You're guiding a team towards success. How can you balance autonomy and direction effectively?

I am very much in favor of implementing humanized and accountable management. Contemporary structures in this exponential era are very lean and it is essential to decentralize power by delegating authority without losing the responsibility of the hierarchy. It is a very effective way of seeking team involvement in activities and reducing response times in the search for solutions.

Defining roles within a team is crucial for effective collaboration. Three key elements contribute to this process, encompassing both hard and soft skills: Competency Matrix: Identify the skill sets required for each role and select the best candidate. It’s essential to recognize the abilities necessary for effective task execution. Behavioral Profiles: While most competencies can be acquired, some behaviors and traits are inherent and difficult to change. Understanding these aspects helps in better role alignment. Understanding Roles: Ensure each team member comprehends their role, strives to excel, and takes pride in their contributions. Clear communication of expectations is vital for fostering a sense of belonging and responsibility.

You cannot manage what you cannot measure and control! The prior definition of objectives, goals and KPI's will allow a visualization of the priority activities for the decision-making process. Agile methods will also facilitate this process and are highly recommended for increasing synergy between teams.

As well as setting clear objectives, you must set expectations. What does success look like? This will enable a clear direction for the team, all understanding what their role is and what is expected of them.

The relationship of trust will be built gradually. Whether with the hierarchy based on their attitude and behavior, or even according to the goals achieved, which will give the feeling of greater capacity to overcome future challenges. The rapprochement between leaders and subordinates is fundamental in building this process that generates trust between both. In the end, everyone will win in this mutual achievement of trust!

In any teamwork co-created shared vision and goals as a direction and accountability in collaborative autonomy must co-exist for success. The teamwork process must always start with building an emotionally bonded team in a safe space for vulnerable open expression and setting goals with roles and accountability. During execution, there could be issues of personal autonomy versus collective responsibility for the direction of the team's end goal. A good coach can sense this from the conversation within the team as both verbal and nonverbal feedback. The coach can help maintain an empathetic and appreciative listening and discussion process to resolve differences. Thinking Hats, Polarity Map and such tools can help in sharing feedback.

Autonomy is important. However, one person's freedom must not impede another's performance. The team needs to understand that collaborative co-creation and achieving goals in a pre-agreed direction is more critical than a sense of ego presented as autonomy. Autonomy must coexist with both individual accountability and collective responsibility. As a coach, after initial vision and goal-setting sessions and setting up a dashboard of action with SMART individual accountability, I schedule monthly review meetings with fortnightly internal progress meetings of the team, sometimes in subgroups. I also interact with individual members to understand any frustrations. A good dashboard with tracking helps progress with accountability and autonomy.

The coach must always respond in the present moment, empathetically and flexibly without judging whatever happens in the teamwork. The team is responsible, collectively and individually. The coach's responsibility is to create awareness if conflicts and challenges arise, and if the team cannot handle these on its own. In a business environment, the teamwork projects I coach may take a year to complete. Multiple changes happen both internally and externally, which cannot be anticipated. The coach's job is to be comfortable not knowing, and adapting to the team's dynamic responses, to hold the focus on the end objectives, while still allowing individual initiatives and encouraging collaboration. This process is an art not a science.