Self-managed teams present management and leadership challenges. What leadership roles and processes are important for self-managed teams?

A team is defined as a group of people working together to
achieve a common goal. Every organizational unit in an organization thus forms a team. A
self-managed team is a specific type of team in an organization in which team members
work together in in their own ways to achieve a goal which is defined outside the team.
Self-managed teams are particularly useful in for management of complex projects
involving research, design, and process improvement
work.

The qualifying characteristic of a self-managed team
from a traditional organizational unit or a work team is the role and processes used by
the team leader. In traditional teams the manager of leader of the team manages and
directs the work of individual team members as well as that of the team as a using
formal or positional authority. Such positional authority requires and authorises the
manager to define the goals of the group working under his supervision, and also take
major decision on means and methods of achieving these goals. In contrast, in
self-managed team, the manager delegates authority for all these decisions to the team
as a whole. The only outside direction of the team is in the form of goals and
objectives of the team specified as per overall organizational plans and organization
structure.

In such self-managed teams the role of team
leader or manager and the processes followed for managing and leading the team are quite
different from those used for traditional organisational structure relying on positional
authority.

For the self-managed teams to be effective the
management and leadership need to develop the and use roles and processes in which the
team leader or manager is a fellow worker in the team and not a supervisor of other
person on the team, who leads by setting up good example rather than by giving
directions. He coordinates the work of the team members and provides the necessary
support for coordination of team work with work of others outside the team. An effective
leader of self-managed teams facilitate effective team interaction processes including
participative decision making, rather than taking decision and ordering the subordinates
to implement the same. Leader facilitates communication among the team members as well
as communication across the team boundaries, rather than acting as a focal point for
communication through which all information must pass.

The
team leader needs to help team members to recognize, develop and use their unique
abilities and skills for accomplishing the team goals. At the same time he or she also
facilitates harmony between needs of the organization and individual team
members.