John Adair's 100 Greatest Ideas for Effective Leadership

Idea 1: Task, team and individual

In leadership there are always three interacting elements or variables:

1. The leader: qualities of personality and character.
2. The situation: partly constant, partly varying.
3. The group: the followers, their needs and values.

It is helpful to look at leadership in relation to the needs of work groups. Work groups are always unique – they have their own group personality – but like individuals, they share needs in common:

1. Task need: to achieve the common task.
2. Team maintenance needs: to be held together or to be maintained as a team.
3. Individual needs: the needs that individuals bring with them into the group.

These three needs (the task, the team and the individual) are now the watchwords of leadership and people ...