclas was the expressive one. An concrete example of how we would act if a member of the team came up to either of us with a question could be such as this: Niclas would most likely stay at his position and discuss the matter with the student in case, trying to enable the students to solve the problem alone, whereas David would follow the student to his computer and start focusing on solving the problem together with them. We have found that the instrumental/expressive partitioning enabled the team to choose what kind of instructing they needed when they needed extra help. It also provided for some extra dynamics during morning meetings and planning meetings due to the varying ways the two types of leaders seem to organize activities. There have been some discussion between the coaches regarding the effectiveness of both methods and there exist some consensus that the instrumental approach makes the group produce more code; but that the expressive approach is needed as a complement for the group s autonomy. This view is also supported by the literature, as seen in the results sections. Even though the industry is free to choose its leaders as it see fit, that is not the case in the course EDA270, here the recruitment base is extraordinarily thin, consisting of 20 or so students that all should be paired up and placed to coach teams. The current selection model; that the coaches chooses whom they want to coach with has worked fine in this team and the coaches knew beforehand that they complemented each other and were able to communicate properly when needed. That the coaches naturally was divided into the instrumental type and one into the expressive type was a coincidence that proved to 10

11 be lucky. The reason for introducing dual leadership was we were asking our teachers to be trained and to become parts of teams. I contended the only way to ask teachers to do that was to model with co-principals with equal authority in only one case (citation from [6]). This surprised us somewhat, since we, when starting the study, expected this to be the most common reason for introduction of dual leadership in organisations. 6.3 The impression of Dual Leadership in EDA260 In order to evaluate the impression dual leadership made upon the students that is taking the course EDA260 we asked the student of one group four questions (see: Appendix A for questions and received answers). The results we have received are thin, to say the least, as a mere 50% of the students answered our questions. Readers are advised not to take the following analysis to seriously. If we are to draw any conclusions it seems the team appreciates the dualistic aspect of the team coaching, as they recognize the fact that it adds an extra point of view for the leadership. The team appreciates the fact that the coaches try to be coordinated and have internal discussions as to present a unified front. No clear disadvantages is mentioned, some hypothetical ones not included. As suspected, and confirmed by the answers of one of the students, it seems they have not reflected much on the dualistic aspects of the coaching before they received these questions which is rather interesting. If the case had been solo coaching, the team seems to believe that the work had been more monotone, something that the team does not seem to desire. 7 Summary The researched literature points to a few key factors for the dual leadership to a success; mainly the dual leaders must complement each other. This have been formalized in the Bales-Parsons model and according to these ideas one leader should be instrumental and one expressive. The instrumental leaders is characterized by a more instructive, enterprising approach and the expressive leaders are characterized by a more solidary, thought provoking view on leadership. Even though the model makes clear that one leader could posses both the instrumental and the expressive leadership abilities it is made clear that the case with two leaders complementing each other is the preferred one. The success is mainly due to the group members feeling of satisfaction and the dual leadership is merely a tool for achieving this. It is also of paramount importance that the leaders know how to cooperate and that they respect the authority of the other leader. When choosing leaders it is important to take this in consideration as a dysfunctional team likely will be the result otherwise. This is being taken into account in the industry (and in the public sector), and in the EDA270 course it is being handled by letting the coaches choose their coaching partners. In the project course EDA270 all coaches are full time coaches, but this is not the case in the industry; there also exists part time coaching and mixes of these two extremes. The full time alternative is the most ideal since this enables the coaches and dual leaders to keep a high level of project and 11

12 organization awareness and also provides for good redundancy should one of the leaders be absent for some reason. Appendix A: team feedback on dual leadership A feedback questionnaire was circulated around team 03 in course EDA360 and the purpose was to get a general picture of how dual leadership is viewed upon by the students. The questionare consists of the following questions (with answers indented): What are the advantages and disadvantages to having two coaches? Fördelarna är ju att det finns en större total kunskap, och två olika sätt som coacherna tänker på, vilket leder till att problem ses på olika sätt. En nackdel kan vara att de två olika coacherna ger olika svar på samma fråga, dock har detta ej stötts på så det är endast ett teoretiskt problem. I ett projekt som det här känner jag inte att det finns några problem med att ha två coacher. Med tanke på vårat arbetssätt skulle jag säga att möjligheten att ha en extra person att bolla idéer med är den bästa situationen man kan vara i. Antar att fördelen är att det finns ytterligare personer att bolla idéer med och de beslut som måste tas av en coach kommer alltid att gå genom två personer och förmodligen göra besluten bättre rent generellt. Med en coach kan bara den lyssna på en sak men med två kan två saker komma fram till coachteamet samtidigt vilket kanske gör att små problem kan lösas snabbare. Nackdelen är att snabba beslut som tas av en av coacherna bara inte gillas av den andra och en konflikt kan uppstå, men så länge respekt visas sinsemellan tror jag fördelarna blir fler än nackdelarna. Fördelarna med att ha två coacher är flera, till exempel kan de vara bra på olika saker och ansvara för olika delar av projektet. Nackdelar kan jag inte se några med två coacher, förutom möjligtvis för ett företag då de får betala för två. Dock skulle ju kvalitén bli därefter. What would it be like to have one coach compared to having two coaches (as is the case now)? Att ha en coach hade gjort att allt hade gjorts som den coachen ville, vilket kan vara både bra och dåligt. Nu förs det en dialog som gör att man kompromissar efter bådas tycke vilket i många fall är bra. Vet inte riktigt vad man är ute efter på andra frågan, men hade det bara varit en coach hade arbetet kanske blivit mer enkelriktat (vilket är något negativt.) Med det menar jag att två personer, oftast, har olika tankar kring hur något bör utföras, vilket leder till att man kanske möts i mitten, eller att man argumenterar för sin sak och på så sätt övertygar om att ens tankesätt är det bästa. Hade det däremot bara varit en coach skulle den interaktionen inte synas i arbetet. 12

13 Svårt att säga. Mycket beror nog på personligheterna hos coacherna hur formellt eller informellt relationen till de övriga i teamet blir. Fördelen med två coacher är att dom kan komplettera varandra. Om vi bara hade haft en coach tror jag inte projektet hade flytit lika bra. Med två coacher tror jag man får en mycket bättre plan och struktur på hur projektet ska genomföras. De kan även ta bra beslut tillsammans och stötta varandra, så att osäkerheten minskar. Does it seem like the amount of work performed by the coaches is equal or is one of the coaches taking on a greater leadership role than the other? Båda coacherna arbetar lika mycket, i alla fall som det ser ut från mitt perspektiv. Tycker inte att det känns som att någon av coacherna gör mer. Inte mycket till utförligt svar; men personligen tycker jag inte att någon verkar göra mer jobb. Känns ganska så lika. Bra balans och båda har varit väldigt delaktiga och hjälpsamma under utvecklingen av programmet. Jag tycker de tar på sig lika mycket ansvar för projektet och båda är väldigt måna om att det går bra och fortskrider som tänkt. Det känns som att de delat upp arbetet, med en som försöker driva projektet framåt och ha en bra översikt och en som mer svarar på frågor och hjälper till med kodningen, även om båda har koll på alltihop och verkar samarbeta bra. Do you have any other comments regarding the dual coaching in the course? Att ha två coacher fungerar väl och det kan även ses som en fördel för dem i och med att de har någon att diskutera arbetet med. Utöver det som är skrivet här har jag inga andra kommentarer. Två tummar upp! Tänkte inte så mycket på vilken betydelse det hade att ha två coacher jämfört med en innan jag fick dessa frågor framför mig. Men efter att reflekterat över det vill jag nog säga att jag är väldigt positivt till att arbeta med två coacher i ett team. Jag tror det är bra att ha två coacher, då de kan hjälpas åt och komma fram till gemensamma beslut. References [1] programming. Retrieved on 27/02/12. [2] Retrieved on 7/02/12. [3] Retrieved on 7/02/12. [4] Retrieved on 11/02/12. 13

14 [5] Nurcan Duygulu. Team effectiveness and leadership roles. Unpublished, [6] Wexler Eckman Ellen. Co-principals: Characteristics of dual leadership teams. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 5:89 107, [7] Etzioni. Dual leadership in complex organizations. American Sociological Review, 30(5): , [8] Ajay Mehra. Distributed leadership in teams: The network of leadership perceptions and team performance. The Leadership Quarterly, 17: , [9] Marks Zaccaro, Rittman. Team leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 12: ,