Team leader’s role in the adoption of shared leadership (SL)

Abstract

Shared leadership is increasingly becoming a concept that is being associated with modern day leadership and traditional ways of leading teams and organizations are becoming redundant. There is a need to incorporate a more open and one-on-one people management way of leading. Shared leadership states that leadership must have a shared component so that team leaders and team members must share in this influence and leadership to co-lead. This research study sought to find out the role of a team leader in the adoption of the shared approach to leadership and to see the conditions that cause team members to adopt it . The roles of a leader found were; maintain consultative team performance, keep communication channels open, spearhead team involvement, lead in collaboration, co-lead with team members, drive team engagement, encourage team work, cascade information, empower others, prepare for succession readiness, provide flexible management, balance transformational and transactional leadership. The conditions that were discovered from team members were; room to exercise leadership within their own area; to be equipped for succession or the next level of leadership; role clarity and fourthly to have engagements on task and strategy progress; to be involved in planning and problem solving; to have an environment if idea and information sharing and finally to be empowered to make decisions.