One of the Biggest Obstacles to Building Shared Ownership
As a leader, you sometimes want and need to build ownership at the team level. This means that you are building ownership that is truly shared by more than one team member.
Shared ownership is an interesting phenomenon and one that can be difficult to wrap our heads around. As a parent, I often encounter this difficulty with my children. The “That’s mine!” “No, that’s mine!” back-and-forth that happens when they are fighting over a household object is a perfect example. The reality is, the object belongs to the family. Thus, our ownership is shared, and this has to be learned.
We are so busy that it’s easy to steer away from shared ownership. Team members are often relieved when something gets taken off their plates when someone else on the team displays ownership for that piece of work. It's easy to think that sharing ownership would just feel like redundant work.
However, shared ownership is essential to getting diverse thinking from multiple team members applied to one task or project. It helps prevent tasks from falling through the cracks, like when two team members have a deadline on their radar and they can back-stop each other (but be careful - if they're not organized each could assume the other is handling it). Lastly, shared ownership is a way to cross-pollinate ideas to make the work products better.
Even if we’re not too busy, and even if we understand that we should in theory share ownership with colleagues, there’s still potential trouble.
One of the key obstacles to building shared ownership among your team members is the fear of "stepping on toes."
Imagine if Suchi, head of client relations, feels a sense of ownership about how the company invoices look and how often they get sent and wants to influence that piece. However, Barron, head of finance, could easily feel that Suchi was stepping on his toes.
This problem is so ubiquitous that many of the Suchis out there often just don't bother trying to influence work that isn't in their official domain.
As a leader, you can model and communicate the value of sharing ownership. This can counteract the threat response that is quite natural when one team member feels another is "stepping on their toes."
Leaders can work towards shared ownership on their teams with the following actions:
Identify: where do the team's roles intersect and overlap?
Encourage team members to speak up regardless of whether they feel like they are encroaching on another team member’s “turf” when they can add value.
Encourage team members to lean into areas that don't at first feel like "theirs."
Encourage gracious receiving from teammates of peer-to-peer input.
Talk about the concept of shared ownership and why it matters (greater collective intelligence).
Remind the team that the team’s overall goals are paramount to their individual roles, and the team-level output goes up if we share ownership.
As a leader, start encouraging shared ownership today, and normalize stepping on toes.
