Leaderless teams are a new style of team that uses democracy, personal involvement, mutual respect, and trust as a foundation.

Leaderless teams are built on eight principles.

In a leaderless team, members work together and make decisions on their roles, expectations, and responsibilities.

Individuals take ownership and responsibility when given the power to make all the decisions that impact their team. They are invested in the success of the team.

The second principle is to Encourage Individual Responsibility for Group Success. In a leaderless team, the focus is on group success when encountering problems or conflict.

Principle 3 is Create Clearly Defined Roles. Team members rotate through each role to acquire the necessary skills so responsibilities can be shared.

Principle 5 is Share and Rotate Leadership. Team members' knowledge and skills are used to determine leadership roles. Shared leadership makes members more vested in the group's success.

In order to ensure team success, the team looks at the knowledge and skills of each team member and matches those skills to the needs and responsibilities of the team.

Principle 6 is to Learn to Listen and Speak. When communicating with fellow team members, there's an expectation to contribute and talk as well as to listen respectfully to different opinions. Determining the right and wrong time to speak is important. 

Healthy teams practice two-way communication where team members listen respectfully and provide feedback. Team members learn to give and receive constructive criticism.  Members also recognize the right and wrong times to speak.

Principle 4 is Encourage Equality. Modern organizations remove the concept of boss and subordinate and tap into the expertise of all team members to form a strong and productive team.

Consensus is a concept used in leaderless teams where all members agree on a thought or action.  It's principle number 7.

Consensus is a method used by healthy teams. It requires a high level of participation where individual opinions hold a lower priority than the opinion of the team. Consensus builds trust among team members.

Principle 8 of leaderless teams is Work with Purpose. When a team has a unified purpose and all members are passionate about that purpose, there is little they can't accomplish. The team focus will be on producing the best possible product because all members' voices have been heard.