How Informal Hierarchies Support Organizational Success

Key Takeaways:
• Professional cleaning managers must recognize natural team hierarchies to understand workplace dynamics.
• Cultivating strong relationships with informal team leaders gives valuable insight into worker morale and staff concerns.
• Facility cleaning managers should use consistent workplace presence and conflict resolution to guide team culture.

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Cleaning operations typically have multiple independent work groups whose members spend more time together than with their formal supervisors and managers. As a result, a pecking order is formed, giving a voice to informal leaders whose opinions may or may not align with the goals and objectives of the organization. These informal leaders—and those with influence and powerful voices—can gain power that determines the work culture and how team members feel in the workplace without showing up on any organization chart.

As a manager, it is important to understand these hierarchies and relate in a way that honors their structure and builds connections. Attempting to dismantle or alter the pecking order is unproductive and ultimately disrupts operations.

Although sometimes obvious, the pecking order is not always easy to distinguish. This hierarchy develops naturally and changes frequently, depending on who may come and go. Formed on a shared interest, informal leaders arise based on an individual’s confidence, expertise, credibility, communication skills (especially if they can articulate and advance a team’s shared interest), and perceived rank.

Group perception matters. If frontline teams believe a potential leader has access to formal supervisors, their credibility grows significantly.

Of the many good reasons to form healthy relationships with these informal leaders, one is that these members can offer valuable insight into how the group is feeling and pinpoint their concerns. However, there is no shortcut to understanding a team’s dynamics and pecking order. As a formal leader, having a regular, ongoing presence with these team members is helpful.

Focus on listening to workplace dynamics. Integrating into the workplace will quickly reveal who the informal leaders are, and others will confirm them during conversations. Time is always on an organization’s side, so when groups have potential leaders competing, allow that process to play out. There is no need to react. Instead, respond to the needs of the group.

Once informal leaders are identified, managers should follow these six steps:

1) Invest time and energy in building relationships
2) Be inclusive and open to authority challenges
3) Treat everyone equally during conversations (lose titles)
4) Handle conflicts as positively as possible
5) Be empathetic
6) Maintain professional boundaries

By seeking to understand what is important to the team, the significance and importance of informal leaders in an organization’s overall success is revealed. Attempts to dismantle or alter the course of the pecking order will ultimately do more harm than good to the well-being and morale of an organization’s employees.

However, beware of charismatic but self-serving informal leaders. These are people whose divisiveness can harm organizational and worker well-being if their voices go unchallenged. The counterbalance is the consistency of a formal leader’s presence within the group, expressed goals of looking out for the team’s best interest, and an overall understanding of group dynamics and individual relationships.

Gene Woodard, R.E.H., spent more than 45 years in the cleaning industry, retiring as the director of building services at the University of Washington, before which he spent almost a decade at Emanuel Hospital in Portland, Oregon. Gene was also a founding member of the Healthy Green Schools & Colleges Steering Committee, and served for many years as an advisory board member of Facility Cleaning Decisions magazine.