Embracing shared leadership

I’ve recently made a point of reading up on shared leadership and I’m converted, I think its the way to go. Two reasons really, first it describes better what I see happening in the work environment and second, it offers an alternative to the confusion around “self-organising teams” (or is it “self-managing”??)

I regularly hear comments like “everyone in your company is a leader” or “leadership is all around you”. I struggle with these sometimes because I wonder “if everyone is a leader… who is doing the following?” or to put it another way: if everyone is leading who does the non-leadership work? In the discussions of shared leadership I find the answer.

Let me dig into both a little further.

Most of the papers I’ve been looking at come from the academic world. That makes for some very dry reading and many of those papers aren’t easy to access?—?luckily I have access to a University library at the moment. The upside is that it means the field has been researched properly.

Lets start by defining what I mean by shared-leadership:

“shared leadership is a dynamic, interactive influence process among individuals in groups for which the objective is to lead one another to the achievement of group or organizational goals or both” Pearce and Conger, 2003 (this book is referenced in several of the papers I looked at so seems a good starting point)

Lets add:

• Shared leadership covers influencing peers as well as those who appear higher and lower an org chart.
• While some authors use the term “shared leadership” to describe determined job-shares (e.g. joint CEOs) most use see it as an emergent state.
• Leadership is exercised through Influence more often then direct authority, and influence derives from knowledge, ability, technical skills and soft skills.

This describes the way I see good teams work. The Scrum Master leads daily stand-up meetings with their facilitation skills, they may set up the planning meeting and lead the team through the steps. But the Product Owner/Manager steps forward when it comes to nominating and prioritising the work to do. When the conversation turns to technical issues team members my more naturally follow the suggestions of an experienced coder or designated architect.

Outside of set piece events, during the day-to-day work, the person who picks up a piece of work will lead on that work. If get stuck they may call in others while retaining leadership of the problem. Or, they may defer to a more experienced colleague who comes to help.

The idea that leadership moves matches what I see happening. That doesn’t preclude there being a designated leader or, manager. In appointing managers companies expect them to take on a leadership role and in designating them a manager confer some authority on them.

A good manager will respect the abilities of others and allow leadership to flow. So they will let the Scrum Master run meetings, let the Product Owner/Manager prioritise work and let experienced coders lead on the design. They will use their authority to resolve disputes, interface to the company, and use that authority for the good of the team.

Of course, not all managers are good, weak managers are all too common. I recall one in particular, Jerry, who on appointment immediate moved to put the team in their place. He didn’t want team members deciding on priorities, design, team working or even speaking to other managers. Until he arrived the small team were sharing leadership and working effectively.

Shared leadership matches the “distributed and devolved authority” that I’ve been advocating for years. What is needed is for decisions to be made by those closest to the need to the decision and those with the most knowledge.

Distributed and devolved authority has been my formulation for side-stepping the questions of “self-organising” or “self-managing” teams. While I’m all in favour of involving more front line staff in decision making those terms create problems.

For a start, there is little agreement on whether it is “self-organising” or “self-managing”?—?or what the difference is. Neither term is particularly well defined. Sometimes “self-directed” gets thrown into the mix to complicate things.

Because the terms are poorly defined they bring unwarranted assumption. Even some well known advocates take the terms to mean “No managers”?—?and in particular no project managers. Now while there might be reasons to reduce the number of managers in such an environment once people think managers might be gone it creates problems.

Then there is the question of who is in the self-organising team and who is outside the team? I remember one developer who took exception to the Product Owner nominating the work to do. He pointed out that the team was supposed to be self-organising?—?at least according to Scrum?—?and he saw the Product Owner as behaving like a manager. To his mind that was wrong.

His interpretation gave me a lot to think about, there was a logic in his interpretation. At the time I didn’t know the term “shared leadership” but I was applying the ideas. In my interoperation the Product Owner and Product Manager lead on what commercial, customer facing, work needed to be done. Plus, they were members of the wider team, they were specialists, leaders, in one aspect of the product but not all aspects. When it came to the solution design, and how the work was split up then other team members would step forward.

The problem is that hierarchies tend to develop whether you want them or not. In the absence of a formal hierarchy an informal one often emerges. The one that emerges might be more problematic than a formal one. Consider a team which swaps its designated manager for self-organisation only to see an prejudiced Alpha Male emerge as leader. (I wrote a blog post a couple of years ago, "In defence of hierarchy", check out my blog.)

Now don’t get me wrong, I agree there are lots of problems with “Management” but, unlike some, I don’t see Management as fundamentally flawed. Rather what I see is a lot of bad management. In truth much of this is because few stop to take the time to learn about management and how to perform it. Management is a skill like any other?—?or perhaps, given the breadth of management it is multiple skills.

Herein lies another problem, if a company adopts “self-managing” teams and removes many dedicated managers it does not mean all the management work is magically removed. Sure some will be, but managers don’t spend the whole day talking to other managers. The management work which remains will now need to be done by the team members. In other words, fewer managers means more people managing.

Given that these people have decided not to become managers there is every chance they aren’t interested in management work?—?much of which can be boring. Neither will these people have spent time, or be interested in, improving management skills which they now need.

The best teams I see practice a form of shared leadership while still having a manager. Sometimes that manager is close, even in the team, other times they are removed. But a good manager appreciates the abilities of the team and lets leadership flow between team members.

I expect to hear more of shared leadership, it is a model I intend to learn more about and help my clients embrace.?