Informal responsibility - As a formal manager, you can benefit greatly from resource people among your employees who act as your extended arm. But you also put them in a difficult position, writes Christian Nyvang Qvick. Here's what you need to be aware of.
You probably know them from your own workplace. Those employees who have neither personnel responsibilities nor formal management powers, but who still need to provide leadership to their peers in order to make things happen.
We can call these employees organizational resource persons. They are characterized by the fact that they act in a hybrid role, where they perform "normal" tasks while also contributing to tasks that would traditionally be on the manager's desk.
It could be the case coordinator in a police investigation department who has an overview of the case and decides which cases colleagues should start working on. It could be the person in charge of a residential home who is responsible for instructing and guiding other colleagues in a new pedagogical practice - and who, if necessary, must correct and adjust colleagues who do not act in accordance with this practice.
Similarly, it could be the shift planner who decides when other colleagues should report to work. Or the internal consultant who must ensure that the organization's digital initiative becomes an integral part of the collegial task solution.
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Distributed leadership
In short, we're talking about employees who, through their task-oriented functions, act as the link between strategic decisions and the day-to-day execution of tasks. Regardless of whether they are called coordinators, project managers, professional lighthouses or similar terms, the common denominator is that they act as leaders by influencing the "doings" of their peers in connection with the task solution - as illustrated by the examples above.
When you as a formal leader make use of such resource people to ensure the best possible solution to the core task, we talk about practicing distributed leadership.
Research suggests that distributed leadership has significant benefits. It can lead to organizational learning and better results when employees' knowledge, competencies and skills are brought into play. Similarly, there can be coordination benefits of using distributed leadership in organizations that solve complex tasks. And it can be a training ground for leadership talent.
But there are also pitfalls that you as a manager can stumble upon along the way if you don't understand the role of your resource people.
