Shared Leadership Explained

The growing shift away from top-down leadership models over past decades has been driven by the demands of modern organizations—especially in complex, knowledge-intensive, dynamic environments. Yet, the alternative, ‘shared leadership,’ is not a universally agreed term, nor one that fits all contexts. The shift is more nuanced, with many advocating for more flexible, adaptive, and participatory leadership models, of which shared leadership is an overarching description.

Traditional hierarchical team structures are not only difficult to maintain in our less deferential times—where workforces are mobile and well educated—but there are also specific criticisms. In rapidly changing environments slow decision-making is one negative. Poor employee engagement is another; lack of empowerment leading to low commitment, low morale, and a resistance to innovation. Teams that depend on rigid roles and top-down leadership are also hampered by inflexibility and struggle to adapt to agile, cross-functional work.

Since the days of Napoleon military leaders have acknowledged the downside of ‘command and control’ and have adopted ‘mission command’, which empowers subordinates to take initiative based on intent, not orders. Based on the same principle today, shared leadership has been shown to improve team effectiveness and cohesion, increase team members sense of satisfaction and worth, and foster psychological safety.

Shared leadership models spread leadership responsibility across a team rather than centralizing them in one formal leader—allowing flexibility in job roles and decision making. Emphasis is on collaboration, knowledge sharing, mutual accountability, and leveraging diverse expertise—rather than on following instructions from above.

However, deploying shared leadership can be a challenge for organizations due to a limited understanding of the ways shared models can be effectively configured. To throw some welcome light on this challenge, a recent study from Melissa Chamberlin, Jennifer D. Nahrgang, Hudson Sessions, and Bart de Jong, examines shared leadership configurations and their effectiveness in teams—considering two aspects: a) What leadership roles are shared, and b) How leadership is shared across members and roles.

Central to the researchers’ proposition is that not only will different configurations of shared leadership manifest within teams, but that each configuration will uniquely affect team effectiveness or the extent to which a team accomplishes its objectives. The study defines two essential team configurations: Collective and Distributed. Other variations include centralized configurations where there is one formal team leader but some degree of shared decision making.

Collective Configuration. All team members share all leadership roles within collective configurations. The increased amount of sharing that occurs as team members trade off responsibilities across leadership roles provides greater opportunities for team members to maintain coordination among one another, agree on strategic priorities, and focus on goal-relevant activities. This approach of multiple leaders across multiple roles ensures that teams are continuously working on tasks that drive toward consistent goals and activities required to be successful.

Distributed Configuration. Each member holds a specific leadership role while other members hold other leadership roles within distributed configurations. The sharing of leadership across different roles provides opportunities for teams to utilize a range of knowledge and skills among members. Although roles are clearly defined, some degree of cooperation and coordination is necessary in order to complete goal-oriented tasks and activities and maintain focus on strategic priorities.

Key findings

Comparing the effectiveness of collective, distributed, and centralized forms of shared leadership, the researchers found that, in relation to centralized configurations, distributed configurations are better positioned to execute the team processes that contribute to the team's success because team members have more opportunities to communicate, share knowledge, and work together to complete tasks.

However, these important aspects of positive team interaction are even more pronounced in collective configurations, which typically, with their greater communication and coordinated focus, have higher team effectiveness than either distributed or centralized configurations.

An important further finding of the research—particularly relevant at a time when many teams are dispersed, working remotely or across time zones—is that when dispersion is high, collective configurations have a stronger influence on team effectiveness relative to distributed configurations. The sharing of all leadership responsibilities across the collective team offers a clear way to overcome the challenges associated with dispersion, whereas distributed configurations that maintain a single leader in each role are more susceptible to these difficulties.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Access the research paper: ‘An examination of shared leadership configurations and their effectiveness in teams,’ Melissa Chamberlin, Jennifer D. Nahrgang, Hudson Sessions, Bart de Jong. Journal of Organizational Behavior, Wiley 2024, https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2774