New corporate team leadership approach: treat team members like adults
Harvard Business Review proposes radical new approach: Treat employees like adults
A cornerstone of bioteaming is that all team members should be treated like adults
This is the foundation of a self-managed team where its members operate responsibly but with autonomy.
For example see my bioteam article on distributed team leadership.
Adults expect to be given information not orders.
They expect to have to think some things through for themselves and to be trusted to act in the best interests of the team.
Ok so it can always be abused and people can make honest mistakes.
But with some organisation usually neither of these should produce project showstoppers and with the right transparency system mistakes should happen only once or twice as people learn under the spotlight of peer review.
There will, of course, be new mistakes but thats progress!
Remember a key principle of governance is that the cost of the control should never exceed the cost of the losses without the control in place.
Bioteams constantly challenge their "permission structures" and where possible replace them with "forgiveness structures" based on transparent visibility of all team member actions.
Bioteams Books Reviews
The coming shape of organizations and teams
Belbin sees Bioteams as the next step. Dr R Meredith Belbin, regarded as the father of "team-role" theory and one of the worlds foremost experts on teams predicts that we will evolve into bioteam forms. In his book "The Coming Shape of Organisation" Belbin picks out five observations human teams need to learn from "a diminutive masterclass" of social insects such as bees, ants and termites.
Buy it now from:
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