🤝Sharing Leadership with Teammates
Video Version
Here's a video version:
Everyone Shares Leadership on Agile Teams
Everyone leads on an agile cross-functional team. Yes, even the interns. Even the people who have 0 experience. This is very intentional! Everyone is in service to everyone else's growth. Read about cross-functional teamwork here to learn about team empowerment in decision making.
A self-organized team who is empowered to take the reins of ownership should not have a single leader, or even a group of leaders. Everyone should lead. When there's a dynamic of "leader" and "follower", it creates an imbalance of power and ownership. People wait to be told what to do. People making decisions themselves may take the team in a direction that's not the best way forward. People may not speak up about important concerns because they fear punishment from a leader in charge.
Decision making should be shared together in the entire group. Ownership should be handed to the people who are considered the least experienced so that they can grow. Cross-functional agile teams create environments where everyone shares leadership. Everyone makes decisions together; everyone owns work; everyone shares responsibility; everyone supports each others' growth. Read more about this in the Agile Handbook.
A lot of people are conditioned to think that something is "right" or "wrong". We seek perfection in decisions, and this creates a fear of making the wrong choice. Agile teamwork removes this notion of "the wrong choice" because teams encourage failure. This means, no one has to make the "right choices" in order to lead! You can get it wrong. You can try and fail, and adjust. This is how team structure of empowered teams operate. They foster senses of belonging, growth, and collective decision making so that they all can feel the deep ownership in the outcomes. This is how people share leadership on agile teams.
On a shared leadership team, no team in our community should have single leaders telling everyone what to do, or assigning work. People transfer ownership to their teammates. Teammates decide what work to lead (or be "accountable for") and how to get involved (with the RACI Chart).
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