Self-Managed Team Tips: Pros and Cons of Self-Management

A self-managed team is a group of people who work together toward a common goal without the influence of an external leader or manager. While other higher-ranking members of a company might provide mentoring or general guidance, these project teams set their own agendas and execute their plans. Some call this form of internal management a “holacracy,” a decentralized and semiautonomous form of organizational governance.

Implementing this type of team structure can benefit your organization in a panoply of ways. Here are three clear pros to including self-managed teams in your overall company structure:

• Greater independence: A more hands-off management style creates a far more independent and open work environment. This frees up self-managed teams to try things in new ways, leading to increased innovation and all the resultant productivity that comes with it.
• Increased engagement: When employees feel they control their work, it leads to a greater sense of engagement. A high sense of employee engagement also helps to undercut any negative groupthink that might arise from feeling unable to question the hierarchies and long-standing processes of a company.
• Lower costs: If you allow a work group to manage themselves, you spare yourself the cost of hiring an additional manager. This can lead to substantial cost savings for your company.

Self-managed teams can hit some speed bumps along the way to achieving their potential. Consider these three cons:

• Less efficiency: While there are plenty of high-performing self-managed teams, others struggle to achieve maximum efficiency. Unless someone on the team has excellent project management skills, it might prove difficult for the group to organize their workflow in the most time-effective way. For that matter, every single member of a self-managed team needs to have excellent time management capabilities to hit the ground running.
• Potential power struggles: The concept of self-managed teams conjures up ideas of democratic cooperation, but it can also lead to a power vacuum in practice. One person might try to assume a leadership role, while others might shove off their duties to another member of the group. Without an actual manager holding people accountable, power struggles like these can derail the potential of a self-managed team.
• Reduced control: Self-managed teams grant executive-level employees far less control over their organizational structure. Without a team leader, team performance is up to a decentralized group of people rather than just one manager who reports back to the company’s higher-ups. This makes it more difficult for those executives to directly exert influence over a given team.

Team-building can be a daunting yet rewarding task. Keep these four tips in mind as you set out to build your own self-managed team:

1. 1. Bring together the right people. When bringing together a new team, especially a self-managed one, ensure you assemble the right balance of individuals. Aim for a team structure with cross-functional potential—for example, a well-organized person can serve as an internal project manager alongside fulfilling their actual job duties. Work with your human resources department to decide which specific individuals could best make up a specific team.
2. 2. Decide on a decision-making process. Problem-solving is necessary in any sort of teamwork and having an established process in place for doing so is essential to self-management. Clearly define team roles and the ways the entire team can vote on and resolve disputes. This prevents conflict and helps meet team needs in an efficient, useful way.
3. 3. Facilitate an environment of trust. Self-managed work team members need to trust one another to make decisions and work together well. In a self-managed team, everyone becomes something of a leader in their own right. Encourage each member of the team to adopt a give-and-take leadership style of their own. Be open to pioneering new paths but still ready to yield to other people’s input. This approach builds trust in others and self-confidence simultaneously.
4. 4. Identify strengths and weaknesses. As either the organizer or a member of the team, do your best to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each stakeholder. When you know where each person in a group of employees excels and struggles, you can better set up teams for self-governance. Self-organizing and delegating tasks becomes far easier when everyone knows who’s good at what.

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