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170 Chapter 7

ennifer, Robyn, Jiang, and Andreas comprise the broadcast advertising team in the
corporate offices of a California-based retail company. Jennifer, with the company
Jfor more than 20 years, is the team’s designated leader and their broadcast media
buyer. Jiang, their promotions coordinator, is responsible for planning and directing pro-
motional events, such as their back-to-school campaigns, which coincide with the televi-
sion and radio advertisements. He also makes sure that all of Jennifer’s business records
are kept up to date. Andreas, their production coordinator, assists Jennifer in writing,
producing, and directing all television and radio commercials. Robyn, their broadcast
advertising coordinator and Jennifer’s administrative assistant, is primarily responsible
for creating and maintaining working relationships with television and radio sales repre-
sentatives. The company’s quarterly profits are directly tied to successful media cam-
paigns, which themselves are directly tied to how well this team works together. Jennifer,
although highly regarded by her advertising peers, has a leadership style that does not sit
well with the team. She tries to control all their tasks and manage their socioemotional
climate. Her style poses problems for the team in the following ways.
High turnover is common in this division. New employees are constantly being trained,
often inadequately. New employees are never fully informed about their job responsibilities
because Jennifer tightly controls the flow of information to them, but she is often too busy
to work with them. Too often, they learn how and what they are supposed to do after being
reprimanded by Jennifer for making a mistake. This creates resentment among the team
and costs the company time and money. Further resentment is created by Jennifer’s desire
to control their socioemotional environment. For instance, if Andreas writes a poor adver-
tising script, she expects one of his co-workers to tell him rather than convey the bad news
herself. Yet this retail company is successful in part because the broadcast advertising group
produces effective advertising. At what point is ineffective leadership considered a prob-
lem? Who is responsible for change? Is the character of a group solely determined by one
person’s behaviors? If you were an outside consultant, what would you say to this division?
These and other issues will be touched on in this chapter.
According to Larson and LaFasto, the final ingredient for effective group perfor-
1
mance is team leadership, with the right person serving in the leadership role. Serv-
ing as a leader in a small group can be a source of self-esteem, recognition, and
appreciation; it can also be a nightmare.
Much of the conventional wisdom about what makes a good leader is simply
wrong or oversimplified. We hope this chapter and the next one will dispel those
beliefs. We examine the concepts of leader and leadership, describe the process of
leadership emergence, review traditional and contemporary perspectives about leader-
ship, examine the relationship between leaders and members, and develop an argu-
ment in favor of distributed leadership for most small task-oriented groups. In
Chapter 8 we focus on practical application: The specific duties leaders are expected
to perform and how to perform them well.

Leadership and Leaders

Whether your group has a specific person called a leader or not does not matter.
What does matter, if your group is to function effectively, is that it has leadership. Let’s
look more closely at the relevance of this distinction to small group communication.

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