Teamership: Redefining Leadership
Redefining leadership as supporting Teamership. Photo by ThisisEngineering on Unsplash
There are (literally) billions of definitions of leadership – from scholars, corporate leaders and any number of social media “influencers”. Obviously, there is no singular definition of leadership that we can consider to be “right”.
With that in mind, whether it is right or not, here is a definition of leadership that is useful for functioning in a team-based network.
Leadership is: Supporting Teamership.
As a reminder:
Teamership is the ability or power of an individual to contribute to collective performance.
That might sound confusing, circular or even contradictory. It’s not.
Teamership happens at the individual level.
Leadership is about creating the conditions that support individuals to make teams better.
The more individuals take action to make their teams better, the stronger the network becomes. That’s teamership.
The more that conditions support individuals to take those actions, the more likely they are to happen. That’s leadership.
Teamership = Individual actions
Leadership = Supporting individual actions
We have been getting signals about this for a while from multiple sources.
Meg Wheatley talks about moving from Hero to Host.
Stanley McChrystal talks about moving from Chess Master to Gardener.
McKinsey talk about putting dynamics before mechanics.
These are different doors to the same house.
These are all ways of describing the importance of making a shift from leadership requiring hierarchy, authority and controlling behaviours to leadership being relational, dynamic and creating the right conditions for performance.
Leadership is supporting Teamership.
Here are a few things to consider this week:
How do you define leadership?
Do the leaders you consider effective define leadership the same way you do?
What is the impact of reconsidering the role of leadership as “Supporting Teamership”?