That’s the question I sometimes want to ask when people in companies or organizations proudly tell me that they no longer have a hierarchy and that the team makes its own decisions anyway.

Often enough, it doesn’t feel like that at all from the team’s perspective.

They do not perceive the “decisions” they can make as being independent of the opinions of the leaders/founders, because often enough this person makes it quite clear what he or she thinks the decision should be.

Team members find this far more difficult than when there is a clear statement and the decision and responsibility for this decision comes from the leader.

Self- organization, self-leadership

Genuine self-management and self-organization have nothing to do with such manipulative management and decision-making strategies.

The point here is that those who have the most knowledge, together with those who are most affected by the decisions, actually influence them quite transparently.

In the transition to self-organized teams, the leader is the one who ensures that spaces remain free for real decision-making and short-term leadership and commitment, so that new organizational structures can be established in the first place.

It is precisely this deliberate keeping of free spaces that is important in order to create trust in the new structures. Manipulation from the second row ensures that the exact opposite happens.

This inability to let go on the part of managers and founders in particular is all too understandable. It is comparable to the situation of a parent who has to allow their child to start walking on their own. At some point, you can no longer hold their little hands, but have to allow the child to start walking – perhaps with wobbly steps – but confidently and determinedly, including the occasional stumble.

Narratives

If you find yourself in a situation where this letting go and allowing things to happen feels very difficult and you keep coming up with excuses: “I’m only going to do this next year”, “the team doesn’t know the history”, “I have to clean up and prepare everything first so that the team can take over”, “there’s no time for such changes right now, we have to get going first and then the team can take over”, etc., you are usually carrying around inner narratives that simply stand in the way of a holistic transformation.

If organizations are made up of people, an organizational transformation can only succeed if the people in it transform themselves.

This is where focused coaching can help to review these narratives and adapt or discard them if necessary.

And what about you? Do you lead or do you manipulate?