Profession Team Leader
with Competence, Commitment and a Conscience


by Alain Paul Martin

As a result of the feedback of clients who have participated in PDI advanced management workshops, the monograph titled Profession Team Leader with Competence, Commitment and Conscience will be published in hardbook format in December 2009.

This book is for project team leaders, managers and management students.

Excerpts from Chapter II: Leadership Knowledge © A. P. Martin, 2009. All rights reserved.

1. Competence 101: Leadership Knowledge Knowledge is not necessarily about education and diplomas. Microsoft's Bill Gates is living proof of a successful leader who does not possess a university degree. And Birkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett, who was refused admission at Harvard, went on to become a leading entrepreneur of a diversified holding company with global interests in publishing, broadcasting, consumer products and insurance. In the airline world traditionally led by men, Colleen Barrett, a shy junior college alumnus, rose from a secretary to president at Southwest Airlines. In its first 37 years lifespan, Southwest Airlines is the only major American career which posted profit every year and has never laid-off employees.[1] Effective leaders know that long-term competitive advantage goes far beyond rivalry and pricing. It encompasses a host of process and substantive issues that are all woven into one fabric [2] ranging from innovation, quality, customer service, workforce competence and commitment, a fitting supply-chain and principled intelligence production, to a balanced portfolio of ethical pursuits and community acceptance.

ISBN: 978-0-86502-620-9

Specifically, team leaders should focus on gaining the following practical working knowledge that team members need to get their jobs done.

1. Self-knowledge is the starting point for both the leaders and their assistants. It is about understanding what makes us tick. It is about being aware of our tendencies, strengths, values and personality including our motivation, behavior, attitudes, emotions and feelings. It about knowing what we don't know and seeking either the knowledge or the right people to make up for our knowledge deficit.
2. "Self-knowledge is the indispensable prelude to self-control, for the nation as well as for the individual, and history should forever remind us of the limits of our passing perspectives. It should strengthen us to resist the pressure to convert momentary impulses into moral absolutes. It should lead us to recognition of the fact, so often and so sadly displayed, that the future outwits all our certitudes and that the possibilities of the future are more various than the human intellect is designed to conceive." [3]
3. Knowledge of others (staff, current and potential clients, competitors, local community, providers and other stakeholders) including what motivates people individually and collectively. Here; tools such as psychographics, behavioral finance and behavioral economics can be effective in diagnosis and intervention. Behavioral economics, is "a relatively new field that has pointed out many ways in which people make irrational, short-term decisions."[4]
4. Effective leaders know that familiarity breeds overconfidence and worse complacency. They are mindful of this quasi-universal irrational bias toward the home field advantage , namely that most people tend to inflate the value of what they know (or like, such as the home teams, products and local stocks) and underestimate the real worth of what they don't (including the competition, foreign resources, products and assets). As an illustration, "investors overreact to good news and under-react to bad news on stocks they like, and do just the opposite to stocks that are out of favor. Past perception seems to dictate future performance. And it takes time to change those perceptions." [5]

3.      Knowledge of social systems particularly the respective organizations of their stakeholders, their interests, norms, culture and values;

4.      Knowledge of the appropriate uses, misuses and effectiveness of power, authority and other instruments of influence and control. Effective leaders understand, practice and help their assistants and other team members engage in an informed and reasoned dialogue. They persistently privilege logic and reason through open and honest communication and principled negotiation. On communications with the public at large, they value transparency, clarity and honesty. They also must keep remain focused and concise to avoid confusion, message dilution or regretting the words they didn't say.  They exercise power, only by necessity, in a responsible, self-restrained, professional and accountable conduct. They keep authority, as a deterrent and a tool of last resort.  

5.      Working knowledge of the psychology of interpersonal compatibility that remarkably enhances business and working relationships. Compatibility is about each person's (team member, client or partner) needs for socialization (inclusion), control and affection.[6] Furthermore, compatibility is also context and culture driven. Without a proficiency in the business customs and working practices of Germany, the North-American managers of Wal-Mart could not lead their short-lived German subsidiary, no matter how hard they tried.

6.      Comprehensive knowledge of regulations, standards, labor relations and collective bargaining and agreements affecting their teamwork;

7.      Knowledge of ethical dilemmas especially when cherished values conflict;

8.      Comprehensive knowledge of the actual task at hand.  This substantive knowledge cannot but help the team leader assess the magnitude, complexity, duration and risk of the work to be done. It is frequently what breaks down barriers between the team leader, the assistant and the majority of clients and performers, be they a team of employees or external contractors.

Process has its limits and should follow substance, just like form follows structure. Process champions and experts who pay a lip service to substance lack the content to understand and validate the ideas, opinions and recommendations of experts and team members.

Even though no one expects university deans to be proficient in the variety of disciplines taught at their faculty, I have witnessed faculty members and other employees lending their support faster to leaders who took the time to gain a greater appreciation of their subject areas;

9.      Knowledge of strategic thinking and risk management which necessitates a fundamental understanding of intelligence production, analysis and interpretation;

10.   Practical knowledge of current information technology (IT) and virtual communities. Good technology frees us from wasting time on mundane work to (a) focus on important decisions, issue resolution and innovation; and (b) invest more quality time with people.

More influential than ever, blogs and other Internet constituencies can widen and either enrich or skew the debate to serve their own agenda. They can be effective in raising funds and recruiting talent and volunteers as demonstrated by Mr. Barack Obama's team during the 2008 primaries and presidential campaign.  Leaders must also understand the role of bottom-up grass-roots media culture (You Tube, My space, LinkedIn and Facebook) in shaping public opinion, and not merely the youth's.

Furthermore, no leader can remain a passive spectator of the emerging opportunities and disruptions posed by the synergistic convergence of IT with bio- and nanotechnologies. Learning about current and emerging applications is the first step to appreciate the immense potential and risks of this synergy.[7]  

11.   Knowledge of the rules governing execution, quality and productivity. This includes cutting-edge tools to score, interpret and continually improve performance in a dynamic environment characterized by uncertainty and constant change;

12.   Knowledge of the principles and methods of project management, both planning and implementation, in accordance with the level of complexity of the goals to be accomplished;

13.   Knowledge about global trends and events that may impact the mission and various stakeholders including clients and team members; and

14.   Access to people with reliable information and expertise to make up for the leader's own knowledge deficits and those of the team. Here, recognizing with profound humility that, unlike knowledge, our ignorance is infinite is a virtue. 

Effective leaders are continually and subtly switching roles from trainers and learners. With respect to all sources of knowledge and education, the consumer beware argument is no less valid in these fields than when you buy a vehicle from a second-hand car dealer. Everyone has something to sell. The claims by enterprising consultants must be validated as carefully if not more than those made by suppliers of other products. The worst thing to do is to apply a new approach without doing your homework i.e. without validating it and adapting it to your needs.

2. Management Skills for Team Leaders

Like knowledge, most skills can be learned. In this context, a skill is defined as practiced know-how or applied knowledge...

© A. P. Martin, 2009. All rights reserved.
This document and book excerpts are strictly for personal use. The reader acknowledges that the contents are protected by United States, Canada and international copyright laws. No one is authorized to publish, sell, rent, license, transmit, broadcast, edit, modify, use, copy or display these excerpts on the Internet, a paper-based document or in a meeting, a conference, an educational or a training session without the written permission of the author.





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[1] Joe Nocerra: Talking Business: The Sinatra of Southwest Feels the Love, The New York Times, May 24, 2008

[2]  Adapted phrase borrowed from Senator Chuck Hagel's statement on immigration and featured as Quotation of the Day in The New York Times, April 8, 2006.

[3] Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.: America Needs History as Never Before - Folly's Antidote, International Herald Tribune, January 1, 2007

[4] David Leonhard: How Obama Reconciles Dueling Views on Economy, The New York Times, August 24, 2008.

[5] John Mauldin: Take Me Out to the Stockgame, September 27, 2003

[6] Will Schultz, FIRO: A Three-Dimensional Theory of Interpersonal Behavior, 3rd Edition, 1998, CPP Press

[7] Frequently Asked Questions on Nanotechnology, FAQs, 2006-11-15, Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Berlin, Germany. For the latest on nanotechnology: nanotechnology.com and Nanotechnology at the University of Iowa. Also: University of Texas at Austin: Available Nanotechnologies by Title

© A. P. Martin, 2009. All rights reserved.