[HN Gopher] Leaderless Teams ___________________________________________________________________ Leaderless Teams Author : mooreds Score : 48 points Date : 2022-11-08 20:27 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.brettmacfarlane.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.brettmacfarlane.com) | zppln wrote: | I feel like I've suffered through this type of "leadership" for | the past decade. When it works, it's great (although I feel | you've kind of traded traditional authority for slight | manipulation/scheming on part of the leader in such instances). | These instances have also always involved more experienced team | members. | | When it doesn't work it's useless. Instead of just getting told | to drive straight off a cliff you get to wander around in a | forest for a while and when you eventually find out you're lost | it's way too late. | | As always (and as TFA points out) the person you pick for a | leader still needs to actually possess whatever skill set your | flavor of the month leadership style requires. | prosaic-hacker wrote: | I have experienced leaderless teams in my career (46 years) a | handful of times. They formed around a problem that was | unrecognized by Management (thankfully) but need to be solved. My | best example was at a large SW dev firm in the late 80s. World | wide electronic communications was need and faxes and leased | lines connected to Decwriters were not good enough. I was | assigned to the task as just one of my responsibility. A Single | 1200 baud access to internet email at a university solved the | problem. The problem expanded many people wanted the same service | so we need someone (team member 2) who had access to a UNIX | systems. Eight serial ports and 2400 internet connection to the | first local ISP. | | Rinse repeat 5 years later 10 people, part time, supported all | internet connections and intranet/internet web-servers including | application without management sanction. Everyone had a service | role in there own department. Being connected to the others meant | we performed at a high level. We didn't have a leader per se but | we all moved in a common direction. | | It lasted 8 years and finally several Directors discovered we | existed as a team. Like sharks they each took a bite out of us, | each one trying to become the dictator of the internet. | Procedures were imposed. We were not allow to speak to each other | with out going through the directors. Our individual productivity | dropped. Angry internal clients screaming for the old way. | Nothing got done. Three months later the director that won got | half the people back together but we were not the same any more. | I still found interesting work for 2 more years before finally | leaving. | | Leaderless teams can work under the right conditions. I have | tried to create them when I moved into management and it worked | to some degree a few times. I did not lead or participate in the | teams I just suggested people talk to each other know that the | might click. I fed them problems (and resources) that I knew that | they could solve that I knew would take more effort/time if we | did it though channels. The individuals got recognition and I got | my problems solved. | keyle wrote: | Interesting, thanks for sharing that bit of history. | | I wonder what "Everyone had a service role in there own | department." means? | a_c wrote: | To me authority and leadership are related but orthogonal. | | Authorities come from the ability to author. It is a creation | right. The creation could be a story, a software and, probably | what most most people have in mind about authority, a rule. On | the other hand, leadership is the ability to, well, lead. You go | where ever you want, but if you want people to follow, you need | leadership. | | One can be a leader without authority. Think of a manager, while | it might not be obvious, it is ultimately up to the "managee" to | decide whether to carry out what the manager requires. You may | fire, you may hire, but none of those guarantee you things | getting done. Manager has no authority. | | Now, write a software. People wants to add a feature to YOUR | software. You have absolute authority in deciding whether to | accept. | eternalban wrote: | "What emerged from this exercise is that social class, education, | gender and athletic ability were less important for leadership | than the capacity for an individual to attend to others in the | group." | | If this experiment was done 80 years and they selected military | leadership positions based on this experiment (as it implies by | reduced failure rate measure), I don't understand why OP used | "gender" in the summary statement above? Did UK actually field | troops in WWII led by women? | samjohnson wrote: | This is interesting, but it's not obvious to me what "the | capacity for an individual to attend to others in the group" | means in this context. | | It would be interesting to learn how that capacity was observed | and measured. Has anyone seen the source research? | gopher_space wrote: | From how I've heard it used I'd say 'attend' means 'pay | attention to' with undertones of care or service, in this | context. | | You might have to dig a bit for the details. The following link | could help, and the relevant part might be on pg. 8 (actual). | | Menzies is a rabbit hole, by the way. Her work during the war | was dwarfed by what came afterwards. | | http://www.moderntimesworkplace.com/archives/ericsess/sessvo... | thwayunion wrote: | Leaderless models work very well in cases where tasks are stable, | tasks can be assigned 1:1 to team members, team members more-or- | less understand which tasks are for them, and any major changes | to tasks can be coordinated on timeframes of months or years. | | The classic example is the traditional academic department at a | non-research university. | | 1. The main deliverable are courses. | | 2. Each professor has some assigned courses. Once assigned, the | professor can teach the course mostly in isolation. Additionally, | the department tends to hire faculty in a way that makes sense | for their curriculum; ie, the one Systems professor in a small CS | department is probably going to be teaching the Systems | electives. | | 3. The courses offered are mostly stable. When the curriculum | changes, the changes can be managed in a distributed fashion | because the change will take at least 6 months to 18 months | before rollout. | | Therefore, a traditional academic department can run in a mostly | leaderless fashion, with a department chair who plays a | supporting role and perhaps a bit of a coaching role for newer | hires. | | This doesn't work as well when tasks require close collaboration | or when tasks evolve rapidly. It's not impossible. Just much | harder. In those cases you tend to end up with a recognizable | leadership vacuum, leading to sub-optimal outcomes mentioned in | other comments. | | Anyways, that's all a bit of an aside and not directly germane to | the article. But I do wonder if selecting leaders via leaderless | teams exercises selects for leaders who work well in well-defined | tasks with teams that are already partitioned into quite specific | roles, but flail in environments with more dynamic tasks/goals. | andrewla wrote: | I don't think this was the main thrust of the article. The | "leaderless team" concept was used to identify individuals | within that group that were well-suited to leadership, | specifically by identifying (and coaching) those individuals in | the group who possess "the capacity for an individual to attend | to others in the group". | | So more of a question of how to identify the emergence of | organic leadership skills within a setting where there is no | "assigned" leader. | robotresearcher wrote: | The article is about how to identify promising leaders via a | training exercise. It is not about using leaderless teams for | actual work. | | Many of the comments here seem to be responding only to the | title. | hotpotamus wrote: | Whenever my boss was out on vacation and the subject came up, I | just told anyone who asked that the team was in autonomous | collective mode. | nlstitch wrote: | This is an empty, hollow article and its not like how I | experienced groups for 20+ years. | | Just like with siblings in families or groups of friends, | everyone naturally gets a role in a group; that's just how groups | of people let alone animals work. Need to learn how to help | others is fine and dandy, until it affects your own autonomy, let | alone your identity, let alone the groups' autonomy. Than it will | eat at you. | | Also what happens in groups is that if there is someone thats is | truely not fit for a group, the whole group dynamic will change | for the worse and it will try to oust it like a cancer. Until | there is someone that speaks up (a leader) things will stay the | same because the group will value the "being a group" above all | else, even the goal of which the group was founded on. | | So? You actually need a good natural leader to guide you through | some of the bad stuff. I think leaders are often misunderstood of | being only authoritarian, but thats not the case. | calvinmorrison wrote: | > I think leaders are often misunderstood of being only | authoritarian, but thats not the case. | | Leaders spend more time thinking about other people than anyone | else in a company | avgcorrection wrote: | Lot's justs. Just the way it is. Just-so story? | | It's so just-obvious that it needs no argument. It's just | natural. | | > I think leaders are often misunderstood of being only | authoritarian, but thats not the case. | | Bosses (as in formal authorities, people who have formal | control) have been rebranded as "leadership" exactly because | "leader" sounds much more voluntary and consensual. | jondeval wrote: | This is an interesting article. My takeaway is that this British | team during the war seems to have streamlined a process for | surfacing leadership traits that are relevant in a military | context. | | Lately, my view on what makes a good leader and what I'm trying | to practice myself is simplifying down quite a bit. I've come to | the conclusion that if there is one attribute you should optimize | for, either for yourself as a potential leader, or in choosing | someone to follow when selecting a venture, it's ... technical | competence. | | Hopefully it's clear that I'm defining technical competence | broadly to mean deep knowledge about the details of your | particular domain. I think this definition is applicable to | engineers, attorneys, doctors, entrepreneurs, etc. | | I think generalizable leadership attributes are important but | purely supplementary to technical competence. | theCrowing wrote: | Leaderless teams always start to build a hierarchy on its own and | the longer they exist the harder it gets to get new people into | the group. It's really hard to manage. | bombcar wrote: | Yep, leaderless teams are either ad-hoc for a short time, or | they develop an unofficial hierarchy (often based on the | complaining of certain people, not anything else). | baxtr wrote: | So basically your saying that leaderless teams are only | leaderless for a short period | andrewla wrote: | This is exactly what the article seems to be talking about -- | how to identify the emergence of leadership where no formal | hierarchy exists, and how to coach those individuals to find | leaders. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-08 23:00 UTC)