Csdrhrt

I work for a large software company and our division has created a newly formed team, and at the moment we all report directly to the VP. The VP has other responsibilities, so this team is just one area of his overall charter. He is not involved in day-to-day activities, but we also don't have a clear team leader or manager. There is a project manager who handles a lot of the coordination with other teams, but our VP is actually his skip-level (he reports into a different manager).

Those of us who are on this team doing the work day in and day out are all senior, and while we work well together it's a bit confusing that we don't really have a "lead" per se. I've spoken to our VP about this, and he feels we can work this out ourselves and that we should see each other as equals.

For now this is OK - we have a rough understanding of how we split up the work, but there is also a lot of overlap between us in terms of ownership from a business and technical perspective. It also leads to challenges such as if I get invited to a meeting and others from the team don't, should I always forward the invites? If someone comes and speaks to me, do I make sure to always include others?

Because we all transferred from existing groups I can see that there might be hesitation for our VP to start compartmentalizing us due to political reasons, and while this structure might be OK in the beginning as we're getting the project off the ground, I can't see it functioning in an efficient manner six months from now.

Am I wrong in thinking that a team needs an explicit leader, whether official or unofficial (e.g., not actually having direct reports but still being designated as the team lead)?

Yes, it's possible. It may or may not be a good idea.

First, it's possible. There are even formal organizational styles (scrum) that do it. There are workplaces where the engineering team is full of people who don't want to be in charge that manage to make it through well enough on separation of roles and consensus. That doesn't mean that it's always a good idea, or that it's a good idea in your case.

For your particular case, you need to have a meeting, sit down, and iron out some ground rules. Right now, your respective roles are ill-defined, and it's starting to cause some issues. One way of handling that is to have one of you get picked as leader, and let that person decide, but it may be that no one wants to give the spot to someone else, and it may be that no one wants the spot to begin with. The problem isn't that you have no leader (at least for right now). The problem is that you have no way to settle the gray areas.

So, at minimum, come up with a list of concerns. Ask your teammates to do the same. Have a meeting in which you lay out the concerns, talk about whether or not you want to have someone take a leadership role, step through each of the concerns, and come up with agreed-upon group answers. If you can come to an agreement of how to do things more or less by consensus, then great. If you can't, you're probably going to need someone in at least a nominal leadership role.

Incidentally, it sounds like you personally would be more comfortable with a clear leader. That's reasonable. I will say that if you're going to advocate for having a clear leader, it strengthens your position somewhat if you're not also advocating that you personally should be that leader. (Of course, if everyone agrees in principle, but no one wants to take it on....)

Hierarchies have some bad sides, but they also have advantages. For example:

• they dramatically reduce the coordination effort and potential for conflicts. Even if the team is managed quite democratically, it's normally a good idea to have someone who takes the final decision in case discussions stalemate




• they create clear responsibilities; if there's a failure it's normally evident who's to blame. Some people would argue that's actually problematic about hierarchies, but I don't think so. Yes, fingerpointing can be a problem. But lack of accountability creates toxic environments. It's sometimes enough to have one colleague who fails to deliver/ behaves uncooperatively for the atmosphere to sour. There's simply no way to sanction uncooperative behavior.

I've worked in an organization proud of no having hierarchies. This organization wrote "equality" and "democracy" into its program.

It was the most toxic place I've ever worked in. Yes, decisions were taken "democratically". This meant there were plenty of conflicts and politics taking place before votings (we took all main decisions by voting). Also, there was no sense of continuity or accountability. Disparate decisions were voted for, depending on how the power structure looked like on the day of voting.

After that, I always had bosses: some good bosses and some bad ones. But I would never accept a job in an organization without hierarchies again.

An important point is that in some organizations there are structures of reporting although there are no formal chains of command and leaders. For example, I know organizations in which you always report to your project manager on the project you currently work on. Although officially you don't have a leader, you actually do. This is a completely different situation to the one I describe above of course.

There is a management system that got a lot of press some years back called Holacracy which purports to eliminate the need for management hierarchies. This is the approach that is/was used at Zappos. The idea is that you have 'circles' of accountabilities. I spent a little time trying to understand this and I'm wasn't completely sold on the hole thing but I do think there are some extremely useful concepts here. I think I've read things that claim you have to buy into it completely but I find that hard to believe since these are pretty big general ideas and I felt like I was reading Robert's Rule's of Order when I looked over the rules and procedures that are packed into it.

Specifically, in your case, I think it's possible to get away with not having a single leader if you and your colleagues can decide how to classify parts of the work and agree to who owns each part. It's also crucial that people follow through and take these decisions seriously. If you can't do this, then you probably need a leader.