It is fairly well known and observable that the self-steering ability (see
elsewhere my view on maturity and its development) differs between people. Some succeed in making choices that lead
to a successful experience because they can use their own competencies and
ambitions in a meaningful way to a meaningful life, while others struggle with
it for a lifetime, and often still have an unsatisfied feeling. Survival then appears to be the highest
level attainable. In the less favorable case, a coach can provide a good
point of reference to arrive at an insight and action, leading to strong
progress, faster than the natural evolution of the stages of life could do. Either way, good luck or not, the person
concerned pays the bill and has the freedom to handle it at his own discretion.
If we switch from the individual to an organization,
the question is as follows: "is a group of people, large or small, able to achieve a common goal while being successful for themselves as
a group?" In that case, we are not only talking about
the individual needs and aspirations of all the group members (competencies, ambitions and giving meaning), but also about the results that the
organization in question must achieve in function of its social mission. Organizations
are not just social constructions to allow people in a constructive social
context to function for themselves; they are also vehicles for creating added social
value. Whoever participates in an organization is supposed to
(want to) participate in it.
The needs for self-steering ability are cumulatively
situated on three levels: the self; the group as a whole; the focus on the mission of the organization. Some considerations :
- A person with limited self-steering ability will probably put a
lot of energy into one's own needs, and will also partly extract that energy
from the group. This has an inhibiting effect at least, perhaps even
disruptive. Forming a self-managing team with people who cannot
realize self-management for themselves will give limited opportunities; leadership will prove to be necessary.
- Someone with sufficient self-management
ability can have a positive effect to the self-management team, provided that
the social skills are strong enough to function in relation with colleagues. The bar regarding maturity is therefore
even higher. If not everyone in the team has sufficient maturity,
leadership will be needed to constructively absorb and guide the associated fields of tension.
- If the aforementioned condition is met,
the 'organization assignment' dimension is added. This is about the 'mental contract' and
the associated sense of responsibility of the team members to combine all the
previous (individual and group dimension) with the assignment. Mental contract and sense of
responsibility indicate 'wanting' to be of service to the organization. There is also the 'ability' aspect, which
indicates knowledge of the environment, technology, finances, etc., all of which
determine the proper functioning of the organization. Again, it is not surprising that
leadership will be necessary to meet this dimension.
Of course, each of the 'obstructions' mentioned can be
taken care of by the group. If that succeeds, the group has sufficient
self-management ability. In that case we could speak of shared leadership
because the necessary attention to these obstructions can come from every group
member, and at different times. As long as it is effective, the necessary
management is present; by one person or by a shared responsibility. The team
culture that is needed for this will have to be developed, which can again be
done by the group members themselves, by some pioneers (informal leaders), or
by one particular person, possibly temporarily. Just to be clear: leadership is not the
traditional hierarchical model in which thinking and doing are separated, and where
compliance with leadership is assumed. Leadership can take shape in different
ways, and I'm not talking about styles. Styles are usually legitimate (socially
accepted) deviations from good leadership because of personality problems of
the leader. Think of dominance, need for control, perfectionism,
conflict avoidance, paranoia, acceptance need, ... I am talking about the
different paradigms in the way in which managers (whether or not shared!) see their role and whether or not they make their function
available to the team or themselves. More about that elsewhere.
The answer to the question in the title could
therefore also be: certainly, and it is mainly about replacing a single
person with a shared assignment within a team. The Role of "leadership" then continues to
exist, but fades into a strong group culture as the role is taken up by several
people at each necessary moment. The speed and quality of the transition from single-person to shared leadership certainly depends on a number of
preconditions and not least on the way in which the mutual agreements between all parties involved with regard to self-management are made
and followed up on. Perhaps the word
"self-management" should be replaced by "self-guidance", or better: "integrated leadership"? But the content of the "leadership" role
remains the same, regardless of who does it.
Leadership is one of
the most difficult jobs in the world. People who try to do a good job in that
responsibility, make a lot of mistakes and have a high need for further
development. Why would they succeed better is they don’t have appropriate
education, experience and assessments; knowing that they did not apply for this
responsibility at all? They were chosen for a certain operational task, because
the seem to have the competences for it, and were interested. Is it fair to
force them in the position of taking responsibilities for the overall results
of a team?
Hugo Der Kinderen
July 2017
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