Benedict Roemer Theories in Action 2

After writing so much about the way that each member of my organization tends to work independently from others, I thought it would be interesting to apply a theory to my experience with this that addresses team work. The theory that came to mind was shared or collective leadership theory. While Danni Wang, David A. Waldman, and Zhen Zhang specifically state that shared leadership and team work are not the same, the idea of group members working collaboratively is present in both. According to Wang et al, shared leadership is “an emergent team property of mutual influence and shared responsibility among team members, whereby they lead each other toward goal achievement”.

Interestingly, I believe that each member of my organization definitely feels a shared responsibility for the success of the organization because it is so small and each member is therefore crucial to its operation. The mutual influence and leading toward goal achievement is the part of the shared leadership definition that might be missing. I wouldn’t consider my organization as very hierarchical in its formal leadership structure because each member is a leader in their own field within the organization and has a lot of freedom to operate as they see best. Sure, the CEO has to sign off on anything budget related and often throws in ideas and some direction during meetings, but mostly people are experts in their field and therefore are given a lot of freedom to work as best suits them. However, when it comes to mutual influence and motivation towards goal achievement, leadership suddenly seems more top down as the majority of this is a one way stream from the CEO.

I think that my organization could greatly benefit from sharing more leadership because each member is brilliant in their field and in general. However, Wang et al. also write that shared leadership “emphasizes social interactions among team members”, and this is where a clear divide begins with the reality of my organization. Mutual influence is difficult to achieve when there are few conversations between team members. The CEO often has one on one meetings with various team members, but besides the weekly staff meetings, I rarely observe members who are of equal status meeting with each other. Shared leadership can entail influence flowing in all direction – from top to bottom, laterally, or from bottom to top – so it’s possible that the meetings between the CEO and other team members can fall within the realm of shared leadership. However, if all social interaction between team members are through the CEO, which most are, then that more likely demonstrates singular leadership.

If I may briefly move into social network theory, the CEO of my organization has a very high degree, as the rest of the team connects to her but not to each other. However, in order to achieve shared leadership, the social network diagram of the organization should have more closure – more connection between each member of the team. Research on shared leadership has shown greater organizational success when shared leadership is present, and if members of my organization had more influence on one another and distributed their skills throughout the organization, who knows what influence the organization as a whole could have in their field of work.