As teams and teamwork continue to grow in popularity, many organizations have set out practical help and guidance in an area few managers/team leaders are trained in. The article cites many of the perceived benefits of teamwork, and identifies its pitfalls. The author proposes three complementary management approaches of managing, coaching and leading to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of teams. In the end, the author lists the trip wires that need to be avoided to enhance the effectiveness of leadership.

Surprisingly little has been written about leadership in the particular context of teams, yet leadership in teams is of paramount importance. The quality of leadership is likely to affect both the efficiency and effectiveness of a team. Effective leadership can provide motivation, task and goal clarification, and prompt and appropriate feedback. While there is a wealth of written material on leadership, little focuses on leadership within teams.

Why do these two important areas of research (leadership and team functioning) fail to address this important issue? One major reason is the multiplicity of variables at work in teams. This makes it particularly difficult to focus on just one variable, for example, leadership. Furthermore, theories on what constitutes effective leadership are rarely conclusive. Traditionally, leadership was seen as a team role performed by one person. With increasing emphasis on participation, empowerment and decentralization of decision-making, it is perhaps more appropriate to consider "distributed leadership". In distributed leadership, the leadership does not rest in one person, instead it is ditributed among the members of the team. However, distributed leadership is even more difficult to study. These obstacles account, in part, for its omission from research studies.

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