Team building

One of the important elements that lead to the success of effective office functioning is the process of building up a team of efficient co workers and colleagues. This is a fact that applies not only to offices in the real world as well as to those in the virtual world.

A good team is never better than or as good and as strong as its weakest link – the leader. The leader must be a person who is committed to certain core values and to the job at hand, a person who has clear ideas about what needs to be achieved and about the aims of the organization and the will power to get them executed. He must also have the necessary communicative and persuasive powers to make his colleagues and subordinates co operate with him.

In this respect the many differing theories on leadership communication have been put forward. One such theory says that leaders are basically change agents. This means that leaders are people who can exert influence on others, especially opinion leaders, to adopt an innovation.

According to this theory, any activity must lead to a change in the immediate environment. If the change is to be efficient and effective, the leadership must also be clear and conscious about the change to be effected. So the leader himself should be a well informed person who can also communicate well.

Another way of effecting changes is to route them through the opinion leaders. Typical opinion leaders in a society are teachers, local politicians etc. They are the tier of leadership that obtains at the base of the society.

They may already be entrenched in the leadership at a certain level of society, as far as a certain sector of jobs and responsibilities are concerned. By influencing the opinion leaders, whose number may be less, it is possible to create and spread a new opinion or make the society accept an innovation, in a more effective manner. So it is more practical and commonsensical to utilize the services and cooperation of opinion leaders in leadership exercises.

In fact, the view concerning the role of the leader itself has changed with the arrival of the 21st century. Whereas, the leader of the 19th and 20th century practically lead the movements, in the new society of intensive communicative powers, the leader only catalyses the change. He shows by example and leaves the actual implementation to the society itself.