Week 3: Leader/Follower Relationships at CommonLit
Because of the way CommonLit is set up, it can be hard to clearly define leader-follower relationships. The people at CommonLit are divided into teams, each with a team leader. I am not familiar with how the other teams work, but on the curriculum team, there is not a clear hierarchy of positions, and like I said in my last blog, even the team leader doesn’t seem to have a noticeable amount of authority over the others. Instead, everyone fills a specific role, so every person is important to the company in their own specialized way, resulting in a dependent team structure rather than a top-down hierarchy.
Although it is a team-oriented environment, most people work independently and autonomously, identifying tasks to complete and areas that need to be focused on. If someone needs help on something, they might send a message in the group instant message service Slack or make a request at the morning meeting, and someone with a little extra time always steps up to help out. For projects that require multiple steps completed by multiple people, they use the task board Trello. For example, once we have permission to post a text on the site, someone will attach it to a Trello card for a text to be created. Once someone has put the text in the proper formatting, they’ll move it to the next column for someone to prepare, meaning they create questions to guide reading and check comprehension afterward. Then it’ll get moved to the next column for review and then revisions and so on until the text is published on the website. This system allows people to work independently while still being able to ask questions when needed, and people retain some flexibility in the projects they take on.
Overall, everyone functions independently, and a lot of interactions happen virtually through the task board. Nevertheless, anyone is happy to help if you need it, so while the work is very independent, the company is very team-oriented. As a result, everyone knows everyone, and they have developed a close-knit community, making working together all the more enjoyable.
Once again, you have addressed something I posed in my response to one of your earlier reflections – the use of messaging or work flow software. Sounds like your team has an effective strategy for communicating (outside of meetings) and moving work flow along while still allowing for individuals to question/comment along the way. As you work more with the team, it will be useful for you to consider different styles of leadership that you witness (as it seems everyone on the team has opportunities to exhibit leadership given the way in which you function). It will also be useful for you to think about the way in which the group has (or has not) cultivated trust – and how trust is developed across teams.