“All groups and organizations should function as teams in which everyone makes decisions and shares responsibilities and duties.

“All groups and organizations should function as teams in which everyone makes decisions and shares responsibilities and duties. Giving one person central authority and responsibility for a project or task is not an effective way to get work done.”
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the opinion expressed above? Support your views with reasons and/or specific examples drawn from your own work or school experiences, your observations, or your reading.

Eventhough the author's statement is quite enticing I chose to stand on the other side of the fence, for the following reasons.

Digging the examples from history to present events, there is no harm to claim that leadership is mostly about a single person and his strength to take a prompt decision. Alexander lead his huge army to invade the whole world just by his sheer will power and decision. Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Google are all ruling today just because they are driven by one man and one decision.

Coming down to day to day life activities, such as in any project, if every person in a team has the same and the equal responsibilities, there can be unnecessary conflicts in opinion even executing a tiny job. Everybody will have different vision and may be most of those are not correct. This situation is not only time-consuming but also counter-prodcutive for a company where fast delivery is a buzz word.

The reason for advocating a single leader is that he can delegate the responsibilities to the right guy avoiding unnecessary delays and confusion. Not everybody is adept at everything, but it is also true that everybody has their own strength. So its a leader's job to know whom to assign a job so as to deduce the best output from him. If everybody becomes leader who is going to execute the actual job at hand?? An example in this scenario can be that all US soldiers be given the rank of a Captain, then who is going to command and who is going to follow?

A leader ensures that decision is made, he may be wrong at certain occassions but would be able to make decisions on time. Delegation helps others concentrate on their strength and leave the leader to plan out the future activities. A leader is chosen based on certain attributes, which cannot be found in everybody. According to a survey in US army, there is a steady shortage of around 300-400 army personnels for the last 2 decades. So the point is that not everybody can be leader, it is safe in few hands only.

Finally, even though its a very win-win situation to suggest that equal responsibilities be given to every member, but in practical scenarios, either we think about household jobs or office work, one-man leadership is best to accomplish things efficiently.