Mastering Team Leadership

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2003), "Mastering Team Leadership", Library Review, Vol. 52 No. 6, pp. 280-281. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530310482088

This is one of those books which convinces on reading. It will also prove a very useful text for students doing human resource management and business studies courses, and people on DMS and NVQ courses. Cartwright is an author and consultant with several books to his credit (empowerment, entrepreneurial organizations, going global, customer relations). Here he provides good value for money and presents his material clearly, weaving teams and leadership neatly together and not losing his way. This is one in the “Masters” series likely to interest lecturers, teachers, students, and librarians (especially in colleges and universities). Others related to it in the series are on human resource management, management skills, and strategic management. The Palgrave Master Series Web site provides more. Mastering Team Leadership contains much that you would expect to be there – groups and teams, team roles and Belbin’s ideas, leaders and managers, leadership styles, power and empowerment, and team culture. Most predictable of all is what is said about motivation and leadership, even though it is good to have it in front of you as you read about teams. This is all topical, relevant, highly useable for first‐time students, and well organized around a general argument that teams are central to the modern organization, leadership is often missing, conflict badly handled, and change has made the leadership challenge even more testing than ever. Cartwright picks up on the well‐known developments of Belbin’s work into team and work roles, on the importance of cross‐cultural teams and virtual teams, and usefully contrasts team cohesion with groupthink. Exercises, questions, and targeted further reading are sound features. It’s not enough for a full‐semester text but excellent in its field for part of a course. These ideas apply to information‐related situations as to any other, although specifics would have to be supplied to flesh out the generic template of this versatile text.