Explore leaderless team structures and shared leadership models. Learn how organisations succeed without traditional hierarchy and when this approach works best.
Written by Laura Bouttell • Wed 31st December 2025
Can a team succeed without a designated leader? Blackpink—the world's biggest K-pop girl group—operates without an official leader, deliberately choosing shared responsibility over hierarchy. Their phenomenal global success challenges conventional assumptions about leadership necessity, offering lessons for business leaders exploring distributed authority and collaborative structures.
Leaderless teams represent a growing organisational experiment. From W.L. Gore to Valve Corporation, from agile squads to creative collectives, organisations increasingly question whether traditional leadership hierarchies serve modern work effectively. The answer, as Blackpink's model illustrates, depends on context, composition, and commitment to shared purpose.
A leaderless team operates without a formally designated individual holding ultimate authority over team decisions, direction, and coordination. Instead, leadership responsibilities distribute across team members based on expertise, context, and situational needs.
Key characteristics of leaderless structures:
| Characteristic | Description |
|---|---|
| Distributed authority | No single person holds final decision-making power |
| Rotating leadership | Different members lead based on task requirements |
| Collective accountability | Team shares responsibility for outcomes |
| Peer coordination | Members self-organise without hierarchical direction |
| Consensus-oriented | Decisions emerge through dialogue rather than directive |
This structure differs fundamentally from traditional hierarchy, where designated leaders hold authority over specific functions, decisions, and team members. Leaderless teams replace positional authority with expertise-based influence and collective responsibility.
Organisations choose leaderless structures for several reasons:
1. Equality and Collaboration
When YG Entertainment launched Blackpink without a leader, CEO Yang Hyun Suk explained: "I didn't want them to have a leader because I want all of them to be like friends, work things out among themselves so that they can come up with better results." The philosophy prioritises peer relationships over hierarchy.
2. Diverse Expertise Distribution
As Blackpink member Lisa noted, the group lacks a leader "because all four members have things they're good at, and they all have certain leadership qualities." When expertise distributes broadly, concentrating authority in one person may limit rather than enhance team capability.
3. Creative Freedom
Hierarchical structures can constrain creativity by channelling ideas through approval processes. Leaderless teams enable direct collaboration without gatekeeping, potentially accelerating innovation.
4. Agility and Speed
Without waiting for leader approval, teams can respond faster to opportunities and challenges. Members closest to situations make decisions without escalation delays.
5. Engagement and Ownership
Distributed responsibility creates broader ownership. When everyone leads, everyone invests more fully in outcomes.
Academic research on shared leadership reveals nuanced findings:
Positive findings:
Cautionary findings:
Research suggests that shared leadership works best when teams possess high capability, clear shared purpose, and supportive organisational context—conditions not universally present.
Several notable organisations have implemented distributed leadership:
| Organisation | Structure | Notable Features |
|---|---|---|
| W.L. Gore | Lattice organisation | No traditional hierarchy; associates commit to projects |
| Valve Corporation | Flat structure | Employees choose projects; no managers |
| Morning Star | Self-management | Workers negotiate responsibilities with colleagues |
| Buurtzorg | Self-managing teams | Nursing teams operate without managers |
| Spotify | Squads and guilds | Autonomous teams with minimal hierarchy |
These organisations demonstrate that leaderless structures can scale—though each has developed specific mechanisms to address coordination and accountability challenges.
Without designated authority, leaderless teams employ various decision-making approaches:
1. Consensus
All members must agree before proceeding. This approach ensures buy-in but can slow decisions and enable minority vetoes.
2. Consent-based
Decisions proceed unless someone objects with substantive concerns. This accelerates decisions whilst maintaining safeguards.
3. Advice process
Any member can make decisions after seeking input from affected parties and experts. This balances autonomy with consultation.
4. Rotating facilitation
Different members facilitate specific decisions based on expertise relevance. Leadership rotates without hierarchy.
5. Sociocratic circles
Structured governance processes distribute authority across interconnected teams with defined domains.
Blackpink exemplifies pragmatic distribution: "They divided responsibilities," with members leading in their areas of strength whilst collaborating on shared matters.
Leaderless structures thrive under specific conditions:
1. High Individual Capability
Shared leadership assumes members can lead when required. Teams with skill gaps or experience deficits struggle without directed development.
2. Clear Shared Purpose
Without hierarchical direction, shared purpose provides alignment. Teams must deeply understand and commit to collective goals.
3. Psychological Safety
Members must feel safe expressing opinions, challenging ideas, and admitting uncertainty. Hierarchy often provides structure that compensates for low safety; leaderless teams cannot function without it.
4. Mature Interpersonal Skills
Conflict resolution, communication, and collaboration capabilities become essential when no leader mediates disputes or facilitates dialogue.
5. Supportive Organisational Context
Surrounding systems must accommodate non-hierarchical operation—performance management, resource allocation, and career progression designed for distributed leadership.
6. Appropriate Task Complexity
Complex, creative, knowledge-intensive work benefits more from shared leadership than routine operational tasks requiring coordination efficiency.
| Task Type | Leaderless Suitability | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Creative work | High | Diverse perspectives enhance innovation |
| Knowledge work | High | Expertise-based decisions improve quality |
| Problem-solving | High | Multiple viewpoints identify better solutions |
| Routine operations | Low | Coordination efficiency matters more |
| Crisis response | Low | Speed requires clear authority |
| External representation | Medium | May benefit from consistent spokesperson |
Blackpink's creative work suits shared leadership; their management company handles operational coordination, creating hybrid structure rather than pure leaderlessness.
Leaderless structures present genuine challenges:
1. Coordination Complexity
Without clear authority, coordinating across activities requires more communication. Decisions that hierarchy handles implicitly require explicit negotiation.
2. Accountability Diffusion
When everyone leads, no one may accept responsibility for failures. Collective ownership can enable collective avoidance.
3. Decision Delays
Consensus-seeking takes time. Urgent situations may demand faster resolution than distributed processes allow.
4. Interpersonal Conflict
Without leader mediation, conflicts between members can escalate or persist. Peer resolution requires skills not all possess.
5. External Interface Challenges
Organisations and stakeholders expect leadership contacts. Leaderless teams must address external communication without designated representatives.
6. Free-Rider Risk
Without leader oversight, underperformance may escape accountability. Peer pressure sometimes proves less effective than hierarchical management.
Effective leaderless teams develop mechanisms compensating for absent hierarchy:
Coordination mechanisms:
Accountability mechanisms:
Conflict resolution mechanisms:
Blackpink's management provides external coordination, allowing the group to maintain internal equality whilst benefiting from organisational support.
Moving toward distributed leadership requires deliberate transition:
Step 1: Assess readiness
Evaluate whether team capability, culture, and context support shared leadership. Not every team should attempt leaderless operation.
Step 2: Build capabilities
Develop members' leadership skills before distributing authority. Training in decision-making, conflict resolution, and facilitation prepares teams for shared responsibility.
Step 3: Clarify purpose
Ensure deep alignment on team mission and goals. Shared leadership requires shared direction.
Step 4: Define processes
Establish explicit mechanisms for decisions, coordination, and accountability. Leaderless doesn't mean structureless.
Step 5: Transition gradually
Shift authority incrementally rather than removing leadership suddenly. Build confidence through successful distributed decisions.
Step 6: Learn and adapt
Monitor effectiveness and adjust structures based on experience. Shared leadership evolves through practice.
Paradoxically, someone often helps leaderless teams succeed—though their role differs from traditional leadership:
Facilitative roles in leaderless teams:
In Blackpink, the oldest member Jisoo serves as informal connector and representative—fans call her the "unofficial leader"—whilst lacking formal authority over other members.
Honest examination reveals that truly leaderless operation proves rare. Most teams described as leaderless actually exhibit:
Informal leadership emergence:
Natural leaders arise based on personality, expertise, or circumstance. Formal leaderlessness often masks informal hierarchy.
External leadership:
Teams without internal leaders often receive direction from external sources—managers, clients, or organisational structures.
Situational leadership:
Different members lead different activities, creating distributed rather than absent leadership.
Hidden hierarchy:
Seniority, tenure, or reputation creates influence patterns resembling hierarchy without formal designation.
Blackpink operates within YG Entertainment's management structure. Their internal equality exists within external organisational hierarchy. This hybrid model—internal collaboration within external coordination—may prove more realistic than pure leaderlessness.
Traditional leadership remains appropriate when:
The question isn't whether leadership matters—it always does—but whether leadership should concentrate in individuals or distribute across teams.
A leaderless team operates without a formally designated individual holding ultimate authority over team decisions. Leadership responsibilities distribute across members based on expertise, context, and situational needs. Members self-organise, make collective decisions, and share accountability for outcomes. Examples include W.L. Gore's lattice organisation, Valve Corporation's flat structure, and Blackpink's collaborative model.
Teams can succeed without designated leaders under specific conditions: high individual capability, clear shared purpose, psychological safety, mature interpersonal skills, and supportive organisational context. Research shows shared leadership enhances performance in complex, creative, knowledge-intensive work. However, routine operations, crisis response, and teams with significant capability gaps often benefit from traditional leadership structures.
Leaderless teams employ various decision-making approaches: consensus (all must agree), consent-based (proceed unless objections), advice process (consult then decide), rotating facilitation (expertise-based leadership), and sociocratic circles (structured distributed governance). The appropriate approach depends on decision urgency, impact, and required buy-in.
Shared leadership advantages include broader ownership and engagement, faster response without escalation delays, enhanced innovation through diverse perspectives, improved member satisfaction, and better utilisation of distributed expertise. Teams with shared leadership often show higher performance in knowledge-intensive work and greater resilience through reduced dependency on single individuals.
Leaderless team disadvantages include coordination complexity, decision delays during consensus-seeking, accountability diffusion, unresolved interpersonal conflicts, external interface challenges, and free-rider risks. These challenges require compensating mechanisms that add their own overhead, potentially negating efficiency gains from removed hierarchy.
Notable organisations with distributed leadership include W.L. Gore (makers of Gore-Tex), Valve Corporation (video game developer), Morning Star (tomato processing), Buurtzorg (Dutch nursing organisation), and Spotify (through autonomous squads). Each has developed specific mechanisms addressing coordination and accountability challenges whilst maintaining flat structures.
Transitioning to shared leadership requires: assessing team readiness, building leadership capabilities across members, clarifying shared purpose, defining explicit decision and coordination processes, transitioning authority gradually, and learning through experience. Premature transition without adequate preparation often fails; successful shared leadership emerges from deliberate capability development.
The question "Who's the leader?" assumes leadership must concentrate in individuals. Blackpink's success without a designated leader—like W.L. Gore's decades of performance or Buurtzorg's healthcare excellence—suggests this assumption deserves questioning.
Yet honest analysis reveals nuance. Few teams operate truly leaderlessly. Informal leaders emerge; external structures provide direction; situational leadership distributes but doesn't eliminate authority. The practical question isn't whether to have leadership but how to distribute it appropriately.
For business leaders considering shared leadership models, several principles apply:
Context matters: Shared leadership suits some work better than others. Creative and knowledge-intensive tasks benefit more than routine operations.
Capability precedes structure: Distribute authority only when members can exercise it effectively. Premature distribution creates chaos, not collaboration.
Process replaces position: Removing hierarchy requires adding explicit mechanisms for decisions, coordination, and accountability.
Hybrid models work: Most successful "leaderless" organisations actually blend distributed internal authority with external coordination structures.
The most important insight may be this: leadership exists wherever work happens. The question is not whether to have it but how to arrange it. Blackpink's model—internal collaboration within external support—offers one answer. Your team's answer will depend on your context, capabilities, and aspirations.
As Yang Hyun Suk observed when choosing Blackpink's structure: "All four members spend time together looking for solutions." Perhaps the best teams, whether officially led or leaderless, share that commitment to collective problem-solving—regardless of what their organisational chart suggests.