Leadership

Winston Churchill once said, "If I get 10 Rommel's I will conquer the world."

Erwin Rommel was a German General during World War II, who gained the respect of his enemies for his brilliant team strategies in war. One such example was when his soldiers and tanks were cornered by the allied forces. His team gave up hope and wished to retreat but Rommel had different plans. Overnight he got his team to dig huge holes in the ground, in which he temporarily buried the tanks and next morning when the puzzled allies drove over the area he directed his tanks to emerge from the ground and attack the enemy from behind, completely taking them by surprise and wining that battle.

A team is a group of people that come together to work towards achieving a common goal and it is their team leader, aka the captain of the ship that gives direction to the team and assigns smaller goals to each of them basis their skills to achieve the desired goal, within a given framework. Good teamwork hence is when all members, senior and junior, contribute by doing their respective assigned jobs to the best of their abilities to achieve the set goal. When everybody performs to their potential, the team succeeds and vice versa when even one doesn't, the team fails or the success is not as planed for. It is needless to say that the captain doesn't do all the work, but gets the work done and a good captain ensures that all his members are in check on their duties. Reports and meetings serve as a good way to check status of each department.

Reports and meetings however, are usually frowned upon by people saying that they take up too much of time and are an absolute waste of time. So what are the reasons that leaders can't do without reports and holding team meetings? In fact, they are essential tools that help achieve team objectives:

1. Reports:

2. Help capture progress of a huge amount of information in a structured manner

3. The data in a report helps one analyse and strategise the way forward

4. Help in creating historical learning for new members to learn from or come up to speed with

5. Help in internal and external communication

6. Meetings:

7. Help give feedback

8. Highlight areas of concern and help plug them

9. Help in motivating teams to keep striving on despite the hurdles that appear

I would like to conclude by saying that no leader can achieve anything without a team and it is good leaders that create winning teams that can conquer any task, situation and pinnacle.