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Dear Abby: One of my colleagues is wonderful and gets things done, and well, but their preference is to continue with the status quo -- not interested in growth and/or new and exciting initiatives. (They see me very busy, always stressed, not meeting deadlines, AND getting some big and exciting wins.) We acknowledge that we have different philosophies and approaches, and we respect each other. But I do sort of wish they were more ambitious. Should I be happy with the status quo in their department?

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1) What are the things on the top 10 list that you think you can implement most readily? 2) Share a story of when you have seen shared leadership work in your own life. What inspiration can you draw from that example?

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Glenna Holstein and Mike Larson are both ANCA members based in Milwaukee, Wis. They met 15 years ago working together at the Urban Ecology Center in Milwaukee, where they became fast friends as they connected over shared values and curiosity about how to become the best leaders they could for their respective teams (and arguably over their shared nerdy sense of humor). A decade and a half later they still love geeking out about ideas and practices of shared leadership. Glenna and Mike led a session on shared leadership at the 2023 ANCA Annual Summit; this article summarizes what they discussed in the session.
Ask a room of 30 people what makes a good leader, and you might get 30 different answers.

That's one of the things that makes leading a team so tricky: different people value different things. As capable and intentional as you might be, it can feel truly impossible to be the "right" leader for everyone. It's a pretty intimidating prospect, when you think about it! Having to be everything to everyone, see things from all angles, make all the decisions, as just one person?

Here's the good news: we're convinced that you don't have to do it all. In fact, it can be more effective, more fulfilling, and more motivating when you share leadership on your team.

Why shared leadership?

We could literally talk all day about why we love shared leadership, but the basic summary is this - sharing leadership on your team:

Makes your job easier (you don't have to make all the decisions by yourself!)

Builds trust and buy-in among your team (if you're making decisions together, everyone has a say and a stake.)

Makes your decisions better (you get multiple perspectives and often come up with ideas you couldn't come up with on your own.)

Builds new leaders (everyone on your team will be gaining the skills they need to lead, both on your team and in any future role they may have.)

Makes everything more fun (this is subjective, but we definitely think so!)

Types of Team Structures

Hierarchy & Crews

Many of us are familiar with the traditional corporate hierarchy prevalent in most organizations. Smaller organizations might get away with more of a "crew" model: a number of employees reporting to one boss or director.

While both of these models can be effective, they also have significant weaknesses. Have you ever been frustrated by a decision made up the corporate ladder that didn't make sense to the front line staff who had to implement it? Or, have you ever had a supervisor who faced problems outside of their depth that they didn't know how to handle? Both of these problems stem from a model of leadership that concentrates decision-making power and authority in one person. As long as that person is competent, benevolent, and well informed, everything seems to go fine and they often get a lot of credit. However, when they make a mistake, they also receive all the blame.

Collaborative Teams

Hierarchies are not the only way to organize. In a collaborative team model, a group of people work together to make decisions, prioritize workstreams, and assign tasks. In this model the leader does not hold the power, they hold the space - acting more as a facilitator of the conversation than the boss.
From Mike: This style of leadership was modeled for me by my first real mentor. Whenever I came to her with a question or problem she would always respond by asking: "what do you think you should do?" This simple question shifted the power dynamic in our relationship. I quickly learned to come to her with solutions, not just problems, and she empowered me to have agency and take responsibility for their actions. When I became a manager myself, I was able to apply that same strategy with my team. Whenever a question or problem would arise, we would bring the team and I would ask "what do you think we should do?" It was cool to see many brains coming together to meet the challenge and often the solutions they came up with were way better than I would have come up with on my own.
This type of dynamic just doesn't happen organically. It requires intentionality and a foundation of trust built over time, especially if transitioning from a traditional hierarchy or crew style model. Fortunately, there are a number of tools to help facilitate a highly effective and collaborative team. Two models/resources we have found useful in developing our own sense of organizing teams are Teal Organizations and Sociocracy.

Teal Organizations

A "Teal" organization is loosely modeled after a living organism, focusing on self management (high autonomy, strong peer relationships, power embedded throughout organization), wholeness (creating an environment where people can bring their whole selves to work), and evolutionary purpose (defining purpose of work is a process of observation, exploration and discovery in which everyone participates). For more on Teal organizations, see the book "Reinventing Organizations" by Frédéric Laloux.

Sociocracy

Sociocracy is a system of dynamic governance that aims toward equitable, efficient, and collaborative decision-making. One of the major principles of sociocracy is organizing work and teams in "circles" -each of which is a group with decision making authority in their own area (for decisions which affect other areas, they must involve other circles in the decision).

Key elements of the circle structure are that each circle has a facilitator and that the circles are "double linked" going outward from the center - each link represents two people who are part of both the inner and outer circle, to ensure information flows between circles and that decisions are not made without the voice of adjacent circles being present.

From Glenna: In one of my previous roles, I experimented with organizing my team in circles, as seen above. This structure worked well for me because I was doing membership work that needed engagement across the organization but I was technically a department of one. The circles allowed me to involve and empower folks with different areas of expertise in different areas of membership, while promoting a flow of information among areas and ensuring cohesion via the central strategy team.

How to make decisions as a team

No matter how you decide to organize your team (or whether your team's structure is predetermined by your organization), you will need to figure out how your team makes decisions together in order to effectively share leadership.

Choose your style

There are many decision making styles, but a good way to get a sense of the range is to think about "directive" decision making (one person makes the decision and hands it down to the team) on one end of the spectrum and "consensus" decision making (decision made by mutual agreement of all parties) on the other end. Directive decision making has the benefit of being quick and clear, but it can also have the downsides of having lack of team buy-in, and feeling frustrating. Consensus decision making has the benefit of buy-in and engagement, but can sometimes feel cumbersome as a process.

Collaborative decision making

In our experience, a collaborative approach to decision making can help find the sweet spot between the two extremes. Essentially, this means working with your team together to "decide how we decide." Together, your team will come up with clear guidance about what kind of decisions might be directive and who makes them vs. which ones will be made together as a group (and how you will walk through that process together), vs. which one might be made by one person with the input of others.

For example, decisions about safety need to be made quickly and will likely be made directively. Decisions about how to allocate budget among different needs within your team might be made together as a group. And decisions about a specific project someone on your team is working on might be made by one person with input from others.

Consent-based decision making

One tool we have found particularly useful for making decisions as a team also comes from Sociocracy - it's called consent-based decision making. When done well, this process gives everyone a voice without being too cumbersome.

The key to the process is the idea of the "range of tolerance." Typically when making group decisions we come into the conversation aiming for our own personal preference. But in a consent-based process, we don't ask "what do you prefer?" we ask "is this in your range of tolerance?" or "do you object?"

The distinction seems slight but to illustrate the difference it makes, take the example of trying to decide what to have for dessert. Imagine someone's preference for dessert is chocolate ice cream, but their range of tolerance might be anything with chocolate in it. So by making that slight shift to "range of tolerance," we give ourselves vastly more area to work within to make our decision.

A consent-based decision-making process usually looks something like this:

1. Someone presents an idea or proposal to the group (may have been shared with group beforehand, depending on complexity)

2. Group has a chance to ask clarifying question

3. Group does a quick round for reactions. In sociocracy, a "round" is a specific tool: you go around the group in a circle and give each person a chance to speak in order before there is any cross talk. This balances introvert and extrovert communication styles and ensures that you hear from everyone.

4. Consent decision-making round: People can say "I consent" or "That's within my range of tolerance" to consent to the decision, or "I object" if they have an objection. Note objections if there are any.

5. Integrate objections until the proposal is in everyone's range of tolerance, or identify steps to get it there by the next meeting.

Your role as a leader in this model is to facilitate these processes, as opposed to being the one making the decision.
From Glenna: I helped facilitate consent-based decision making for our organization's COVID response team. While I initially worried that the "consent, object, range of tolerance" language and the rounds would feel onerous, it actually had the opposite effect. Once we had the shared language and understanding, we could actually make decisions more quickly. We came up with a color-coded shorthand for "preference" (green), "range of tolerance" (yellow), and "objection" (red). We could often do a really quick visual poll on the zoom screen (we each had colored pencils or scraps of paper that we would hold up) to see how close we were to consenting on a decision.
From decisions to process

Whatever guidelines and processes your team comes up with, the main point to remember is that your decision-making has to be intentional and inclusive. As a leader you are shifting your role from being the one who makes all the decisions to the one who holds a space for the process. Will your team decide to do things you wouldn't have decided on your own? Absolutely. Will that be uncomfortable sometimes? For sure. Will there also be times where you are amazed and delighted by the things your team comes up with that you never would have thought of by yourself?

We guarantee it.
For more on shared leadership, join us for an ANCA CONNECTS program on this topic, December 13, 2023. Learn more >
Additional Resources

The Future of Management is Teal
An introduction to Teal Organizations.

Reinventing Organizations Wiki
A site based on the book "Reinventing Organizations" by Frédéric Laloux.

Sociocracy - Basic Concepts and Principles
An introduction to Sociocracy.

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Cultivating Shared Leadership - Association of Nature Center Administrators

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GLENNA HOLSTEIN & MIKE LARSON An introduction to leadership structures, and how shared leadership can improve decisions, build trust, and make work easier. Glenna Holstein, IndependentMike Larson, Executive Director of the Blue Lotus Center in West Bend, Wisconsin Glenna Holstein and Mike Larson...

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A version of this article appeared in the Autumn 2015 issue of strategy+business.

Illustration by Martin O'Neill

Many people sense that the way organizations are run today has been stretched to its limits. In survey after survey, businesspeople make it clear that in their view, companies are places of dread and drudgery, not passion or purpose. Organizational disillusionment afflicts government agencies, nonprofits, schools, and hospitals just as much. Further, it applies not just to the powerless at the bottom of the hierarchy. Behind a facade of success, many top leaders are tired of the power games and infighting; despite their desperately overloaded schedules, they feel a vague sense of emptiness. All of us yearn for better ways to work together - for more soulful workplaces where our talents are nurtured and our deepest aspirations are honored.

The premise of this article is that humanity is at a threshold; a new form of organization is emerging into public view. Anthropological research suggests that this is a natural next step in a process that began more than 100,000 years ago. There have been, according to this view, at least five distinct organizational paradigms in human history. Could the current organizational disillusionment be a sign that civilization is outgrowing the current model and getting ready for the next?

A number of pioneering organizations in a wide variety of sectors - profit and nonprofit - are already operating with significantly new structures and management practices. They tend to be successful and purposeful, showing the promise of this emerging organizational model. They show how we can deal with the complexity of our times in wholly new ways, and how work can become a place of personal fulfillment and growth. By contrast, they make most of today's organizations look painfully outdated.

A History of Organizational Paradigms

In describing the pattern of organizational evolution, I draw on the work of a number of thinkers in a field known as "developmental theory." One of its basic concepts is the idea that human societies, like individuals, don't grow in linear fashion, but in stages of increasing maturity, consciousness, and complexity. Various scholars have assigned different names to these stages; philosopher Ken Wilber uses colors to identify them, in a sequence that evokes the light spectrum, from infrared to ultraviolet. I borrow his color scheme as a convenient way to name the successive stages of management evolution ( see Exhibit 1).

Around 10,000 years ago, humanity started organizing itself in chiefdoms and proto-empires. With this shift away from small tribes, the meaningful division of labor came into being - a breakthrough invention for its time. With it came the first real organizations, in the form of small conquering armies. These organizations, which in integral theory are labeled Red, are crude, often violent groups. People at this stage of development tend to regard the world as a tough place where only the powerful (or those they protect) get their needs met. This was the origin of command authority. The chief, like the alpha male in a wolf pack, needs to constantly inspire fear to keep underlings in line, and often relies on family members in hopes that they can be trusted. Today's street gangs, terrorist groups, and crime syndicates are often organized along these lines.

Starting around 4000 BC in Mesopotamia, humanity entered the Amber age of agriculture, state bureaucracies, and organized religion. Psychologically, this leap was enormous: People learned to exercise self-discipline and self-control, internalizing the strong group norms of all agricultural societies. Do what's right and you will be rewarded, in this life or the next. Do or say the wrong things, and you will be excommunicated from the group.

Related Story

All agrarian societies are divided into clearly delineated castes. They thrive on order, control, and hierarchy. In organizations, the same principles characterize the Amber stage. The fluid, scheming wolf pack-like Red organizations give way to static, stratified pyramids. The Catholic Church is an archetypal Amber organization, complete with a static organization chart linking all levels of activity in lines and boxes, from the pope at the top to the cardinals below and down to the archbishops, bishops, and priests. Historically, the invention of formal roles and hierarchies was a major breakthrough. It allowed organizations to scale beyond anything Red society could have contemplated. Amber organizations produced the pyramids, irrigation systems, cathedrals, the Great Wall of China, and other structures and feats that were previously unthinkable. They also considerably reduced violence; a priest whose role is defined by a box in an organization chart doesn't scheme to backstab a bishop who shows a sign of weakness. A second breakthrough was the invention of stable, replicable processes, such as the yearly cycle of planting, growing, and harvest in agriculture.

Today, this hierarchical and process-driven model is visible in large bureaucratic enterprises, many government agencies, and most education and military organizations. In Amber organizations, thinking and execution are strictly separated. People at the bottom must be instructed through command and control. In today's fast-changing, knowledge-based economy, this static, top-down conception of management has proven to be inefficient; it wastes the talent, creativity, and energy of most people in these organizations.

Starting with the Renaissance, and gaining steam with the Enlightenment and the early Industrial Revolution, a new management concept emerged that challenged its agrarian predecessor. In the Orange paradigm, the world is no longer governed by absolute, God-given rules; it is a complex mechanism that can be understood and exploited through scientific and empirical investigation. Effectiveness replaces morality as the yardstick for decision making: The best decision is the one that begets the highest reward. The goal in an Orange organization is to get ahead, to succeed in socially acceptable ways, and to best play the cards one is dealt. This is arguably the predominant perspective of most leaders in business and politics today.

The leap to Orange coincided with three significant management breakthroughs that gave us the modern corporation. First was the concept of innovation, which brought with it new departments such as R&D, product management, and marketing, as well as project teams and cross-functional initiatives. Second was accountability, which provided leaders with an alternative to commanding people: Give people targets to reach, using freedom and rewards to motivate them. This breakthrough, sometimes called management by objectives, led to the creation of modern HR practices, budgets, KPIs, yearly evaluations, bonus systems, and stock options. Third was meritocracy, the idea that anyone could rise to any position based on his or her qualifications and skills - a radical concept when it appeared.

The transition to Orange brought a new prevailing metaphor. A good organization is not a wolf pack or army, but a machine. Corporate leaders adopted engineering terms to describe their work: they designed the company, using inputs and outputs, information flows, and bottlenecks; they downsized the staff and reengineered their companies. Most large, mainstream publicly listed companies operate with Orange management practices.

In just two and a half centuries, these breakthroughs have generated unprecedented levels of prosperity, added decades to human life expectancy, and dramatically reduced famine and plague in the industrialized world. But as the Orange paradigm grew dominant, it also encouraged short-term thinking, corporate greed, overconsumption, and the reckless exploitation of the planet's resources and ecosystems. Increasingly, whether we are powerful leaders or low-ranking employees, we feel that this paradigm isn't sustainable. The heartless and soulless rat race of Orange organizations has us yearning for more.

Postmodernity brought us another world view. The Green stage stresses cooperation over competition and strives for equality, solidarity, and tolerance. Historically, this perspective inspired the fights for the abolition of slavery, and for gender equality, and today it helps combat racism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination. Green organizations, which include many nonprofits as well as companies such as Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, and the Container Store, consider social responsibility the core of their mission. They serve not just shareholders but all stakeholders, knowing that this often results in higher costs in the short term, but better returns in the end.

Green leaders have championed the soft aspects of business - investing in organizational culture and values, coaching, mentoring, and teamwork - over the hard aspects of strategy and budgeting so prized in Orange. Family is their metaphor; everyone's voice should be heard and respected. You can't treat knowledge workers like cogs in a machine. Empowerment and egalitarian management are among the breakthroughs they introduced.

Practice shows, alas, that empowerment and egalitarian management are hard to sustain. Efforts to make everyone equal often lead to hidden power struggles, dominant actors who coopt the system, and organizational gridlock. Green companies, universities, and organizations that take egalitarianism too far have tended to bog down in debate and factionalism. Successful Green companies maintain a careful balance: taming the traditional hierarchy through constant investment in training and culture; reminding leaders and managers to wield their power carefully; and raising the skills of people on the front lines.

All of these organizational paradigms coexist today. In any major city one can find Red organizations (entities at the fringes of the law), Amber organizations (public schools and other government entities), Orange organizations (Wall Street and Main Street companies), and Green organizations (values-driven businesses and many nonprofits). Look closely at how an organization operates - its structure, leadership style, or any core management process - and you can quickly guess the dominant paradigm. Take compensation, for example: How are people rewarded? In a Red company, the boss shares the spoils as he or she pleases, buying allegiance through reward and punishment. In Amber organizations, salaries are tightly linked to a person's level in the hierarchy ("same rank, same pay") and there are no incentives or bonuses. Orange companies offer individual incentives to reward star performers, while Green companies generally award team bonuses to encourage cooperation.

Today, in small but increasing numbers, leaders are growing into the next stage of consciousness, beyond Green. They are mindful, taming the needs and impulses of their ego. They are suspicious of their own desires - to control their environment, to be successful, to look good, or even to accomplish good works. Rejecting fear, they listen to the wisdom of other, deeper parts of themselves. They develop an ethic of mutual trust and assumed abundance. They ground their decision making in an inner measure of integrity. They are ready for the next organizational paradigm. Its color is Teal.

The Nature of Teal

In 2012, I set out to find some examples of Teal organizations and describe the factors that set them apart. To qualify, an organization had to employ a minimum of 100 people and had to have been operating for a minimum of five years in ways that were consistent with the characteristics of a Teal stage of human development.

After screening a great number of organizations, I focused on 12, selecting those that were most advanced in reinventing management structures and practices. (See "Examples of Teal Management," where ten are listed; the other two, AES and BSO/Origin, reverted back to more traditional management practices after a change of CEO or ownership). I was struck by the diversity of these organizations. They include publicly held and privately held for-profit corporations along with nonprofits in the consumer products, industrial, healthcare, retail, and education industries. Typically, the leaders of these companies didn't know about one another. They often thought they were the only ones to be so foolhardy as to rethink their management practices in fundamental ways. Yet, after much trial and error, they came up with strikingly similar approaches to management. It seems that a coherent new organizational model is emerging.

Examples of Teal Management

Buurtzorg: a Netherlands-based healthcare nonprofit, profiled in this article.

ESBZ: a publicly financed school in Berlin, covering grades seven to 12, which has attracted international attention for its innovative curriculum and organizational model.

FAVI: a brass foundry in France, which produces (among other things) gearbox forks for the automotive industry, and has about 500 employees.

Heiligenfeld: a 600-employee mental health hospital system, based in central Germany, which applies a holistic approach to patient care.

Morning Star: a U.S.-based tomato processing company with 400 to 2,400 employees (depending on the season) and a 30 to 40 percent share of the North American market. (If you have eaten pizza or spaghetti sauce in the U.S., you have probably tasted a Morning Star product).

Patagonia: a US$540 million manufacturer of climbing gear and outdoor apparel; based in California and employing 1,300 people, it is dedicated to being a positive influence on the natural environment.

Resources for Human Development (RHD): a 4,000-employee nonprofit social services agency operating in 14 states in the U.S., providing services related to addiction recovery, homelessness, and mental disabilities.

Sounds True: a publisher of multimedia offerings related to spirituality and personal development, with 90 employees in the United States.

Sun Hydraulics: a maker of hydraulic cartridge valves and manifolds, with factories in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and Korea employing about 900 people.

Holacracy: a management system first developed at the Philadelphia-based software company Ternary, which has been adopted by a few hundred profit- and not-for-profit organizations around the world, most famously by Zappos.

Like previous leaps to new stages of management, the new model comes with a number of important breakthroughs:

* Self-management. Teal organizations operate effectively, even at a large scale, with a system based on peer relationships. They set up structures and practices in which people have high autonomy in their domain, and are accountable for coordinating with others. Power and control are deeply embedded throughout the organizations, no longer tied to the specific positions of a few top leaders.

* Wholeness. Whereas Orange and Green organizations encourage people to show only their narrow "professional" selves, Teal organizations invite people to reclaim their inner wholeness. They create an environment wherein people feel free to fully express themselves, bringing unprecedented levels of energy, passion, and creativity to work.

* Evolutionary purpose. Teal organizations base their strategies on what they sense the world is asking from them. Agile practices that sense and respond replace the machinery of plans, budgets, targets, and incentives. Paradoxically, by focusing less on the bottom line and shareholder value, they generate financial results that outpace those of competitors.

Changing Paradigms at Buurtzorg

Buurtzorg, a large Dutch nursing care provider, is a good example of an organization running with Teal management structures and practices. Since the 19th century, every neighborhood in the Netherlands has had a local nurse who makes home visits to care for the sick and the elderly. These nurses operated largely autonomously until the early 1990s. Then, to maximize efficiency and reduce costs, the government created incentives for care-giving agencies to merge into larger enterprises.

The new agencies, most of which were private companies, gravitated toward an Orange paradigm. Seeking to minimize downtime and allocate staff flexibly, they set up centralized call centers; instead of calling their nurse personally, clients now had to dial the center. Planners were hired to devise daily visiting schedules that minimized travel times. The agencies instituted time standards: 10 minutes for intravenous injections, 15 minutes for bathing, and 2.5 minutes for changing a compression stocking. Barcode stickers, placed on patients' front doors, tracked the nurses' progress so central managers could analyze their efficiency. As these organizations consolidated, they added more layers of management, all with the intention of increasing efficiencies and squeezing out costs.

The outcome has been distressing to patients and nurses alike. Clients, who are often elderly, have to cope with new faces in their home at every visit. They must repeat their medical histories to hurried nurses who have no time allotted for listening. The nurses, for their part, find these working conditions degrading. They know they should spend more time trying to understand the changing conditions of their patients, but they simply can't. The whole system is prone to errors, conflicts, and complaints.

Buurtzorg's purpose is not to give shots and change bandages efficiently but to help elderly patients live a rich and autonomous life.

Buurtzorg (the name means neighborhood care in Dutch) was founded in 2006 by Jos de Blok, who had experienced these problems firsthand, as a nurse for 10 years and then as a manager. His new organization is extraordinarily successful, having grown from four to 9,000 nurses in its first eight years and achieving outstanding levels of care. He set up the company as a self-managing enterprise. Nurses work in teams of 10 to 12, each team serving around 50 patients in a small, well-defined neighborhood.

Buurtzorg has a distinctive outlook on the nature of care. Its purpose is not to give shots and change bandages as efficiently as they can, but to help its patients live, as much as possible, a rich and autonomous life. Nurses regularly sit down for coffee with their patients. They help them structure their own support networks and reach out to families and neighbors. Patients see the same one or two nurses all the time, and often form deep bonds of trust and intimacy with them.

Clients and nurses love Buurtzorg. Only eight years after its founding, its market share has reached 60 percent. Financially, the results are stellar, too. One 2009 study found that Buurtzorg requires, on average, only 40 percent of the care hours needed by a more conventional approach, because patients become self-sufficient much faster. Emergency hospital admissions have been cut by a third, and the average hospital stay of a Buurtzorg patient is shorter. It's estimated that the Dutch social security system would save $2 billion per year if the entire home-care industry adopted Buurtzorg's operations model.

Self-Management and Its Misconceptions

Buurtzorg's 9,000 employees operate entirely with self-managing practices. Local teams of 10 to 12 nurses decide which patients to serve, how to allocate tasks, where to rent offices, how to integrate with the local communities, which doctors and pharmacies to work with, and how to collaborate with nearby hospitals. They monitor their own performance and take corrective action if productivity drops. Teams don't have team leaders; management tasks are spread across the members, all of whom are nurses.

One common misconception about self-management is that everyone is equal and decisions are made by consensus, which requires endless meetings. The truth is very different. Self-management requires a whole set of interlocking structures and practices, so that decision rights and power flow to any individual who has the expertise, interest, or willingness to step in to oversee a situation. Fluid, natural hierarchies replace the fixed power hierarchies of the pyramid. This requires explicit training. At Buurtzorg, all new team members take a course called Solution-Driven Methods of Interaction, learning sophisticated listening and communication skills, techniques for running meetings and making decisions, and methods of coaching one another and providing perspective.

You might assume that all this is managed through staff functions - the source of capability and power in many Orange and Green organizations. But Buurtzorg's 9,000 nurses are supported by fewer than 50 staff people. The nurses do their own recruiting and purchasing, contracting for specialized medical or legal expertise when needed. They align with the larger organization not through rules and procedures, but through the collaboration methods they learned. A powerful internal social network allows them to draw on guidance and medical expertise from fellow nurses in other parts of the country, many of whom they've never met.

The Embrace of Wholeness

In Amber, Orange, and Green organizations, people typically show up wearing a mask: the bishop's robe, the doctor's white coat, and the executive's suit all embody subtle, but real, expectations. Leaders fear that if people brought all of themselves to work - their moods, quirks, deepest aspirations, and uncertainties - things would quickly fall into disorder. Most people adopt an air of resolution and determination, favoring their masculine, rational selves. It feels unsafe to reveal the caring, inquiring, intuitive, and spiritual aspects of the self, or to express a desire for meaning. Many of us end up disowning some fundamental aspects of our selves. When an organization feels lifeless, is it because we bring so little life to work?

Teal organizations start from the premise, resonant with many wisdom traditions, that a person's deepest calling is to achieve wholeness. These organizations engender vibrant workspaces and practices where trust flourishes. People feel they can truly be themselves. Simple management practices foster a sense of personal connection. At Patagonia's headquarters in Ventura, Calif., for example, the company maintains a child development center for employees' preschoolers. Children's laughter and chatter are regularly heard; kids visit their parents' desks, join adults for lunch at the cafeteria, and run around in the playground outside. One sometimes sees a mother nursing her child during a meeting. At another Teal company, Sounds True, people regularly bring their dogs to work. Meetings often take place with two or three dogs lying at people's feet. Having children and animals present tends to reconnect people with deeper parts of themselves; they see one another not only as colleagues, but as part of a common humanity.

One harbinger of the rise of consciousness in the business world is the support given to contemplative practices. It's becoming fashionable, even in Wall Street banks, to offer meditation classes. But these are often treated as add-ons, separate from the real work. At the Heiligenfeld hospital chain inner work is woven deeply into daily life. Every week, colleagues from their five hospitals come together for 75 minutes of intensive, reflective dialogue about a theme such as dealing with risks or learning from mistakes. Heiligenfeld also devotes four days per year to silence. The staff speaks only when needed, in whispers; patients engage in forms of therapy that require no words, such as walks in the woods or painting sessions. People learn to interact from a deep place when words are not at hand.

The quest for wholeness can also be seen on the factory floor. At FAVI, a French automotive supplier, all engineers and administrative workers are trained to operate at least one assembly-line machine. When orders must be rushed out, white-collar workers come in to run the machines for a few hours. It's a wonderful community-building practice. People in engineering and administrative roles work under the guidance of the machine operators. They see for themselves how hard the work on the machines can be and how much skill it involves.

FAVI also has an in-depth onboarding process that ends with new teammates writing an open letter to the colleagues they have joined. The letters often describe how, perhaps for the first time in their career as a machine operator, their voice counts at work and they are considered worthy of trust and appreciation.

Evolutionary Purpose

Most organizations define a purpose for themselves in the form of a mission statement, which is typically engraved on a plaque in the headquarters lobby. Most of these statements, of course, sound hollow. The espoused purpose can't compete with the pursuit of profits or competitive advantage.

Buurtzorg's purpose, as discussed above, is to help sick and elderly patients live a rich and autonomous life. Its competitive advantage is the way it fulfills that purpose, with self-organization and wholeness. If it were a more traditional organization, it would try to keep this competitive advantage secret, and gain market share accordingly. Founder de Blok did the opposite. He wrote a book ( Buurtzorg: Menselijkheid Boven Bureaucratie, [Boom Lemma uitgevers, 2010], coauthored with Aart Pool, whose title translates as "Humanity above Bureaucracy") in which he documented Buurtzorg's revolutionary ways of operating in great detail. He accepts all invitations from competitors to explain his methods, and acts as an advisor for two direct competitors without compensation.

"The whole notion of competition makes no sense," says de Blok. "If you share knowledge and information, things will change more quickly."

Making purpose the cornerstone of an organization has profound consequences for leadership. In today's dominant management paradigm (Orange), leaders are supposed to define a winning strategy and then marshal the organization to execute it, like the human programmer of a machine who controls what it will do. In the Teal paradigm, founders and leaders view the organization as a living entity, with its own energy, sense of direction, and calling to manifest something in the world. They don't force a course of action; they try to listen to where the organization is naturally called to go. None of the organizations I researched has a strategy document. Gone are the often dreaded strategy formulation exercises, and much of the machinery of midterm plans, yearly budgets, cascaded KPIs, and individual targets. Instead of trying to predict and control, they aim to sense and respond.

FAVI uses a metaphor to explain this. Other companies look five years ahead and make plans for the next year. They prefer to think like farmers: Look 20 years ahead, and plan only for the next day. A farmer must look far out when deciding which fruit trees to plant or which crops to grow. But it makes no sense to plan a precise date for the harvest. One cannot control the weather, the crops, the soil; they all have a life of their own. Sticking rigidly to plan, instead of sensing and adjusting to reality, leads to having the harvest go to waste, which too often happens in organizations.

Practices based on sensing and responding, combined with self-management, lead to high levels of innovation. Two nurses on a Buurtzorg team found themselves pondering the fact that elderly people, when they fall, often break their hips. Could Buurtzorg help prevent this? Their team created a partnership with a physiotherapist and an occupational therapist from their neighborhood. They advised patients on small changes they could bring to their home interiors, and changes of habit that would minimize the risk of falling. Happy with their success, they approached de Blok to suggest turning "Buurtzorg+" (Buurtzorg + prevention) into a national program.

Had de Blok been a traditional CEO, he might have analyzed the idea and, if he approved it, assigned a team in headquarters to develop a comprehensive implementation plan. His actual answer was much humbler: Why should he, rather than the system itself, decide if this was a wise thing to do? He suggested that the same team of nurses package their approach and disseminate the idea on the company's internal social network. Hundreds of teams showed interest and the idea quickly caught on. Within a year, almost all teams had incorporated prevention into their work using that model.

In a self-managing, purpose-driven organization, change can come from any person who senses that change is needed. This is how change has occurred in nature for millions of years. Innovation doesn't happen centrally, according to plan, but at the edges, when some organism senses a change in the environment and experiments to find an appropriate response. Some attempts fail to catch on; others rapidly spread to all corners of the ecosystem.

Becoming a Teal Organization

Some companies, like Buurtzorg, are advanced on all three Teal breakthroughs: self-management, wholeness, and evolutionary purpose. Others are more advanced in one area than others - FAVI in self-management, Heiligenfeld in wholeness. None of the Teal companies I have identified have the scale of the largest Orange companies (such as Walmart) or Green ones (such as Southwest Airlines). This is still the dawn of the Teal paradigm. However, its promise is suggested by the success these organizations are having.

Every stage of organizational evolution is more mature and effective than the previous stage, because of the inherent attitude toward power. A Red leader asks, How can I use my power to dominate? An Amber leader asks, How can I use it to enforce the status quo? An Orange leader asks, How can we win? A Green leader asks, How can we empower more people? A Teal leader asks, How can everyone most powerfully pursue a purpose that transcends us all?

Research suggests that there are two - and only two - necessary conditions for developing a Teal organization.

1. Top leadership. The chief executive must have an integrated world view and psychological development consistent with the Teal paradigm. It is helpful if a few close colleagues share this perspective.

2. Ownership. Owners of the organization must also understand and embrace Teal world views. Board members who don't get it, experience shows, can temporarily give a Teal leader free rein. But when the organization hits a rough patch or faces a critical choice, owners will want to regain control in the only way that makes sense to them: appointing a CEO who exerts top-down, hierarchical authority.

What about businesses, nonprofits, schools, hospitals, government agencies, and other institutions where these conditions are not in place? Can a middle manager hope to influence an entire enterprise by showcasing Teal practices locally? As much as I would like to believe this is possible, my hopes are not high. Experience shows that it takes more than a successful local example to catalyze this sort of system-wide change.

However, as a middle or senior manager, you can introduce some elements of the new paradigm for your own benefit and that of your colleagues. Practices that encourage people to show more of their true selves might come across as unusual, but are unlikely to raise red flags with top leadership. Some elements of self-management can be introduced; for example, instead of imposing new targets, ask team members to determine, in a peer-based process, which targets could be changed. If the team functions well, don't attend the meeting. Let them come up with the best solution on their own so the targets will be theirs. Or when it's time to appoint someone to report to you, don't do it yourself. Let the team one level below write up the job description, interview candidates, and select their boss. Executives who have tried this find that subordinates take choosing their boss very seriously, and the process gives the boss a much stronger working relationship with the team.

The full benefit, of course, accrues to those organizations that fully embrace the new paradigm. When I spent a day with de Blok in the small headquarters of Buurtzorg, I was struck by how much simpler work life could be. Buurtzorg is a 9,000-person organization growing at breakneck speed. But after several hours of conversation, I realized we hadn't been interrupted once. No urgent phone calls; no assistant coming in to whisper in the CEO's ear that something had come up. Work in Teal organizations seems to unfold so easily it sometimes verges on the magical. Control and self-correction is embedded in the system, and no longer requires leaders to be on top of everything at all times.

In the past, with every change in consciousness (from Red to Amber to Orange and to Green), more powerful and life-enhancing forms of management have emerged. After the full emergence of the Teal paradigm, we will probably look back and find the organizational forms and practices of the late 20th and early 21st century alienating and unfulfilling. Already, it's clear that we can create radically more productive, soulful, and purposeful businesses and nonprofits, schools, and hospitals. We are at an inflection point: a moment in history where it's time to stop trying to fix the old model and instead make the leap to the next one. It will be better suited to the complexity and challenges of our times, and to the yearning in our hearts.

The story line of evolution in this article, and the use of colors to describe stages, draws on the work of several thinkers, including Clare Graves, Ken Wilber, Jenny Wade, Don Beck, Robert Kegan, and Jane Loevenger.

Reprint No. 00344

Author Profile:

Frederic Laloux is the author of Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness (Nelson Parker, 2014), from which this article is adapted with permission. A former associate partner with McKinsey & Company, he is now an independent scholar and advisor to organizational leaders.

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A version of this article appeared in the Autumn 2015 issue of strategy+business. Illustration by Martin O'Neill Many people sense that the way organizations are run today has been stretched to its limits. In survey after survey, businesspeople make it clear that in their view, companies are places of dread and drudgery, not passion or purpose.

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How does this work when presented to a nonprofit Board? Accountability from a legal/ethical perspective? 

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How does this work when presented to a nonprofit Board? Accountability from a legal/ethical perspective? 

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Really good examples of when Directive Decision Making might be most appropriate - emergencies, decisions that affect just me, etc. Collaborative seems like the best practice for most decision making. What are examples of a time when Consensus Decision Making might be the most appropriate?

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Really good examples of when Directive Decision Making might be most appropriate - emergencies, decisions that affect just me, etc. Collaborative seems like the best practice for most decision making. What are examples of a time when Consensus Decision Making might be the most appropriate?

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13:57:12 From Mike Larson - Blue Lotus Center (he/him) to Everyone:
	I'm going to get a drink of water
13:57:28 From Dan Auer - ANCA to Everyone:
	https://padlet.com/ANCAmembership/anca-connects-cultivating-shared-leadership-on-your-team-6uvrwzbti6qun358
14:00:55 From Asa Duffee (he/him) â ANCA to Dan Auer - ANCA(Direct Message):
	Dan, Iâm not actually co-host. Are you able to quickly make me so?
14:01:11 From Asa Duffee (he/him) â ANCA to Dan Auer - ANCA(Direct Message):
	Just in case that Internet goes out, yâknow ð
14:01:58 From Dan Auer - ANCA to Asa Duffee (he/him) â ANCA(Direct Message):
	Yes let me see if I can make you co-host
14:02:27 From Asa Duffee (he/him) â ANCA to Dan Auer - ANCA(Direct Message):
	I got the powers, thank you!
14:02:50 From Dan Auer - ANCA to Everyone:
	https://padlet.com/ANCAmembership/anca-connects-cultivating-shared-leadership-on-your-team-6uvrwzbti6qun358
14:07:26 From Glenna Holstein (she/hers) to Everyone:
	If you attended the shared leadership session at the summit or read the article in âDirectionsâ, what stood out to you? Or, what is a question that surfaced?
14:07:37 From Dan Auer - ANCA to Everyone:
	https://natctr.org/news/directions/shared-leadership
14:08:41 From Catherine Timko Lake Erie Nature & Science Center to Everyone:
	Starting an Executive Director succession plan.
14:08:48 From Robin Sears, WRL (she) to Everyone:
	Always ready to improve my leadership skills, and I have a big staff transition coming up, so I have to be extra strong.
14:08:54 From Tom Meier - Baltimore Woods Nature Center to Everyone:
	looking for insight/new ideas for working with our education team
14:08:56 From Meaghan Boice-Green (she/her) to Everyone:
	We are undergoing a big change in staff- a few people who've been here less than a year and more starting in the new year! So it's a good time to cultivate some shared leadership.
14:08:58 From Whitney, Baltimore Woods Nature Center to Everyone:
	Intentionally growing shared leadership instead of it being forced due to capacity challenges
14:09:00 From Meg J. (she/her) NatureBridge to Everyone:
	excited to hear examples of successful leadership models for highly matrixed orgs
14:09:05 From Jen Levy (she/her), ANCA to Everyone:
	I am interested in methods of shared leadership that help train new leaders.
14:09:09 From CarolynMoy to Everyone:
	I am joining from a bird sanctuary in Middletown, RI.  I signed up for today's meeting because I am new to the nature center world, have transitioned from healthcare
14:09:10 From Marissa Olsen to Everyone:
	I read the article. Looking for ways to motivate young professionals new to the field to step up into leadership roles.
14:09:17 From Marcos Stoltzfus (he/him) Merry Lea Env Center to Everyone:
	Always looking for ways to improve/pad leadership techniques and strategies
14:09:20 From Hideko Secrest (she/her), Awbury Arboretum to Everyone:
	My camp co-director just left the state permanently and while looking for a new co-director, Iâve been talking to several of the other lead counselors and think Iâd like to bring them into shared leadership.
14:09:20 From Christina Hodge - NatureBridge Olympic to Everyone:
	To help build skills and confidence in our new leaders
14:09:31 From Vera Roberts, Warner Park Nature Center to Everyone:
	Great to see everyone!  I read the article and was inspired to learn more about Shared Leadership and how we might implement it with our small team
14:09:34 From wellslh to Everyone:
	insight into working with an established staff, as the newbie, in an agency without a succession/growth plan
14:09:49 From Robin Sears, WRL (she) to Everyone:
	Replying to "Always ready to impr..."
	
	oops, I should say "we" have to be extra strong.
14:10:02 From Kristina Weeks to Everyone:
	staff transitions, small org dabbling in shared leadership in different ways for a long time, need more clarity on what it can be and how it can work well for staff and board
14:10:20 From Beth Trowbridge to Everyone:
	Exploring leadership options for our organization for potential future changes
14:10:24 From Heather Hahn Sullivan - DLC to Everyone:
	My team is challenged by wanting to consult everyone before making a decision - hoping to get some tools to empower individuals, and help them feel like they can both take ownership and share authority
14:11:14 From Erin Shultz to Everyone:
	What does shared leadership look like at different organizational levels? And then how do these models support individual empowerment/progress as well?
14:15:49 From Glenna Holstein (she/hers) to Everyone:
	If folks have clarifying questions as weâre going through this summary, please feel free to drop them in the chat! Weâll pause to answer a few questions right after the summary.
14:28:11 From Dan Auer - ANCA to Everyone:
	These slides will be added to the Padlet after todayâs meeting.
14:28:49 From Asa Duffee (he/him) â ANCA to Everyone:
	https://natctr.org/events/calendar/shared-leadership
	
	https://www.sociocracyforall.org/
	
	https://www.strategy-business.com/article/00344
14:29:10 From Margaret Blackburn (she/her) to Everyone:
	Reacted to "These slides will be..." with â¤ï¸
14:29:13 From Margaret Blackburn (she/her) to Everyone:
	Reacted to "These slides will be..." with ð
14:29:15 From Margaret Blackburn (she/her) to Everyone:
	Removed a â¤ï¸ reaction from "These slides will be..."
14:29:20 From Margaret Blackburn (she/her) to Everyone:
	Reacted to "https://natctr.org/e..." with ð
14:29:21 From Asa Duffee (he/him) â ANCA to Everyone:
	Sorry, wrong link on the shared leadership article before. It is: https://natctr.org/news/directions/shared-leadership
14:29:41 From Jen Levy (she/her), ANCA to Everyone:
	I have a question!
14:30:05 From Anna Sawin to Everyone:
	Reacted to "These slides will be..." with ð
14:40:04 From Alex Grindle to Everyone:
	I am curious when something rises the level of decision.
14:40:12 From Marcos Stoltzfus (he/him) Merry Lea Env Center to Everyone:
	I'm reflecting on how central trust is; to ensure discussion members feel comfortable raising an objection.    [maybe in particular when adopting this practice for the first time]
14:40:22 From Glenna Holstein (she/hers) to Everyone:
	Reacted to "I'm reflecting on ho..." with ð
14:40:55 From Dan Auer - ANCA to Everyone:
	Reacted to "I'm reflecting on ho..." with â¤ï¸
14:41:18 From Whitney, Baltimore Woods Nature Center to Everyone:
	Replying to "I'm reflecting on ho..."
	
	I agree, was also thinking about how this would require people to feel comfortable sharing within the team and trust that they will be listened to and respected even if they had a different opinion from others.
14:41:49 From Glenna Holstein (she/hers) to Everyone:
	Replying to "I am curious when so..."
	
	Great question! We can talk more about this, but really anything that affects more than one person or area in the group. Does that make sense?
14:42:03 From Glenna Holstein (she/hers) to Everyone:
	Reacted to "I agree, was also th..." with ð
14:44:54 From Alex Grindle to Everyone:
	Reacted to "Great question! We c..." with ð
14:49:13 From Christina Hodge - NatureBridge Olympic to Everyone:
	Replying to "I am curious when so..."
	
	How do you lead or summarize the conversation if you are not the first or last to speak? Iâm curious about how facilitation goes with not speaking first or last. Do you pick someone else to facilitate?
14:50:57 From Glenna Holstein (she/hers) to Everyone:
	Replying to "I am curious when so..."
	
	Great question! I think Mike is specifically speaking to when your team is going around and sharing opinions. You are right that as the facilitator, you may speak first to lay out the prompt, or last to summarize what was decided by the group. Does that make sense?
14:52:09 From Christina Hodge - NatureBridge Olympic to Everyone:
	Replying to "I am curious when so..."
	
	Yes, that you as the leader speak first and last to facilitate the conversation, but share your opinion in the middle. That makes sense.
14:55:40 From Glenna Holstein (she/hers) to Everyone:
	Replying to "I am curious when so..."
	
	@Christina Hodge - NatureBridge Olympic Exactly! Well said. :-)
14:59:33 From Mike Larson - Blue Lotus Center (he/him) to Everyone:
	Replying to "I am curious when so..."
	
	And accomplishments...
15:00:29 From Vera Roberts, Warner Park Nature Center to Everyone:
	Would love to hear from folks who work within government or large bureaucracies on how they have implemented some of these practices while still adhering to structures and practices outside of their control or decision-making authority.
15:00:40 From Kelly Sloan (she/her) to Everyone:
	Reacted to "Yes, that you as the..." with â¤ï¸
15:01:33 From Robin Sears, WRL (she) to Everyone:
	Start - stop - keep. I use "well", "tricky", "different" in the same spirit. eg, What are some things that you find tricky about me?
15:01:42 From Glenna Holstein (she/hers) to Everyone:
	Replying to "Start - stop - keep...."
	
	Love this!
15:01:51 From Glenna Holstein (she/hers) to Everyone:
	Reacted to "Would love to hear f..." with ð
15:02:40 From Glenna Holstein (she/hers) to Everyone:
	Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose
15:09:04 From Dan Auer - ANCA to Everyone:
	https://padlet.com/ANCAmembership/anca-connects-cultivating-shared-leadership-on-your-team-6uvrwzbti6qun358
15:09:35 From CarolynMoy to Everyone:
	Regrettably, I have to sign off for a conflicting event but I have really enjoyed this presentation!
15:09:52 From Glenna Holstein (she/hers) to Everyone:
	Thanks Carolyn!
15:10:46 From Alex to Everyone:
	I am driving so just listening and learning.
15:12:28 From Luke Allison to Everyone:
	Sorry, I joined quite late, I've really enjoyed listening in.
15:19:27 From Dr. Tami Christopher to Everyone:
	just stepping away for a minute
15:21:50 From Luke Allison to Everyone:
	I will be running with the start, stop, keep very soon. We haven't had any structured review process for years now, and each department is trying to find something that feels good and we want to stick around. This seems like a great place to start.
15:22:11 From Dan Auer - ANCA to Everyone:
	Reacted to "I will be running wi..." with ð
15:27:25 From Robin Ladouceur, Bent of the River Audubon Center to Everyone:
	Thank you for this! Have to drop off.
15:29:59 From Sarah Vincent - Prescott, AZ to Everyone:
	Are the questions on the padlet going to be addressed via email or on the call?
15:30:44 From Heather G, Beaman Park, Nashville to Everyone:
	thank you for your insight. have a wonderful holiday.
15:30:44 From Mike Larson - Blue Lotus Center (he/him) to Everyone:
	@Sarah Vincent - Prescott, AZ; We will respond to any questions on the padlet, but I would encourage others to do so as well. We are only two brains, and there are others in this room who may have a valuable perspective
15:30:56 From Corky McReynolds to Everyone:
	Thank you Glenna and Mike!
15:30:59 From Jen Levy (she/her), ANCA to Everyone:
	Replying to "Are the questions on..."
	
	I encourage everyone to use the Padlet!
15:31:03 From Hideko Secrest (she/her), Awbury Arboretum to Everyone:
	Thank you so much for this workshop!
15:31:06 From Meg J. (she/her) NatureBridge to Everyone:
	thank you!
15:31:13 From Audrey Eisenhauer (she/her), Squam Lakes Natural Sci Ctr to Everyone:
	Thank you!
15:31:13 From Margaret Blackburn (she/her) to Everyone:
	Thank you!!
15:31:17 From Whitney, Baltimore Woods Nature Center to Everyone:
	Thank you Mike and Glenna! Wonderful and insightful, thank you for sharing your experiences and advice.
15:31:20 From Meaghan Boice-Green (she/her) to Everyone:
	Thank you!
15:31:21 From Erin Shultz to Everyone:
	Thank you so much everyone!!!
15:31:23 From Vera Roberts, Warner Park Nature Center to Everyone:
	Thanks so much - great and inspiring CONNECTS!
15:31:24 From Kristina Weeks to Everyone:
	Thank you
15:31:29 From Beth Trowbridge to Everyone:
	Thank you!
15:31:36 From Chelle to Everyone:
	Thank you so much!
15:31:38 From Jenn Kirts (she/her) to Everyone:
	Thanks so much, this was so valuable.
15:31:39 From Suzanne Burns to Everyone:
	Thank you!
15:31:39 From Rachel Anderson (she/hers) to Everyone:
	Thank you so much Glenna and Mike! As always we learn so much from ANCA!
15:31:47 From Asa Duffee (he/him) â ANCA to Everyone:
	Thanks all ð
15:31:51 From Dr. Tami Christopher to Everyone:
	Thank you!
15:32:27 From Mike Larson - Blue Lotus Center (he/him) to Everyone:
	michael@thebluelotuscenter.org
15:32:32 From Amanda Accamando (she/her) - Beaver Lake NC to Everyone:
	Thank you! Hope to see a follow up on building trust with your team in 2024. :)

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Shared Leadership Presentation Slide Deck

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Shared Leadership Presentation Slide Deck

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Someone inquired about how to onboard new members into this way of thinking. This is a one page document I use at my organization to help teach some of these ideas. I have others that I use to explain decision making, purpose, crucial conversations, rules of engagement, etc.

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Someone inquired about how to onboard new members into this way of thinking. This is a one page document I use at my organization to help teach some of these ideas. I have others that I use to explain decision making, purpose, crucial conversations, rules of engagement, etc.