Key roles of the leadership landscape

A framework is developed, and validated, that provides an insight into the role of leadership in transforming a loose group into an effective team. In this context a loose group is defined as a number of individuals brought together to achieve a task, but with no further development undertaken. An effective team, by contrast, is one in which development of a supportive social structure has occurred, with each individual adapting his behaviour to optimise his personal contribution to the team. Four distinct leadership "key roles" are identified: legitimate, social, task, and macro, which lead to the identification of critical leadership issues that limit the speed with which loose groups transform into effective teams. This in turn enables specific recommendations to be made to assist individuals within a team to identify the key role they occupy, the importance of that key role relative to the others and the behaviours most appropriate to it. In the current research program the organisation studied was a multinational engineering company, engaged in the design, development and manufacture of rotating turbomachinery.