Page 30 - Develop your leadership skills- John Adair. -- 2nd ed

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What you need to do ■ 21

task area will be impaired and the satisfaction of individual
members reduced. Thus we can visualise the needs present in
work groups as three overlapping circles, as shown in Figure
3.1.

Nowadays when I show the model on a slide or overhead I
usually colour the circles red, blue and green, for light (not
pigment) refracts into these three primary colours. It is a way of
suggesting that the three circles form a universal model. In
whatever field you are, at whatever level of leadership – team
leader, operational leader or strategic leader – there are three
things that you should always be thinking about: task, team
and individual. Leadership is essentially an other-centred
activity – not a self-centred one.

The three-circle model is simple but not simplistic or superfi-
cial. Keeping in mind those three primary colours, we can make
an analogy with what is happening when we watch a television
programme: the full-colour moving pictures are made up of
dots of those three primary and (in the overlapping areas) three
secondary colours. It is only when you stand well back from
the complex moving and talking picture of life at work that
you begin to see the underlying pattern of the three circles. Of
course they are not always so balanced and clear as the model
suggests, but they are nonetheless there.

Towards the functional approach
to leadership

What has all this got to do with leadership? Simply this: in
order to achieve the common task and to maintain teamwork,