When nobody is in charge

I’ve spent many years (maybe too many?) in communities, groups, and organizations governed by consensus: lots of meetings, lots of talk, lots of conflict. A friend and I had a running joke. Whenever someone began to speak with, “I just have to say this…” or “I have to speak up…”, we’d glance at each other and silently mouth, No you don’t.

Our joke was that being inhibited isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, we thought some people would benefit from a little more inhibition. Actually, the group would benefit from it. Not every impulse to speak deserves expression.

The irony is, I was no better than the people I joked about. I spoke up often. I interrupted. I thought out loud. I wouldn’t say I checked my impulses very often. In fact, I usually indulged them.

Looking back, I see I fell into the behavioral trap common in many groups: because no one was “the leader,” none of us saw ourselves as responsible for the quality of the group’s work. We behaved like squabbling siblings—peers, equals, free to say whatever we wanted.

Something curious happens in groups of peers. Our identity shifts. Instead of focusing on the group, What does this group need?, we focus on ourselves: How do I get my point across? Did people hear me? Am I losing influence? Do I need to defend my position?

Without realizing it, we stop identifying with the success of the group and start identifying with our own place within it. The mission gets sacrificed to the social dynamics.

When no one consciously takes responsibility for the group’s effectiveness, the conversation easily becomes a competition—for airtime, for ideas, for direction. We think out loud, making everyone else do the work of finding our point. We reopen decisions just as they’re about to be made. We interrupt. We go off on tangents. Before long, everyone is participating, but no one is really leading.

But leaderless groups don’t eliminate the need for leadership. They distribute it.

And that’s becoming more important, not less. The challenges organizations face today are increasingly too complex for any one person or discipline to solve. They require people with different expertise to think together. At the same time, organizations have been flattening for decades. More decisions are made through collaboration, influence, and cross-functional teams than through hierarchy alone.

And that may be one of the trickiest places where power shows up—not in formal leadership, but in ordinary group life. The ability to lead without being in charge may become one of the most important leadership skills of all.

I wish I’d understood that years ago. I wish I had learned to pause and ask myself:

• Am I speaking because the group needs this, or because I need to say it?
• Am I helping the conversation move forward, or simply expressing myself?
• Is this the right moment?
• Am I adding my energy to the group, or overwhelming it with it?

And I wished I’d learned how to do the little things that make groups work:

• Make sure I’ve listened before offering my opinion.
• Help the group find the thread again when the discussion wanders.
• Help the group distinguish between brainstorming, debating, and deciding.
• Occasionally choose not to speak, simply to make room for someone else.

It sounds incredibly simple, and it is. But it’s difficult to do when we’re among our peers, because it’s so much easier to think like a participant than act like a steward.

Looking back, that’s what I wish I’d understood all those years ago, that every role in a group carries power; leadership is simply the choice to use yours on behalf of the whole.