How to approach an autonomous team
Let's start with an example: you want to implement a new initiative in your team. As a leader, should you propose a structure or let the team create its own? Should you even have a structure in the first place? Or should you assume that it will emerge naturally from the group? What's the best approach?
The answer: it depends very much on the team's maturity and ability to take on new tasks. If it's a brand-new initiative, team members may prefer to be guided to help them work better together. On the other hand, a well-established team may be frustrated at having something imposed on them in advance.
The other key decision-making factor is the ability of team members to make decisions together. There's a learning curve involved in becoming a team, and it can be useful in this case for the leader to provide an initial structure.
In order for you to understand where your team stands and be able to coach them well, it's crucial that you have in-depth discussions with them about expectations.
Creating conversations with your team
You need to clarify what self-organization means in the specific context of your team and your organization, so as to arrive at a common definition. You may also need to define some of the first steps with your team.
What do they want to focus on, what do they want to do differently? What would they like to learn first? Where would they like to see more power and responsibility?
As a leader, you can guide change by helping the team determine what they want to learn, and set a deadline for doing so. Then, you can get team members to give feedback on what they've learned and set them on the path to a second learning experience, and so on until they're empowered enough to take over the process for themselves.
Since each self-organizing team works within a unique context, this raises many questions. What is the team responsible for, and what isn't? What decisions can the team make? How should the team make these decisions, and accept accountability for them? What happens if the team fails? What decisions will the management team make?
As a leader, you need to take the time to clarify these issues and discuss them regularly with your team to avoid confusion, ambiguity or frustration on the part of everyone involved.
Developing team skills
The ability to self-organize implies individual and collective skills that you need to develop in your team. Individually, team members need to learn and develop the following skills.
Individual skills
- Listen (really) to each other
- Communicate in a more structured way
- Establish mutual support and accountability [1].
- Engage in healthy debate
- Create and facilitate meetings
- Design and facilitate decision-making processes
Collectively, a team must develop the ability to continuously improve the way it works as an entity. Five important factors contribute to effective teamwork.
Collective factors
- Psychological safety: "If I make a mistake within my team, no one will hold it against me".
- Reliability: "When my teammates say they're going to do something, they do it."
- Structure and clarity: "Our team has an effective decision-making process."
- Meaning: "The work I do for the team is important to me."
- Effect: "I understand how our team's work contributes to achieving the organization's goals."
When people understand these factors and take ownership of them as a team, their work environment is transformed. Organizational structure and processes begin to support work better. Laughter increases, people take more initiative, and leaders find it easier to engage their team.
In conclusion
Fostering self-organized teams can be very easy or incredibly difficult, depending on your organizational culture and the seniority of the people on the team.
As a leader, it's important to work with your teams to help them align with what self-organization really means. You also need to support them as they seek to develop.
How could you foster autonomy in your teams?
To find out more:
Management 3.0: The Agile Leadership Techniques
You can also visit Steffan Surdek's blog
