Page 139 - The John Adair Handbook of Management and Leadership

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Leadership skills

Having identified the main functions or principles of leadership, there
are skills in providing those functions in different situations and
managers need to develop their abilities to bring those skills to bear
in increasing levels of excellence.
The eight functions (defining the task,planning,briefing,controlling,
evaluating, motivating, organising and setting an example) will now
be examined.

1 Defining the task

A task is something that needs to be done. People in organisations
and teams need to have this distilled into an objective which is :

• clear
• concrete
• time-limited

• realistic
• challenging
• capable of evaluation.

There are five tests to apply to the defining of a task and they are:
i) Do you have a clear idea of the objectives of your group now
and for the next few years/months which have been agreed with
your boss?
ii) Do you understand the overall aims and purpose of the
organisation?
iii) Can you set your group’s objectives into the context of those
larger intentions?
iv) Is your present main objective specific, defined in terms of time
and as concrete/tangible as you can make it?
v) Will the team know for itself if it succeeds or fails and does it
get speedy feedback of results?

Chapter 6: Leadership and teambuilding 129