John Austin, writing in his excellent blog, Tag your Team, references research by Robert Kelley on ‘followership’ which examines two different traits of behaviour in team members: critical thinking and pro-activity.

New research indicates that if you feel that your organisation's leader does not know your name then it is a huge de-motivator.

The Apprentice (BBC TV) which showcases the management style of Alan Sugar, founder and chairman of Amstrad, implies that aggressive leadership is the real secret of business success. However Sally Bibb, author of The Stone Age Company, contends that much of the success achieved by such leaders is in spite of rather than a result of their ‘no-prisoners’ style.

John Austin, in Don’t forget to laugh pokes fun at low-cost leadership styles with some alternative versions of those motivational posters which team leaders, who know nothing about motivation, like to use. Dr Edwards Deming was the founder of the TQM movement and If you really have to stick something on your wall then it should only be his 14 Points.

Leading a virtual team requires different skills than leading a traditional team. For example many virtual team and virtual network outcomes are counter-intuitive due to the complex living nature of the team itself. Discovering this 'on the job' is as crazy as training airline pilots without using flight simulators! This article describes a research project which developed a PC-based simulator tool to help virtual team leaders experience decision making in various scenarios.

Is your team smart enough to collaborate.

Harvard Professor, David Perkins, in his latest book, King Arthur's Round Table, discusses the importance of "organisational Intelligence" and "developmental leadership" and how the absence of these leads to coblaboration rather than collaboration in organisational teams.

The Madness of Individuals. The author contrasts the complexity of the organisations we inhabit today with with the groups our Stone Age forebears lived in a hundred thousand years ago.