3 Tips To Use Hierarchical Flexing for Better Team Collaboration
Hierarchy is everywhere. Even since the early days of evolution, humans have been highly socialized to look for hierarchies within our personal circles and now predominantly within our professional lives.
Hierarchy in the workplace has been a critical piece in studying and understanding the most effective ways for groups and teams to function. Through our evolutionary preferences, humans tend to gravitate towards dominance-based hierarchies, often highly ineffective for supporting a culture of collaboration and creativity. Instead, organizations that practice “Hierarchical Flexing” can discover more effective collaboration and subsequently improve team performance.
Hierarchical flexing can be defined as the degree to which teams can accentuate or flatten their perceived internal hierarchy to match task demands. A past MBA student at Michigan Ross once provided a powerful example of hierarchical flexing in action: the US Navy Seals. On a ground mission, there is a clear hierarchy and chain of command; when a commander instructs the Seals to “get out” of any given location, they listen, with no questions asked. However, upon returning to base for a debrief, the hierarchy is flattened, with stripes actually left at the door. This instance of a flattened hierarchy allows for brainstorming and even the chance for individuals to share information that could be critical for the next mission.
While having a strong shared mission on teams and hierarchical structures in place to support flexing are critical components of hierarchical flexing, there are three essential flexing practices that any leader looking to improve team performance should consider.
The first piece: Create intentional signals and rituals to cue hierarchy flatness. As mentioned in the Navy Seals example above, the intentional signal of leaving their stripes at the door was a clear indicator of a flattened hierarchy. In the workplace, team leaders can use a variety of tools and languages to signal a flattened hierarchy to initiate collaboration. Such tools include physical post-it notes or virtual whiteboards for brainstorming sessions, with the latter ideal for many currently working in hybrid teams. Language cues could be both verbal and nonverbal. These cues might look like a catchphrase that asks a team to all share their input or the use of body language by sitting at the same level as team members or even sitting in the back of the room.
Rituals can then naturally form with the intentional and consistent use of preferred tools and cues, making hierarchy flattening easier over time and allowing leaders and team members to feel more comfortable sharing power and ideas.
The second piece: Adapt leader and team member behaviors to show flatness is safe and desired when flexing to flat. In most cases, effective hierarchical flattening is contingent on the ability of leaders to adapt their own and others' behavior to create a setting where all voices are equally heard and equally impactful. Team leaders play a critical role in fostering psychological safety across team members. Engaging in two-way sharing of emotions with the team, building a safe culture for emotions and a culture of trust, and modeling vulnerability are just a few approaches team leaders can take to build psychological safety for team members.
The third piece: Empower team members through hierarchical trading. Hierarchical trading, i.e., creating multiple hierarchies within an existing team where each person can lead, is another practice team leaders can implement to support flexing. This practice is also known as having horizontal specialization within a hierarchy, where within a team, each person has a clear area of expertise that they own. For example, the CEO of a startup may choose to hire a Chief Marketing Officer who will have the most expertise, autonomy, and power to make decisions in the marketing area. While the CEO still has overarching ownership and can step in as the leader when necessary while always observing, allowing that CMO and others on the team to have that level of their own power and autonomy is vital to create more elastic hierarchies capable of flexing and for overall team effectiveness.
With these tips in mind, it’s important for leaders to remember that sharing power doesn’t take away from their own and may lend itself to making the leader more powerful. Leaders need both substantial confidence and humility to flex between showing power and sharing power. In doing so, leaders can foster a truly collaborative environment that enables everyone to be the best version of themselves while collectively improving both team and organizational performance.
To learn more about effective team leadership practices, join Professor Greer and other faculty experts for the Leading Future-Ready Teams program from Michigan Ross Executive Education.
