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This educational practice paper presents a critically-informed guide to leading and managing teams, structured around four learning outcomes: leadership and management theories, how teams are developed, improving individual and team performance, and determining one's own capacity to be an effective leader and manager.
Rather than presenting classic frameworks descriptively, the paper ties its claims to their scholarly origin and critically evaluates each: trait theory is discussed alongside Stogdill's (1948) finding that no stable trait set reliably predicts leadership across situations, Tuckman's (1965, 1977) stage model is examined for its tendency to oversimplify non-linear team dynamics, Belbin's (1981) role framework is discussed alongside the risk of pigeonholing team members into fixed roles, and Maslow's (1943) hierarchy of needs is discussed alongside Wahba and Bridwell's (1976) evidence against its strict sequential ordering.
A worked, clearly-labelled hypothetical personal SWOT analysis illustrates self-assessment in practice, supported by a discussion of structured assessments including the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, emotional intelligence assessment, and reflective journalling. Each section closes with an AI Insight discussion addressing where AI tools genuinely assist leadership and team management, such as collaboration analytics and 360-degree feedback aggregation, and where human judgement must remain central.
The paper is positioned as a practice-oriented pedagogical resource for business management students rather than an original empirical study, and its scope, contribution, and limitations are stated directly in the Discussion and Conclusion.
Keywords: leadership theory; management theory; team development; motivation theory; self-assessment.
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