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April 17, 2017 101

101: Leadership sharing

The practice of sharing leadership is showing benefits in the world of business, as a time saver, for one. Different than co-leadership — where two or three individuals equally share all responsibilities and have a hand in every area — leadership sharing is about offering employees autonomy, giving away power and having a checklist of accountability to be sure leadership sharing and its value is maximized whenever possible.

Autonomy is not equal responsibility.

Shared leadership is spreading responsibility across multiple people, Greg Chung-Yan, a professor at University of Windsor in Ontario tells Business News Daily. “It's not the same as giving equal responsibility or the same responsibility to more than one person,” he said. “It's about making sure managers have an open door, and that those who take a risk and share an idea or alert managers to a problem don't get punished for it.”

Give away — yes, give away — power.

A shared-leadership model frees up senior executives to strengthen their most talented team members by putting them in areas of work that will further strengthen their skills in given areas, “and thus develop a successful, well-rounded and somewhat 'flattened' company versus a more hierarchically structured company,” Marshall Goldsmith writes in a Harvard Business Review article. “Consider yourself a resource rather than the manager.”

Check yourself.

Jim Bouchard offers a handy checklist on leadership sharing at credit-union industry website CUInsight.com. When you see a new company idea, ask yourself, “Who can I share this with? How much authority can I share? How much autonomy can I allow? How much control do I really need? How much of this can I really do by myself?” These considerations will get you on the road toward a leadership-sharing model.

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