In my opinion, effective leadership in organizations means the ability to analysis current situations and find ways to help the organizations achieve its goal. In order to be aware of the current situations, the leader should know which stage the team is on. Referenced to Exhibit 12-5 Leadership Style and Team Development, there are 5 stages of team development:

1. Forming
2. Storming
3. Norming
4. Performing
5. Adjourning

Team’s productivity will increase from the forming to performing stage, however, team’s morale will at first be high in forming stage, then decrease rapidly to the storming stage and finally keep increasing slowly until performing stage. Related this model to the leadership style, the textbook writes: structuring in the forming stage; resolving in the storming stage; collaborating in the norming stage; and validating in the performing stage. This model exactly matches the process of how our team goes through. During the first two weeks, we focused on building our team agreement and everyone was with high morale. However, we spent almost 2hours to set up our agreement, which showed our low productivity. Then, when we started thinking about the need statement, we are not as morale as before but we spend less time then before. Later, when we were pushed to finish the first proposal, everyone was motivated and performed with high productivity. I think this phenomenon happens to most teams and that is the reason why this model is here. What I have learnt from this model is: as a leader,

1. When the team is at forming stage, I need to organize the members to clear our goals on productivity and clarify different roles because the members are having high morale.
2. When the team is at storming stage, I need to encourage other team members more because the team is losing morale.
3. When the team is at norming stage, I need to be able to eliminate negative energies in the team and help the team built confidence because the members are easily to have different opinions and conflicts may happen.
4. When the team is at performing stage, I need to acknowledge individual contributions and continue encourage the members because most members are in the same direction with both high productivity and morale.

Additionally, Kouzes and Posner’s five practices of Leadership and Emotional Intelligence also help me a lot on building the understanding of leadership. The five practices of Leadership involves:

1. Model the way, which means leaders create standards of excellence by setting up the example.
2. Inspire a shared vision, which means leaders are with high confidence and passions.
3. Challenge the process, which means leaders are innovated and not limited by the rules.
4. Enable others to act, which means leaders respect and are involved with others.
5.  Encourage the hearts, which means leaders know the attributions from individuals and reward those individuals properly.

The Components of Emotional Intelligence is shown as this link, and it explains the ability to understand your own emotions, control negative emotions, empathize with others and build positive relationships with others.

As I have talked in my Final Blog, I am doing a great job on “Model the way”. I am the only one who come to all the meetings and come as the earliest and leaves as the latest. During the meetings, I am always on the track and have a calming effect. Also, I try my best to consist my words with deeds. I really have learnt that it is not easy to model the way; however, once you can set up an example for others, you gain the ability of persistence and the others gain a good model of leader. In addition, I am very proud at the Emotional Intelligence part. From the peer evaluation, my group members thought that I and unselfish and with kind attitude. In the end of the class, my members told me that they love my smiles and thanked me for bring positive energy to our team. Therefore, I thing I am good at building positive relationships with others and self-emotion management. However, a good leader also needs the quality of being active, which is not a quality of mine. Even though I have the smile to bring positive energy to the team, I am still lack of bring powerful energy to my members. Therefore, I think I still need to be more outgoing and engaged with other members