Referring to the article, the main arguments presented by the authors is that external leader
behaviors do support to the self-managing work team success. Their objective is also to
increase the understanding of the role of external leader who is the leader to whom a team
reports to. Self-managing work team are natural work groups where they work together to
perform a task. They take on management into their works where each of them performs as
a supervisors and managers. According to the article, leading a team that manages itself
will need a distinctive approach of leadership. They carry out more responsible with more
complex and demanding roles than the traditional team leadership. For the traditional team
leadership they are more expected to lead by monitoring and managing those teams while
the external leaders are expected to lead by monitoring and managing back to their teams.
Subsequently, boundary spanning activities where external leader need to interact with
various organizations who supply the team with resources and support is very essential to
determine their success in that role. (Druskat and Wheeler, 2003: 435; Robbins, Bergman,
Stagg and Coulter, 2003: 737) In order to be effective leader in the self-managing work
teams which is also known as self-directed work teams, they must know how to influence
a team and others in an organization. For instance, their ability to persuade their team
members to listen, talk and accept advice will be much more advantage to them as a leader.
Secondly, they ought to know how and with whom to build relationships which involve
networking especially with their subordinates. There are times when self-management
team need the leader to seek and scout for information too because when they do not
receive the information there are the risk of becoming over bounded. Thus, ability of the
leader to scout and share the information is very important as it will facilitate team
self-management and the effectiveness. In self-management team they are expected to
have their own decisions. Here is when external leaders come in to view and ensure that
his or her team decisions support to the team effectiveness. In addition, the external leaders
need to ensure their behaviors and strategies do meet with the expectation of the team self
management and team effectiveness. (Druskat and Wheeler, 2003: 435; Williams, 1995)
The authors have made some research to their objectives using the comparative multiple
case study method. They choose two cases sample those with average and those with
