Self-Managed Team (SMT)

Self-managed team is known as self-direct, self-leading, self-maintaining and self-regulating teams. The nature of self-manage team are

  1. Operate without manager supervision
  2. High job satisfaction
  3. High commitment
  4. Make structural and operational decisions
  5. Responsible for tasks as collective whole
  6. Variety of technical skills
  7. Versatile and flexible

Self-managed team are able to

  1. Make operating decisions
  2. Assign work
  3. Plan schedules
  4. Create task procedures
  5. Acquire supplies and materials
  6. Interact with customers
  7. Perform team member evaluation
  8. Deal with conflict


Characteristic of Effective SMT

  1. Have clear missions and high performance standard
  2. Take stock of equipment, training, facilities and other resources team needs
  3. Devote significant time to planning and organizing to use available resources and assess members technical skills
  4. High level of communication


Characteristic of Team Member

  1. Strong belief in personal accountability
  2. Internal locus of control
  3. Emotional stability
  4. Openness to new ideas and different viewpoints
  5. Effective communicator
  6. Good problem-solving skills
  7. Ability to engender trust
  8. Good conflict resolution skills


Distributed Leadership

A collection of roles and behaviors that can be divided, shared, rotated and used sequentially or concomitantly in a SMT environment. The role can be

  • Organizing role
  • Envisioning role
  • Social role
  • Networking role