Question

It is advised that a leader has to be all things to people. He or she has to balance the interrelated demands of the task and teams as well as of individual team members ( Rosemary Thomson, 2008) Discuss the " Development of the three-circle model of leadership (Adair, 1983) in support of this statement.

Answer 1

Yes, a leader has to be all things to people. The leader needs to maintain a balance between task demands and the demands of individual team members. It requires a leadership efficacy to support the interrelation between task demand and employee demand. An analysis of the three-circle model of leadership can be sufficient to establish this opinion.

Components of three circle-model leadership bare as follows:

• Achieving task: Achieving the mission is the primary duty of a leader. The task management includes identification of group performance, the purpose of the task and directional orientation of the task. Task responsibilities of a leader are mentioned below:

 Process identification and system identification: Process identification signifies the requirements of identifying the organizational functions.

 Establishment of responsibilities and task objectives: Leaders guide team members to establish task responsibilities.

 Setting performance standard: Leaders set up performance standard for employees to motivate their performance.

• Managing team or group: Managing team signifies development of communication through the improvement of performance and behaviour. Responsibilities of team management are mentioned below:

 Establishing style, culture and performance of team members: Establishing style, culture and performance of team members are the responsibilities of leaders while dealing with a team.  

 Performance monitoring: leaders should monitor the performance of each team members.

 Conflict management: Managing team conflict is an essential task of a leader. He should take conflict management strategies to reduce team conflict.

• Managing individuals: Individual management is considered to be the most challenging task for leaders. Here leader needs to manage each of the members of the team, maintaining alignment between individual interest and team interest. Recognizing own performance, allowing freedom to each o the member and identifying performance objective of each member are responsibilities of an efficient leader.