Effects of Multi-team Leadership on Collaboration and Integration in Subsea Operations

Inspection, maintenance, and repair (IMR) operations in the North Sea are performed from specialized vessels. The article contributes to the understanding of leadership as being too complex to be described as the strategies and behaviors of only one person. These leaders work in concert to be facilitating and contributing to flexibility and adaptation thus initiating collaboration between teams and individuals through interaction processes. This unique leadership model allows for and generates openness, transparency and the practice of basic values like respect and helpfulness. The challenge for the leaders in subsea operations, however, is to create or contribute to the creation of an overarching collective identity to facilitate the transformation of the organization from a diversified and more fragmented organization consisting of several individual sub teams to an executive force of one overarching team supervised by one leader. A “sharedness” of mindset is developed through a set of collective communication. With shared mental models, there is a better chance of creating a collective flow of work. Openness and a short distance between leaders and subordinates also affect the ability of the organization to discover mistakes and rectify them earlier than otherwise possible. The challenge is as ever both individual and organizational: The ability to work together towards goal achievement. The paper introduces elements building a foundation for successful leading of complex multi-team operations.