Leading Teams

FIRST LEVEL LEADERSHIP -- A CLOSER LOOK

The first level leader role gets special attention in self-directed work systems. It occupies a position of critical importance to the success of the organization. It is often filled by persons whose jobs will see the greatest amount of change and who may have been least prepared for it. First-level leaders can make or break a team, particularly break it. Dominant leader personalities will often suppress team contributions and apathy develops because members have little influence.

First level leadership is handled in a variety of ways.

1. Maintain an exempt* "supervisor" position and simply change the title to a more participative sounding one like "team leader." The person does virtually the same things he/she did before. Some firms stop at this point and accept this guise as self-direction. It is not. Others change the duties of the role. (*Exempt personnel do not receive overtime.)

2. Create a "team coordinator" position within the team itself. In an hourly team, this person would be "non-exempt" -- the individual in the role gets paid overtime.* A single team member becomes the leader and stays in the role permanently. This position carries somewhat less weight than the exempt leader who is outside the team. (*In a professional team, all the members would be exempt from overtime.)

3. Create a team coordinator position within the team and then encourage team members to rotate through it. The length of residency in the position is directly related to how long it takes to train the leader. This is a function of both social skill requirements and the complexity of the technology used by the team. The higher these are, the longer the leader should stay in the position in order to recover the investment in his/her development. A flexible time period can be established, e.g., 1-2 yrs. in a simple system, 4-5 yrs. in a complex one. Other team members will want this opportunity at the earlier point in the range so the pressure to rotate out the existing leader comes then.

4. Split the duties of a team coordinator into approximately five main responsibilities and have separate team members carry out each responsibility. This is referred to as the "STAR" concept. More on it later.