EACH IS CALLED TO LIVE HIS OR HER OWN, ORIGINAL WORDS: Chapter 6, “Leading the Team,” draws on sports for its views on successful leadership practices within groups, opening its discussion by recalling a championship basketball team from Seattle (Gastil 139). Gastil highlights leadership, monitoring, backup, and adaptability as the basis of team excellence (144). A key argument made about leadership within teams is that groups function best when members are “regularly exchanging the roles of leader and follower” (Gastil 151). Franz, in his chapter “Influence, Power, and Leadership,” challenges ideas on leadership and group dynamics by reminding readers of the differences between “personal power” and “positional power” (233-234). The value of knowing the types of power, one reads, is that they can become practical tools to use when attempting to motivate a team to complete tasks; for example, a leader whose perceived power is “personal” may attempt to remind members of why they trust him or her before issuing a request (Franz 235). A closing argument Franz makes is to understand the significance of trust in leadership; trust is key when it comes to managing groups of any type (251-252). Haynes’ chapter, “Group Leadership,” details eight qualities that the ideal leader within a group possesses, qualities that the ideal leader outside of the group setting also possesses. The eight qualities Haynes explains are: (1) Knowledgeable, (2) Competent, (3) Flexible, (4) Empathetic or Empathic, (5) Attentive, (6) Communicative, (7) Inspirational or Motivational, and (8) Trustworthy (90-93). One of the more interesting qualities Haynes explains is “flexible,” the basis of which is one drawing on “experience” in lieu of a one-size-fits-all approach (91). Kantor, “The Heroic Leader in Crisis,” cautions groups against consciously, or subconsciously misclassifying non-group members. Such a mindset, Kantor explains, can create needless barriers between, barriers that could have otherwise been bridges (200). The chapter challenges the celebrated idea of being competitive; one learns, from Kantor, that competitiveness and commonality can co-exist when it comes to leading a group towards its goals. In Group Processes, audiences are challenged to question some common views on leadership, such as the view that leadership definitions are useful when it might be more useful to explore “what is not leadership” (Hogg 243). After surveying multiple theories on leadership, Hogg eventually settles on “followership”; specifically, Hogg empowers group members by demonstrating how leaders must be given their power (254). Readers are excited to learn that leadership theories might be more important for group members than for those in positions of power.
