Leadership in challenging times: Attributes of Effective Leadership in team effectiveness

While leadership is seldom easy, those charged with leading in the current environment are confronted with an array of challenges. In the crisis situation and present state of the economy good leaders overcome the situation and ineffective leaders are left unequipped in the race to succeed. the success of organizations could rest on the competitive skills of the leader. These leaders have to concentrate on building relationships, focusing on resources. The most successful leaders always integrate and discuss goals and stay focused on the vision for the future. Business Leaders face a choice during times of economic stress and softer demand, They can make a panicked attempt to squeeze more out of already anxious workers, who will waste no time leaving for better jobs when things improve. Or, they can focus on the long term and invest in leadership skills, relationships with employees, effective Reward systems and motivating work. While existing leadership research has tried to focus on the importance of transformational leadership in normal times, very little attention has been paid to transformational leadership in crisis situations. Leadership effectiveness has been considered to be playing a very crucial role for various organizations, both during normal times and in times of crisis. In this paper, an attempt is made to focus on the attributes of a leader during crisis. This paper focuses on existing cases from the literature emphasizing the leaders who have performed exceptionally well for their organizations to successfully lead during turbulent times. In this study an attempt is made to discuss the patterns of successful leadership roles for team effectiveness in organizations. Some key dimension variables for leadership behavior identified are : motivating teamwork, mentoring, creating benchmarks and getting results, good communication skills, Delegation of authority and power, giving rewards for performance, training and developing employees, encouraging risk-taking behaviour, forecasting, managing the diverse work force which have an impact on team effectiveness.