Communications of the ACM
Developing a Workplace Team Where Everyone's a Leader
"Research has shown that . . . if you have really effective shared leadership, so much more is possible," says Harvard University Professor and SIOP Fellow J. Richard Hackman.
Credit: PBS
As leaders struggle with growing pressures in today's fast-paced workplace, a change is being made in the way leadership responsibilities are distributed within organizations. J. Richard Hackman, the Edgar Pierce Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at Harvard University, says shared team leadership is the new approach that is influencing the way team members operate to their full potential.
Hackman, a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, explains, "The heroic single leader is no longer congruent with the burdening demands of today's leadership." Fortunately, he says, scholars and practitioners are recognizing that a shift is taking place within the workforce from traditional solo team leadership to shared team leadership.
Hackman will elaborate on the concept of shared team leadership during his keynote presentation at the 2010 Leading Edge Consortium (LEC), to be held October 22-23 at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay, FL.
"The most important conditions for effective shared team leadership include a team that is a mature and reasonably bounded group," Hackman says. "They must know each other's strengths and weaknesses in order to identify who to go to for specific tasks. The second condition is being interdependent on one another for some specific shared purpose or goal."
At the LEC, Hackman will explain how to create this type of environment as well as identify conditions for team leadership to flourish, the challenges one may face when trying to obtain shared team leadership, and how to overcome those challenges.
Hackman has been researching teamwork for several decades and, over the past 10 years, this research has evolved into a focus of shared team leadership. He has drawn his conclusions about shared team leadership from research on intelligence analysis teams, patient care teams, top management teams, and a study of the Orpheus Orchestra.
The Orpheus Orchestra has sometimes been described in the press as "leaderless," but Hackman says this is actually untrue. The orchestra gives all members the opportunity to lead, he says, thereby providing more leadership than one sees in traditional conductor-led ensembles.
"Research has shown that shared team leadership is like an audio amplifier," Hackman explains. "If you have really effective shared leadership, so much more is possible, but it can also generate negative results if not used under the right conditions."
Hackman will discuss how organizations can utilize the strengths of their teams using shared team leadership during his keynote presentation at the LEC. Information about the LEC, including a complete list of speakers and abstracts, is available at www.siop.org/lec.
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