Shared Leadership: Characteristics of Shared Leadership

A shared leadership distributes leadership responsibilities and decision-making power widely throughout an organization so team members help lead each other as they reach goals. Sometimes referred to as a distributed leadership, this style contrasts sharply with vertical leadership, which sets a limited number of team leaders—sometimes as little as one person—to manage the rest of the team.

While it is not as traditional and rigidly hierarchical as vertical leadership, shared leadership can still be somewhat hierarchical. However, there are more shared power relationships across each level than in top-down structures, where one person leads many others.

In a shared leadership, team members have:

• A shared vision: In shared leadership, teams understand common objectives and values of the organization they belong to and the projects and tasks they carry out.
• Coaching: Team coaching is an essential part of shared leadership. In a workshop setting, teams can work out problems as well as leadership development opportunities. This can mean giving others the tools they need to succeed within this model or brainstorming ways to overcome challenges with cohesion and identifying issues with leadership practices or processes.
• Recognition: While shared leadership focuses on the unit, you should still recognize individuals for their successes. This helps foster teamwork by taking the time to value each other’s strengths. Ultimately, this can improve team performance.
• Teamwork: This shared leadership model emphasizes teamwork. Increase transparency of team processes, so everyone has insight into the same information.
• Trust and honesty: To maximize team effectiveness, everyone must build trust with each other so the decision-making process can result in honest, engaging, encouraging, and empowering interactions. Every team member should feel they have the ability to contribute.

There are a few advantages to this model. Research suggests the shared leadership approach has a connection to team effectiveness. Shared leadership can lead to more empowerment of individuals. Since workers share the varied and widespread demands of leadership, they can step up for opportunities they feel align with their own skill set. This style of leadership can also contribute to better self-management among teams since workers have a deep understanding of their purpose and goals.

This type of leadership also has downsides, including that groups may take longer to arrive at decision than one individual or formal leader would. Additionally, it may prove harder to understand accountability. You might have to outline whether each specific task has an owner or owners, or if everyone shares equal responsibility.

If you have not implemented shared leadership, it can also take some time to get it in motion. And lastly, shared leadership may not work for every team.

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