Not so long ago, on one very normal day at a very famous, global organisation, something unique happened. A group went to add their newly formed team to the system, a formality that every team at the company completes. Yet, despite the fact they were a real team, the system rejected them.
Why?
No leader name given.
The issue?
They didn’t have one.
Given their skills, experience, and ability to lead themselves and each other, they’d decided to take an all-play approach and not designate a formal leader.
It’s not just our IT systems that struggle with the concept of a leaderless team, but our own internal wirings. Who’s going to lead the thing? We’re familiar with how it tends to look with one leader at the top, responsible for leading the way and bringing any number of team members with them.
Leaderless teams, on the other hand, aren’t a new concept. The idea of ‘self-managing’ teams without a formal leader responsible for team output has been a talking point since the idea of “the self-managing unit” emerged in the 80s. Yet, the concept remains counter-cultural and counter-intuitive. Could it really be that teams could perform better without someone in charge?
Let’s consider some different approaches to the leaderless team.
The All-Play Team
An all-play team is propelled by taking its own initiative, casting its own vision, and finding its own inspiration and ambition. No more “that’s my team leader’s job”. Each member knows how they play into the leadership of the whole. Accountability for the team’s outputs is shared. Hierarchy dissolves, bringing total agility.
The Co-Lead Team
We champion teamwork and close collaboration, often wanting teams to move away from siloed working. So why should the leader get a free pass at doing a solo job? Pairing up leaders can halve burdens, give an effective sounding board to both parties, and – perhaps most importantly – allow two people with complementary skillsets to utilise two sets of strengths and cover each other’s development areas.
The Servant Leader
A complete script flip from the traditional leader, the servant leader lets team members lead in the owning of responsibility and execution. Rather than getting vision, drive, and inspiration from the one, it comes from the many. The one (or two, or many) that we would have called the leader(s), become the servants or workers of their more junior colleagues.
The Leadership Pool
Every now and again, it becomes a talking point that a football team hasn’t appointed one formal club captain and is instead ‘sharing the captaincy’. Sometimes this works via a leadership pool, with a number of leaders able to step in, especially when others are out injured, suspended, etc. Other times there isn’t even a specified leadership cohort, and the club expects leadership to come from the team.
In taking one of the bold approaches above, our teams might be able to do without – or even thrive – in a leaderless land. But whilst we might not need a leader, we do need vision, wisdom, empowerment, celebration, and direction. We need leadership. Leadership can come from the top. Or it can come from the team.