ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how authority and responsibility relate to team performance, how team actions are coordinated and directed, and how actual job execution is controlled in operational teams. Additionally, since authority and responsibility at various levels impact safety and performance, the chapter is designed to teach you ways to organize your teams for improved performance and safety-related decision making using the concept of distributed leadership. It then describes team leadership methods, authority assignment, and the management of responsibility in order to take advantage of the strengths employees bring to the workplace. The hybrid approach to authority structure has the potential to increase operational effectiveness and efficiency over more rigid organizational structures. This requires providing excellent training to employees, creating qualification and evaluation programs to verify that employees are technically competent and proficient, creating leadership development and mentoring programs, and building high levels of trust between senior managers, team leaders, and subordinate employees.
