What Is the Difference Between Leadership & Teamwork?
Leadership and teamwork act in tandem to help organizations achieve goals, adapt to changing conditions and stay relevant in a fast-changing world. Businesses cannot function without talented leaders to inspire, explain, motivate, coach and guide team members. In turn, teamwork makes great things possible.
Centrally organized organizations need strong leadership at the helm to keep teams on track and maintain consistency. Decentralized organizations also value leadership but rely heavily on teamwork for fresh ideas and new approaches. Knowing the difference between leadership and teamwork allows small business owners to leverage the strengths of each approach.
Importance of Leadership
Strong leaders understand the mission, vision and goals of their organization. When working in a supervisory capacity, they ensure that the individuals and teams reporting to them are working on goals that are part of an overarching strategic plan. Effective leaders plays a key role in the productivity of teams by ensuring that team members understand their assignments and have the resources to achieve key performance indicators, or KPIs, and goals within the set timeline. They work to build trust and positive relationships with their teams and between team members.
Important leadership skills include communication, decisiveness and analytical thinking. According to the CEO Institute, leaders today must also be resilient, emotionally intelligent and aware of trends on the horizon. Teams respect and admire leaders who empower them and lend support without micromanaging. In the absence of strong leadership and clear direction, teams are more likely to experience confusion, frustration and low motivation. Consequently, teamwork stalls out.
Leadership-Driven Organizations
Centralized organizations such as the military, delivery service companies and factories perform best when lines of responsibility and authority are clear. Top-down leadership eliminates confusion as to who is in charge and what tasks must be done. Leadership-driven organizations ensure that individuals and teams have detailed instructions and proper training to carry out their duties in a consistent and timely manner.
Morale is enhanced when company rules are unambiguous, expectations are understood and promotional criteria is objective. The Indeed Career Guide suggests that small businesses may benefit from a leadership-driven organizational structure because decisions can be made faster when power is centralized instead of shared across the organization.
Importance of Teamwork
Teams in the workplace are formed for many purposes: solving problems, inventing new products, streamlining production and improving services, for example. BrightHR reports that teamwork has been proven to increase productivity, camaraderie, profitability and efficiency. Being assigned to a team confers a sense of ownership, accountability and responsibility to colleagues and the organizations.
Teamwork is one of the best ways of harnessing the full potential of each employee. Synergy happens when team members come together remotely or in person to brainstorm, share differing perspectives, bounce around ideas and plan exciting new projects. Assignments can be divided up according to each person’s interests, strengths and skill set. Job satisfaction and company loyalty is strengthened when team members feel that their input is valued and important to the overall success of their employer.
Team-Based Organizations
Team-based organizations typically operate from a decentralized organizational structure where decision-making authority is entrusted to those closest to the work. Examples of decentralized organizations include many universities, tech startups and E-commerce small businesses.
Teamwork and leadership are both essential functions in decentralized organizations; however, teamwork is essential to the viability of decentralized organizations. Teamwork taps the creativity, imagination and visionary thinking needed by organizations that must continually evolve to survive.
In a centralized organization, a supervisor is typically put in charge of leading teamwork and group cooperation. However, team members may exert their leadership skills to mentor, teach and organize the assignments of other team members. Forbes suggests that all teams function best when allowed to make decisions about their work activities instead of waiting to hear back from superiors.
References
Writer Bio
Dr. Mary Dowd possess decades of experience in education, business consulting and land management. Her career has included working as a dean of students, director of equal opportunity and affirmative action, and classroom teaching. Dr. Dowd has written hundreds of online articles and published work in professional journals.