In this week’s reading, “Forces for good”, Crutchfield and Grant talked about leadership sharing. While they talked about all the benefits that an organization can gain this kind of practice, I couldn’t help wonder, would shared leadership lower a nonprofit organization’s efficiency in making decisions? Is shared leadership all about benefits?
Of course, when it comes to big decisions, and when there are different opinions from the leaders, it is better for the organization to hold board meetings and go through a voting process to make the decision more considerate. However, when it comes to small projects and leaders have different opinions about the decision, should the organization go through the voting process as well while any decision can work? These options are provided after careful consideration of the project developers, and they just simply need the leaders to pick one. Is it worthwhile to call in for a board meeting, and wait for a long time until every board member have the time to meet and vote everytime there are disputes about certain projects among leaders?
The waiting and meeting will not only cost a lot of time and money, but may also cause the organization to miss the best time for the operation of those projects, resulting lower efficiency of the nonprofit organization.
Therefore, before an organization adopts shared leadership, it should think carefully.
I think that in a lot of ways, sharing leadership speeds up the decision-making process. I have worked for organizations where VERY senior personnel had to “ok” every decision. More often than not, we were sitting around waiting for a signature on a piece of paper so we could move forward. In truly sharing leadership, those at the top of the organizations must learn to trust the decision making abilities of those at other levels of the organization. This will allow them to focus on more broad organizational issues, such as strategic planning. Leaders must remember that they are not the president or CEO so than can ok every change made on the website. The background color on a brochure is not their responsibility, someone was hired to make that decision and leaders need to allow them to do so. Sharing leadership in this way not only frees senior management to engage in other tasks but proves to employees that they are trusted. If employees believe that their senior leadership trusts them to make these decisions they are likely to be happier (and therefore more effective and efficient) employees.
ReplyDeleteDoes that make sense?
Casondra- I agree that more often than not, sharing leadership can prove to be more efficient than having to oversee every little thing that is going on in the organization. If you hired these people to be your employees, there must be a reason for it. Being able to trust the people below you can actually be a very important leadership quality.
ReplyDeleteGuys, I definitely agree with you. I would even put into the conversation another ingredient: accountability! ... shared leadership-decision making-and accountability. I think that in a shared leadership scenario, the accountability issue turns kind a diffuse... given that more than one person is responsible for the decision making (even-though it is concerning small issues). It may be that in certain circumstances no one knows who took the decision. To avoid such delicate situations and to increase accountability in a context of shared leadership, I would say that there must be clear rules as to those who are responsible for deciding on 'a' or 'b ' matter.
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