Competences of First-Line Management enhancing Effectiveness of Self-Managing Teams in the Health-Care Sector

This paper focusses on what competencies first-line managers should have in their new role as coach-manager, in order to enhance the team effectiveness. Organizations in the healthcare sector have introduced self-managing teams, but the questions is whether this always works. The change of the role of the first-line manager is a big issue, and therefore, by means of a literature review, a theoretical framework has been created. A case study gave insight in what the dynamics are within self-managing teams in the healthcare sector, and helped creating a deeper understanding of this concept. Interviews with members of self-managing teams in the healthcare sector showed that an identified list of seven competencies is mostly applicable. However, the competencies for the coach-manager differs per level of team effectiveness. In order to anticipate on this difference, a new competence is suggested and the competences are compared with leader behaviors. For Livio, the non-relevance of one of the competences is interesting, together with the knowledge that a tailored approach is useful for a coach-manager. This new insight might help organizations in the healthcare sector to better understand the concept of self-managing teams, and to improve the successfulness of the implementation of self-managing teams.