5. Self-Managed Teams
Self-managed teams can be defined as a group of people that have internal task control on a relatively permanent basis for any identifiable task requiring multiple skills (Thibodeaux, 1994). They are “relatively autonomous work groups whose members share responsibility and leadership to accomplish their independent tasks. Their essential characteristics include independent tasks, autonomous decision-making, shared responsibility and shared leadership” (Yang, & Guy, 2011;2010).
In an ideal self-managed team, members plan, organize, control, staff and monitor their own work. A secondary function in generating team spirit, which stimulates collaboration. All members are responsible for the final product and receive feedback and evaluation in terms of team, rather than individual, performance. Team leaders, when included into the company’s structure, function as facilitators rather than controllers (Yang, & Guy, 2011;2010).
Self-managed teams often lack formal mechanisms to persuade individual participation and each team member is expected to contribute. Members often have equal rights and performance duties. These rights and duties create unique team dynamics (Markova & Perry, 2014). Some attributes that can enhance the formation of a Self-managed team are: better communication, shared values, and trust (Thibodeaux, 1994).
Thibodeaux (1994) suggests a communication guideline for organisations that want to be more creative and responsive to environment changes:
- encourage open, “loop” communication;
- facilitate immediate feedback;
- educate, sensitize, and train all levels of employees;
- manage conflict by discouraging bureaucracy,
- overly formal responses to concerns; and
- develop informal, cooperative relationships among diverse, multi-functional work groups
A shared vision between the members has the power to mobilize emotional energy through enhanced communication and teamwork. Organisations that aim to have more effective teams tend to value cooperation over competition. In order to achieve a productive team, they support training for interpersonal skills, share information and knowledge, reduce the hierarchical levels, schedule frequent meetings, and strive for equal treatment between team members (Thibodeaux, 1994).
Trust is desirable in all organisations, but it becomes essential in self-managed teams. Openness and sticking to vision are the best ways to build trust (Thibodeaux, 1994). According to Thibodeaux (1994), trust can facilitate the dialogue needed to develop an organic company and to promote new skill levels that are required in a more democratic environment. Trust also supports people to become committed to the goals and values of an organisation and make it easy for people to feel included in the groups (Thibodeaux, 1994).
Working in a group with no boss can be challenging but productive self-managed teams rarely happen spontaneously. Giving teams specific support such as training, coaching and tools can help on the decision-making process and empower individuals (Laloux, 2014). Training teaches people new technical skills and the rules of the job. In an flat organisation structure, orientation and training are essential to prepare employees to deal with a high level of autonomy (Thibodeaux, 1994).
If the organisational goal is to have empowered employees, then the design of selection and training programmes that ensure technical, linguistic and social influence skills are mandatory. Teams require massive cross-training because members not only learn each other’s skills, but they must also learn how to work as a team (Thibodeaux, 1994).
Several advantages are associated with working in self-managed teams, including higher performance — productivity, pro-activity and customer service — and higher attitudinal outcomes — job satisfaction, organisational commitment and team commitment (Zárraga & Bonache, 2005). Another important benefit of self-managed teams is the knowledge management. Since it is a less dynamic, knowledge is shared among the team members. “In fact, organizing work in this way can lead to one of the benefits of teamwork: knowledge transfer among team members, an advantage that is most beneficial when individuals possess some idiosyncratic information relevant to the other members of the firm” (Zárraga & Bonache, 2005).
Ways of leading in self-managed teams:
Shared Leadership “Decentralization is a stimulus for motivation” (Thibodeaux, 1994)
According to Markova & Perry (2014), the emergence of one team member as a leader within a self-managed team can change the perception of equal influence of each team member over team decisions. As a consequence, team members may feel that their access to power in the team is hindered. “Teams that rely on naturally emerging leaders, in comparison to teams that rotate leaders, have lower level of voice, cooperation and performance” (Markova & Perry, 2014). The author also adds that teams with shared leadership had emotional and cognitive advantages if compared to those with a single leader (Markova & Perry, 2014).
As Meisel & Fearon (1999) noticed, attention to single-person leadership often excludes lessons about the differences made by all other participants in team effectiveness. In addition, exercises with only one leadership role encourage the perpetuation of gender and ethnic role stereotypes and discourage the active participation of all team members as leaders (Meisel & Fearon, 1999).
What differs more traditional forms of leadership to shared leadership is the influence process. On shared leadership the influence process is horizontal, while traditional leadership is an upward and downward hierarchical influence. Shared leadership is about accepting one another as leaders, as opposed to being lead by a single person. It is a way to empower people to engage in leadership functions, thereby fostering shared leadership (Drescher, Korsgaard, Welpe, Picot & Wigand, 2014). As shared leadership involves more members of the group, the presence of multiple results in multiple leader–follower relationships creates more opportunities for parties to interact (Drescher, Korsgaard, Welpe, Picot & Wigand, 2014).
There are some personal characteristics that can help shared leadership to work better. Integrity for example — being trusting, trustworthy and fair — represents an important quality needed by team members as an antecedent to shared leadership. Helpfulness is another important characteristic for successful groups (Barnett, & Weidenfeller, 2016). People do not have to know everything, they just have to work among people who are good at getting and giving help (Heffernan, 2015).
A study confirmed the benefits of shared leadership and the results showed two important conclusions: first, as groups increasingly distribute leadership functions among group members, trust grows. Second, through trust, the expansion of shared leadership is associated with increased performance (Drescher, Korsgaard, Welpe, Picot & Wigand, 2014). Interestingly, research indicates that shared leadership is positively related to performance in both virtual and co-located teams (Hoch & Kozlowski, 2012).
Facilitation and External Leadership
Another tool to successful self-managed teams is using facilitators. A meeting with no boss, where important issues need to be solved, can be a challenge for self-managed teams. That is why a facilitator can play an important role. A facilitator is someone from the team that takes a temporary role with the following responsibilities. The facilitator organises the meeting’s agenda for the discussion and he/she can only ask questions. In a second round, proposals are reviewed, improved and redefined. In a third round proposals are put to a group decision (Laloux, 2014).
The basis for decision-making is not consensus. For a solution to be adopted, it is enough that nobody has a principled objection. People cannot veto a decision because they feel another solution would have been preferable. As long as there is no principle objection, a solution will be adopted, with the understanding that it can be revisited at any time when new information is available (Laloux, 2014). This process guarantees that every voice is heard, that the collective intelligence informs decision-making and that no one person can derail the process and hold others hostage by trying to impose their personal preferences (Laloux, 2014).
If the group gets stuck, even with the provided trainings and coaching, asking for suggestions to other teams (Laloux, 2014) or an external leadership can play an important role in team effectiveness. In this case, even an external leadership shouldn’t be interpreted as a traditional leadership. This external leadership can assume different roles, according to each group needs (Morgeson, 2005).
An external leadership can be beneficial. First, because self-managing teams are rarely delegated full decision-making authority. It is often left to the external leader to make key team decisions (e.g. hiring and firing, dealing with customers, purchasing equipment). Second, there are some activities external leaders are ideally situated to perform, such as encouraging the team, managing the team’s boundaries and dealing with unexpected problems or events that can occur. Because internal team leaders are involved in day-to-day task performance, their ability to monitor the team and environment is limited. Finally, external leaders are frequently found in team-based settings and can positively impact team functioning (Morgeson, 2005).
Examples of Self-managed organisations
It is possible to identify some examples of Self-managed organisational structures that are emerging. Holacracy, Sociocracy, Cooperatives and Flat Structures are some examples. They have high affinity with Teal organisations thoughts since all of them are constituted by self-managed teams.
After analysing all the examples above, flat structures seem to be the best option for transitioning from a hierarchy to a self-managed structure. This is because most of the other models presented have a rigid structure. It means that if the model does not fit for a certain industry or team, they can not apply that system to their company. Flat structures do not present a rule of how they should be structured, it is just a concept that challenges huge hierarchical structures while working in self-managed teams.
Furthermore, leadership does not exists in the other presented structures. Considering people that have worked their whole life in hierarchical companies, and do not know how to be self-managed, not having a mentor or a coach can cause frustration and consequently a malfunctioning of the organisation design. At least in the initial stage it is important to have a leader that acts as a coach, mentor or a facilitator. This work will focus on exploring flat structures and understanding how a flat company would work.
