When there is a pool of work items and a team responsible for completing those work items, someone must be responsible for assigning the work to specific team members. Self-organizing works fine when there is a perfect match of task to individual skill to time, but when there are more tasks than people, people with wide skill sets, people who prefer one type of work over another, differences in priorities, or any other random situation that comes up a thousand times a day, then, I'm sorry, but work is going to have to be assigned. Assigning it appropriately and delivering the instruction is what makes that particular aspect of leadership good or bad.
Inspiring people and letting them self-organise is all well and good in a vacuum, but at some point shit's gotta get done. Leadership is about all of the above and more.
When there is a pool of work items and a team responsible for completing those work items, someone must be responsible for assigning the work to specific team members. Self-organizing works fine when there is a perfect match of task to individual skill to time, but when there are more tasks than people, people with wide skill sets, people who prefer one type of work over another, differences in priorities, or any other random situation that comes up a thousand times a day, then, I'm sorry, but work is going to have to be assigned. Assigning it appropriately and delivering the instruction is what makes that particular aspect of leadership good or bad.
Inspiring people and letting them self-organise is all well and good in a vacuum, but at some point shit's gotta get done. Leadership is about all of the above and more.