The boss may be gone, but social hierarchy is not

A growing number of organizations dismantle their management structures in search of a more equal, empowered model where all team members participate in decision making and are jointly responsible for the results. Our new research shows, however, that the reality of influence in leaderless teams is more complex than what the ideal lets on.

The case for leaderless organizing has never been stronger. Buurtzorg, the Dutch nursing organization, which currently employs around 15,000 nurses working in self-managing teams across 25 countries, delivers better patient care at lower cost and better employee satisfaction. Haier, the Chinese home appliance giant with over 80,000 employees, has re-organized into thousands of micro-enterprises, each self-governing and accountable for its own performance. The message from these pioneers is consistent: trust people to know best how to do their jobs, remove the bureaucracy that slows them down, and the results will speak for themselves.

Following this message, agile and leaderless models have proliferated across industries. The number of management roles in many organizations has fallen sharply as accountability has been redistributed to teams. While leaderless models are designed to unleash the potential of teams and all its members, our research suggests that the reality is more nuanced. Removing formal hierarchy leaves space for informal status-based hierarchy to emerge and govern who has influence and how they use it.

Hidden hierarchy and self-sustaining cycles of influence

We tracked 585 employees across their first six months in newly formed leaderless teams at a major global financial company based in the Netherlands that had reduced its managerial positions from 278 to just 25. Every team member held equal formal responsibility, and no one outranked anyone else. In principle, all voices carried equal weight.
In practice, the dynamics that emerged within weeks would have been recognizable in any traditionally managed organization. Team members who felt more respected and valued by their peers were significantly more likely to propose ideas, suggest improvements, and contribute constructively to team decisions. Inversely, the more they spoke out, the more respected they became. Status and voice fueled each other in a self-reinforcing cycle during the early months of leaderless teams.

The finding that team members with higher status spoke up openly, unlike their peers with lower status was not surprising and is consistent with decades of research on employee voice and group dynamics. What surprised us was that it took only three months for the informal status hierarchies to become established in the teams that were designed to be flat. Meanwhile, low status team members did not increase their voice over the same period. Using influence to secure social standing was a tactic used mainly by those who already perceived having high status in the team. Leaderless structure had not produced equal participation in team decisions, which is typically one of its assumed benefits. Instead, it had produced a hidden social order that was not reliant on job titles.

From challenging status quo to groupthink

We also made a troubling discovery. While high-status team members were keen to express promotive voice, which refers to future-focused ideas and suggestions that are often perceived favorably by others, they waited before expressing more critical prohibitive voice, which refers to flagging problems, challenging questionable practices or raising concerns about what is going wrong. Speaking out in a more socially acceptable way enabled these team members to establish their social standing early on, after which they may have felt more comfortable expressing voice that was more confrontational and socially risky.

This finding has two direct and serious implications for leaderless organizations. First, the employees most likely to flag a problem, challenge a questionable decision, or raise an uncomfortable concern are those who are already the most influential. This means that leaderless teams may be missing out on the much-needed perspective of those who see things differently but keep it to themselves because they are lower in the pecking order. Second, even if the high-status team members eventually express critique and question existing practices, it might be too late to do so only after becoming established enough in the team. It is better to address problems early, when they are still potential, instead of waiting for a license to speak out.

Even though leaderless structures are designed for optimal effectiveness and harnessing every member’s potential, our findings signal a risk for groupthink, where team members avoid expressing criticism for fear of being cast aside from the group. This risk may be even more pronounced in leaderless teams than in traditional, hierarchical organizations, where a manager can solicit input from all group members, or create a formal process for raising concerns. In leaderless teams, those structural nudges and counterbalances do not automatically exist.

Why does this matter?

The trend toward autonomous team structures is accelerating in the age of digital transformation, the demand for faster decision-making, and the post-pandemic renegotiation of how work is organized. Organizations that have restructured toward flatter, more agile models are betting on the known benefits of empowering people on their performance. Our research suggests that this bet comes with a risk that is rarely factored into the design.

Just to be clear, the takeaway is not that leaderless models are not effective or perform poorly. The evidence from success stories, such as Buurtzorg, Haier, or Spotify, suggests they can perform exceptionally well. The risk is that without deliberate attention to how influence is distributed inside these teams, the model quietly reproduces the inequalities in participation it was designed to overcome. If only the selected few flag potential problems or express criticism and do so too late in the game, it can have existential consequences for the organization.

Three implications follow for leaders considering this transition. First, the early months are disproportionately important. Our data showed that the reinforcing loop between status and promotive voice was strongest in the first three months of team formation. After that, patterns became entrenched and significantly harder to shift. Organizations that launch leaderless teams and leave them to find their footing are allowing informal hierarchies to emerge. Coaches, facilitators, and the teams themselves need to be aware of this window and use it deliberately.

Second, psychological safety enabling team members feel safe to take interpersonal risks is necessary but not sufficient. Our research suggests that what matters is not just whether people feel safe to speak out, but whether they feel genuinely valued and appreciated by their peers. Designing for the latter requires more intentional effort in creating a culture of respect and inclusiveness.

Third, organizations need to build explicit structures for inviting not just positively perceived ideas and suggestions, but also the more challenging, critical form of voice that is harder to express as it carries a heavier social cost. Assigning and rotating the role of critical evaluator in meetings and actively rewarding the raising of uncomfortable questions can help counterbalance the social rewards that currently seem to flow almost exclusively toward constructive, consensus-affirming contributions.

The paradox of leaderless teams

The key finding of our research is simple. In leaderless teams, influence accumulates and concentrates in the hands of those who were already valued to begin with. Although leaderless models are built on the promise that everyone leads, the social dynamics it unleashes ensure that some lead considerably more than others.

Removing the formal hierarchy is not the same as levelling influence. It is the beginning of a process that requires sustained, deliberate design. Senior leaders who understand this and support the teams accordingly will be in a far stronger position to capitalize on the strengths of these models. Those who do not may find that they have merely replaced one type of hierarchy with another.