Three Essential Leadership Practices that Improve Team Ownership

An international collaborative leadership expert, Pollyanna developed the models and tools for collaboration and collaborative leadership through her 38 years of working inside and consulting with corporations and organizations. She helps companies create workplaces where talent and innovation are unleashed--making them more productive, efficient and profitable. Pollyanna co-authored "The Agile Culture: Leading Through Trust and Ownership" and "Stand Back and Deliver: Accelerating Business Agility". She also co-founded the Agile Leadership Network (ALN) and chairs Agile Leadership Summits in the United States and Europe.

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Topics: Agile, Talent Management

Why is team ownership important? It is essential to agile team success because individuals thrive on ownership. With ownership, you have a stake in the game and push to find the best solution. It is yours.

The difficulty is that most corporate cultures have command-and-control leaders--leaders who not only tell teams what to do, but how to do it. Telling them how takes away ownership. Without ownership, productivity is low. In one company I assessed, it was as low as 20%. Most often I see productivity of around 50%. Still, that’s a real waste of talent!

As a leader, you can’t “give” ownership to teams and individuals. They have to take it. And many people don’t know how to do that. They are frightened of failure and making a mistake that could result in humiliation, demotion or worse, losing their job. There is a lot of fear. And leaders can help.

Practice 1: Don’t Give Answers!
One of the members of your team comes into your office. “I can’t solve this!” You, as the leader, answer: “Have you tried this….?” You just provided the answer. Now, who has ownership for the solution? You do.

How do you avoid taking away ownership from your team? Don’t give any answers! Just ask questions. I always ask, “How do you want to solve it?” or “What options have you tried?&…

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