46. Personal competences for a self-managing team

Self-managing or autonomous teams are the newest hype in the organizational landscape. This structure promises greater involvement and motivation, togethers with a better wellbeing of employees as self-regulating power increases. Certainly in comparison with our traditional hierarchical organization, more empowerment is clearly a step in the right direction. But too much naivety leads to accidents. Not everyone is able to function with a large autonomy.

If we try to put that into practice by providing a list of competences that people should have to be self-managing is helpful. Using this kind of criteria contributes probably to the success of that team. After all, we live in the age of competences. (1)

Domain knowledge

It is essential that people work, and have the necessary knowledge for the job. Purely theoretical knowledge is insufficient here; practical experience is needed.

Context insight

Knowing the work is not enough. The circumstances in which the work must be done always play a major role. After all, the context determines which actions are appropriate, how to approach things, how to involve people, etc.

Targeting

A clear insight into the objective, and that may be ambitious, is necessary. But also the ability to keep an eye on that goal, and not to lose oneself in non-relevant lateral problems, is essential. There is no need for exaggeration in the form of excessive ambition, but focus is needed.

Emotional stability

Perhaps the greatest temptation to become unproductive is the emotional pressure that comes with working in a team. This can be due to the difficulty of the assignment, but also due to the relationships in the team. If that emotional pressure absorbs attention and energy, then there is no longer space of productive behavior. All energy is lost in the lack of emotional stability and the survival reflexes related tot it.

Relativizing capacity

Not all matters are equally important and can be tackled at the same time. Moreover, the styles, the knowledge, the beliefs, the personalities in a team are very different. Team members who want everything 'now' and 'perfect', probably cannot live and work with this complexity. Their rigid attitude will undermine team focus.

Learning ability

If a team gets a lot of autonomy, it must also evaluate itself. And this should not only lead to putting things into perspective and social support, but above all to learning from the mistakes and shortcomings. Gaining new insights, and retaining them for the future, converting them into agreements and continuing to refer to them, are very necessary competencies. Being able to change beliefs and cultivating other habits are visible outcomes of this competence.

Communication

The team members must communicate productively in order to get the necessary coordination about objectives, working methods, work distribution, etc. Individual communication is the building block. And so it is much more than talking or ventilating. There is a need for focused coordination, dealing with difficult issues respectfully, give and receive feedback.

Listening skills

To work together, one must be able to listen. If that is not possible, there will be too much focus on winning the discussion, and colleagues will soon give up trying to make agreements.

Complexity management

As soon as situations have to be assessed and the relative importance of certain aspects has to be determined, complexity is a challenge. People who cannot handle complexity, and who tend to judge things one-dimensionally and binary, will violate this complexity.

Critical attitude

A team that has autonomy will have to evaluate itself, in whatever area. If its just keep repeating the same thing, the quality of self-management will suffer.

Organizational insight

Organizing oneself is perhaps the basic assignment for a self-managing team. A minimum of practical insight into how the tasks are best organized to make something work is essential. Whoever has a difficulty with that, will quickly be seen as a problem in the team.

Cost awareness

Autonomy inevitably means that decisions must be made with financial consequences. These must of course be properly managed to respect the available frameworks.

Self confidence

Those who lack self-confidence probably also lack the ability to actively participate in team meetings. Compliance and passivity could result, and that is not a contribution to self-direction. Passive people risk to be seen as non-productive by their colleagues.

Modesty

All too self-confident people, who overestimate themselves and their ideas, are a problem in a self-managing team. To achieve a good solution together, each team member should be aware of their own limitations. Dominance from a team-member is a serious threat to cooperation. If you try to eliminate the negative effect of dominant leadership by introducing self managing teams, you school be aware not to create the problem again within the team.

Openness

In order to come to good consultation and good self-evaluation, it will be necessary to discuss matters, even the personal ones like styles and competences. Everything that determines results must be included in agreements and evaluation. A lack of openness means that an employee cannot participate in this process, and therefore becomes a brake on teamwork.

Flexibility

Self-management requires the team to adapt to the possibilities and limitations. Adhering to fixed routines too strongly will create a structural limitation in the team, especially in the longer term.

Collaboration

Many of the abovementioned competencies determine the ability to work together. It is essential that goal-oriented collaboration is strong enough for each of the team members.

Experience with reorganizations in the direction of self-management (soft tilt of organizations (2)) shows that failures are often the result of poor approach and organization by the management of the organization. But honesty sometimes forces us to see the cause in the inability of the team members to effectively use the space offered. It is a too naive view of people not to see that the required competencies are sometimes not sufficiently present.

By the way, I suspect some managers wanting to get rid of their leadership responsibility. If one feels that one fails in this role, it is sometimes tempting to believe in the possibilities of self-management. If it then fails, at least they have provided visible evidence that they were in line with the modern trend, and that the error therefore clearly lies with the team. To be clear: with empowerment, estimating the ability of the team members to use the provided space of autonomy, is a responsibility of the management! The fact that most people overestimate their competences, is a pitfall, and a bad excuse for being naïve in the process of introducing self-management.

To make a good estimate, each team member should be judged on these competencies. Roughly speaking, in using this list as a judging tool, a score of 7 out of 10 appears to be the average, with no scores below 5. Naturally, this standard depends on the degree of autonomy. Team autonomy is not a binary choice, all or nothing. It is about a precise agreement of responsibilities and powers that lie within the team. A learning process has to be part of the plan.

Hugo Der Kinderen

      (1)    See for a realistic analysis of the use of competences in HR in a separate contribution.

      (2)    See separate contributions on ‘tilted organizations’