How to foster ad hoc leadership among your team members and help them avoid burnout in 7 steps

Fields, Poland. © Marcin Konkel . All rights reserved.

The problem: Team members waiting for managers or senior positions to fix things for them and abstaining from driving change themselves.

The definition: Ad hoc leadership as ability to take ownership of a situation or a problem and lead others without formal hierchical managerial postion.

Why should you care?

You work as a team, which requires taking ownership and responsibility. By becoming an ad hoc leader, you:

• increase the probability of things getting fixed (whether directly or indirectly)
• increase their company and market value as somebody who can make things happen instead of passively waiting
• understand the mechanisms of getting things done in their environment
• making their and their workmate’s job easier.

Of course, one can say — where are the leaders who should be enablers making the environment better?

Usually, this is the first road people take, and then you hit a wall. Your leaders might have limited capacity, don’t posses the proper knowledge to get things done or not operate on their level of detail.