Five Reasons That Your Team Does Not Need A Leader

All of us unanimously agree that team leaders are really effective in getting things done on team level, they set and guide their whole team in right direction, taking them toward team goals, objectives, ensuring that team effectively achieves those goals/objectives as per their organization aspirations and standards.

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Yet there are still some situations, contexts in which if one embed a team leader in a team, would negatively affect the overall effectiveness of the team, resulting in poor team performance in terms of its goals attainment, objectives , cohesiveness, creativity, innovation so on and so forth.

Therefore it is essential for managers (of all kinds and all sorts ;p) to consider a team in following terms before assigning going for team leader approach.

Five Reasons

High Intrinsic Motivation

When your team members are intrinsically motivated, when they have their own intrinsic purpose for doing something, like they love what they do, they want to do it because they always wanted to do it, they find that work/task the only reason for their job, life, in a nutshell they are maniacs, crazy about it.

In such case you better save your leader guy for some other day, because instead of bringing perfection he/she would end up as a tool of disruption, demotivation. As those “Maniacs/Crazy/Excessively Enthusiasts” would hate being told (about the only reason of their lives) what to do, what not to do, how to and when to do etc and we all know that excessive love, enthusiasm for something always delivers the best.

Expert Knowledge

Well you don’t want to mess with the “Gurus” “Buffs” right, I mean who you (as a leader) to challenge these guys unless you are really something, which in most cases a leader isn’t (Jack of all Lord of none!). 

Most of the time these “Experts/Gurus” don’t like being told the same thing “what to do, what not to do, how to and when to do etc” as they know what they are doing, they know their thing inside out because they are the experts and thus prefer high autonomy, they take the “Leader Interference” not just an annoyance but as an intellectual interference in their work and that leads to an overall poor team performance.

My recommendation: LEAVE THE EXPERTS ALONE, LET THEM DO THEIR THING!!!

Team Size

In situations where team size is small, it is better to not have the middle man “leader” between the team and rest of the organization, excessive hierarchy makes things slow, makes working environment, correspondence more complex, likewise the team leader cost in such situation is not worthy therefore it is more preferable to have no leader in small size teams.

Members Past

Team members having successful past like in terms of goals/objectives accomplished, projects completed effectively & efficiently, successful innovation so on and so forth without a leader or with minimum leader influence.

Then you don’t need team leaders but team results!

Goal/Objective

When the goal/objective of a team is to achieve something really “Out of the Box”, when they are required to approach a problem/situation from different angle, with radical approach, with novel ideas then let them do it on their own, don’t push them (by a leader) to do it in such and such way, by the book etc because that’s what hinder them from getting out of the box, approaching things differently, having the creativity coming in.

All you need in such situation to give them space, autonomy and you will see some really kick-ass stuff coming through the pipeline.

That’s it, five reasons to not have a leader! Well most of you guys would be skeptical about this whole article or may be about some points, let’s discuss ;) comment box is just, just down, just scroll down a little, yeah there it is!

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