One misconception that prevails upon practitioners is that self-organized teams means, that teams are left alone and therefore, are able to organize themselves. After some months have passed, managers are often disappointed. They had hoped that teams work in a more self-organized way, but become to realize, that teams actually perform quite bad.

The reasons for this are manifold. For example, teams miss a clear goal, roles and responsibilities are not clear and boundary conditions are obscure. How should managers empower teams for self-organization? We will tell you some secrets for successfully empowering employees…

Secret #1: Clear Goal

One secret is, that self-organization needs a clear goal. Only if teams have a clear goal, they can organize themselves towards this goal. Make this clear goal transparent via writing features that have a clear benefit and value to the customer.

Secret #2: Clear Roles and Responsibilities

Furthermore, self-organization needs clear roles and responsibilites. One misconpection of self-organization is that everyone does everything. Truth is, you need one topic owner who feels responsible. That does not mean that one specific person does it all by her or himself, and it also does not mean, that one person makes all the decisions, but it means that one person feels responsible to gather people around the challenges to be solved. For example, agree on a topic owner for each feature. That person feels responsible to drive the feature forward together with the other team members.

Secret #3: Clear Boundary Conditions

Self-Organization just works if managers provide boundary conditions. Employees need to know what they can and cannot decide by themselves. If decision-making is not transparent to everyone, and employees are not sure what they can and cannot decide by themselves, they will not make any decision at all. This will lead to a leadership vacuum within which no decision is made after all. Therefore, managers need to communicate clearly which kind of decision-making is expected by the team, and which is not. Good practice would be, to gradually give more and more decision-making to the team.

Secret #4: Neutral Coach

Self-organized teams need a neutral coach who shares personal observations. This enables the team to reflect upon team behavior. A coach helps the team to develop itself further by setting the right triggers and asking the right questions. This role also helps the team to avoid unhealthy group development, such as group think or desctructive team values.

Secret #5: Self-defined Way of Working

Self-organized teams should take time to talk about how they want to work as a team. This includes team values, plannig rules and meeting guidelines. Important questions include: Which working habits and values are important to us? How often do we want to meet? How do we organize our work? How are working results shared? In which way do we support each other? This needs time and trust to one another. Which leads us to secret #6.

Secret #6: Psychological Safety

The core secret of self-organized teams is psychological safety, which means that employees feel safe to talk openly to one another. If team mates feel safe to talk about personal matters, teamwork will improve. If colleagues feel safe to suggest their own ideas, products will gain in quality. Psychological safety is established by listening openly to concerns and by embracing failures as learning opportunities.

Secret #7: Don’t Expect Mini-Me’s

Often managers hope that when implementing self-organized teams, they will have an army of employees who make the same decisions as they would have made. They expect the same results as before but faster, since they do not have to give clear instructions anymore. Make your own decisions, as long as you make the decisions that I would have made! If employees decided differently than the manager would have decided, managers tend to be disappointed in self-organization and say that it doesn’t work. This is a misconpection of the pure nature of self-organization. Managers who hand over power to the people, will not create mini-me’s of him or herself. Therefore, managers need to be open to the ideas of self-organized teams, even though the manager would have decided differently.

Secret #8: Patience

Last but not least, one cannot expect a team to become self-organized over night. Maturity is a core concept of teams working together. A team matures while team members get to know each other and start to understand how each individual in the team ticks. Team mates develop trust while they mature and develop a shared understanding of working together as a team. So, be patient!