| Course | LDR 726 The Dynamics of Group and Team Leadership (LDR/726) |
|---|---|
| Week | 8 |
| Paper type | Doctoral team leadership plan |
| Length | about 1,153 words, 4 double-spaced pages plus title page and references |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | University of Phoenix |
| Program | DBA |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for LDR 726 Week 8
Seventy Crews as One System: Multiteam Leadership and an Integrated Team Leadership Plan for a Wind Service Company
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
LDR/726: The Dynamics of Group and Team Leadership
Week 8 Final Paper
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Prairie Gale Wind Services, its teams and its plan are composites written for a model paper.
Over seven weeks, this course followed Prairie Gale Wind Services, an invented firm whose 340 technicians work in 70 crews servicing about 2,100 turbines in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. The analyses identified the processes and emergent states that separate strong crews, the cost of reshuffling crews, the failure to pool unique information, the difference between productive and destructive conflict, the value of role clarification, training and debriefs, coaching timed to launches, midpoints and endings and the promise and limits of self-direction. Yet a review of turbine downtime revealed something crew-level analysis missed: in about 40 percent of extended outages, the crew performed well, but delays occurred between teams, such as waiting for the monitoring center to dispatch, for the warehouse to ship parts or for the wind farm operator to grant site access. This paper extends the analysis to the system of teams and presents an integrated team leadership plan.
The Larger System
A single repair involves at least four teams: the remote monitoring center, which detects faults and dispatches crews; the field crew; the parts warehouse, which ships components; and the wind farm operator's site team, which controls access and safety permits. Each has its own goals and leaders.
Teamwork in Multiteam Systems
Marks et al. (2005) studied multiteam systems in a simulation in which teams had to coordinate to achieve system goals. They found that coordination processes between teams predicted system performance beyond processes within teams. Teams that worked well internally but poorly with other teams produced weaker system results. Cross-team processes deserved as much attention as within-team processes.
Leadership in Multiteam Systems
DeChurch and Marks (2006) studied leadership in multiteam systems and found that leaders who engaged in strategy development, planning how teams would work together, and coordination, managing interactions across teams, improved between-team coordination and system performance. Training leaders in these functions produced measurable benefits.
Team Leadership as a Functional Process
Zaccaro et al. (2001) reviewed team leadership and described it as a process of social problem solving: leaders diagnose what the team needs and act to meet those needs through information search and structuring, managing personnel and material resources and integrating team members' efforts. Leadership functions can be performed at several levels.
Where Delays Occur
Analysis of 120 extended outages showed average waits of 9 hours between fault detection and crew dispatch, 31 hours between a crew's parts request and delivery and 6 hours for site access. Crews' own repair time averaged 14 hours. The system's delays exceeded crew working time.
Prairie Gale spent seven weeks improving the 14 hours a crew spends fixing a turbine and had overlooked the 46 hours the turbine spends waiting.
Why the Teams Do Not Coordinate Now
Interviews with the monitoring center, warehouse and operator staff explained the delays. The monitoring center dispatches crews in the order faults appear, without knowing which crews are nearby or have the right parts. The warehouse processes requests in batches twice a day and does not know which repairs are urgent. Operators require 24 hours' notice for site access because they rarely hear from crews in advance. Each team follows sensible rules for its own work, but no one is responsible for how the rules interact.
Boundary Spanning at Prairie Gale
A few individuals already span boundaries informally. A warehouse clerk who once worked as a technician calls crews to ask which parts they will need, and his region has the shortest parts delays. A lead technician in Kansas texts the operator's site manager before every job. These informal connectors show what liaison roles could achieve if made deliberate.
System-Level Practice 1: Daily Coordination Call
A 15-minute daily call will connect the monitoring center, regional supervisors, the warehouse and representatives of the largest wind farm operators to review active faults, assign crews and anticipate parts needs.
System-Level Practice 2: Liaison Roles
Each region will have a liaison technician who spends part of each week at the monitoring center or warehouse, building relationships and knowledge across team boundaries.
System-Level Practice 3: Shared Metrics
All teams will share one primary measure, time from fault detection to turbine restored, displayed on a common dashboard, so that each team sees its effect on the system.
System-Level Practice 4: Leader Training
Regional supervisors and the managers of the monitoring center and warehouse will train in strategy development and cross-team coordination, as DeChurch and Marks (2006) found effective.
Team-Level Practices Integrated
At the crew level, the plan keeps earlier practices: core crews with stable membership, pre-climb briefings and structured debriefs, juniors-first observation sharing, a technical dispute process, role clarification and goal setting, rescue scenario training, supervisor coaching at launches, midpoints and debriefs and staged self-direction with safety boundaries.
How the Levels Connect
Crew debriefs will feed lessons to the daily coordination call; self-directed crews will communicate parts needs directly with the warehouse; supervisors' coaching will include cross-team issues; and shared metrics will connect crew goals to system goals.
A Repair Under the Plan
When a fault appears at 6 a.m., the monitoring center flags it on the daily call at 7, the regional supervisor assigns a nearby self-directed crew, the warehouse confirms parts on hand and the operator's liaison arranges access. The crew briefs, repairs and debriefs, and the time to restoration falls from about 60 hours to a target of 30.
Roles by Level
The vice president leads system strategy and shared metrics. Regional supervisors coach crews and coordinate across teams. Monitoring center and warehouse managers co-lead the daily call. Lead technicians lead crews. Liaisons connect teams.
Sequence
Months 1 to 3: daily call, shared metrics and leader training. Months 4 to 9: liaison roles, core crews and team training. Months 10 to 18: expansion of self-direction and coaching model.
Measures
System: time from detection to restoration, availability. Team: repeat repairs, safety compliance, debrief completion. People: turnover, survey scores on trust and role clarity.
Risks
The daily call could become a routine that people attend without acting, so it will focus only on open faults and decisions, with a strict 15-minute limit. Liaison roles take technicians away from repairs, so they will be part-time and rotated. Shared metrics could lead teams to blame one another; reviews will focus on the system, not on which team caused delays.
Limits
Wind farm operators are customers, not employees, so their participation depends on persuasion and shared benefit.
Conclusion
Multiteam system research shows that coordination between teams drives system performance and that leaders who plan and coordinate across teams improve it, while team leadership is a functional process performed at many levels. Prairie Gale's crews have improved, but turbines wait longer between teams than crews spend repairing them. An integrated plan linking crew practices to a daily coordination call, liaison roles, shared metrics and trained cross-team leaders treats 70 crews and their partner teams as one system.
References
DeChurch, L. A., & Marks, M. A. (2006). Leadership in multiteam systems. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(2), 311-329. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.91.2.311
Marks, M. A., DeChurch, L. A., Mathieu, J. E., Panzer, F. J., & Alonso, A. (2005). Teamwork in multiteam systems. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(5), 964-971. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.90.5.964
Zaccaro, S. J., Rittman, A. L., & Marks, M. A. (2001). Team leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 12(4), 451-483. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1048-9843(01)00093-5
What the LDR 726 Week 8 instructions ask
The final LDR 726 assignment usually asks doctoral students to integrate the course into a team leadership plan, often extending analysis to larger groups or multiteam systems. Expect to explain how teams interact within larger systems, review research on multiteam systems and team leadership, synthesize earlier analyses of team effectiveness, development, communication, conflict, team building, coaching and self-direction and present a plan with goals, practices, roles and measures. A strong paper shows how practices at the team level connect to coordination across teams, grounds recommendations in research and the organization's evidence and includes evaluation. The best plans also state which risks remain and how leaders will watch for them. Support the plan with peer-reviewed research in APA style.
How this LDR 726 Week 8 example is built
A single turbine failure at Prairie Gale involves several teams: the monitoring center that detects it, the crew that responds, the parts warehouse that ships components and the wind farm operator who schedules access. The final paper shows that crew-level improvements will fall short unless these teams coordinate. Research on multiteam systems found that coordination between teams predicted system performance beyond coordination within teams. A study of leadership in multiteam systems found that leaders who developed strategy for the system and coordinated across teams improved performance. A review of team leadership describes leadership as a functional process of diagnosing team needs and acting on them. The plan integrates seven weeks of work with system-level practices: a daily coordination call, liaison roles and shared metrics.
LDR 726 Week 8 grading rubric: where the points go
The final team leadership plan is graded on integration, scope and evidence. Reviewers notice whether cross-team delays are measured, not just asserted. Top papers connect team-level practices from earlier weeks into a coherent plan, extend analysis to coordination across teams using multiteam system research, define leadership roles at each level and set measures for both team and system performance. Graders reward realistic sequencing, attention to resources and explicit links to evidence from the organization. A plan that shows how a single event would flow through the system, from detection to repair, demonstrates applied understanding and gives reviewers a concrete test of the design.
LDR 726 Week 8 help: mistakes to avoid
Final plans often summarize each week's recommendations without connecting them. Show how practices reinforce one another, such as debriefs feeding coaching and stable crews enabling self-direction. Another common gap is stopping at the team level when performance depends on coordination across teams. Analyze the larger system. Some plans assign every task to the top leader; research on functional and multiteam leadership shows roles at several levels. Distribute them. Others propose many initiatives at once without a sequence. Prioritize and stage. Finally, include measures for system outcomes, such as time from fault detection to repair, alongside team measures, and describe how you would know if the plan failed.
Related LDR 726 sample papers
Other LDR 726 week samples
- LDR 726 Week 1: Teams and Team Effectiveness
- LDR 726 Week 2: Team Development and Group Dynamics
- LDR 726 Week 3: Group Communication and Decisions
- LDR 726 Week 4: Conflict in Teams
- LDR 726 Week 5: Team Building and Team Training
- LDR 726 Week 6: Team Coaching
- LDR 726 Week 7: Self-Directed Work Teams
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LDR 726 Week 8 questions, answered
What does LDR 726 Week 8 usually cover?
It usually covers an integrated team leadership plan that synthesizes the course and extends team leadership to larger groups or multiteam systems, with goals, practices, roles and measures.
Where can I find a free LDR 726 Week 8 sample paper?
The closing doctoral plan linking 70 wind crews and their partner teams into one system is shown above in full.
What is a multiteam system?
A multiteam system is a network of two or more teams that work interdependently toward shared goals, such as emergency response teams or crews and support units in a service company.
Why does coordination between teams matter?
Research found that coordination between teams in a multiteam system predicted overall system performance beyond how well each team coordinated internally.
What do leaders of multiteam systems do?
They develop strategy for how teams will work together and coordinate across team boundaries, so that each team's work fits the system's goals.
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