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Beyond Empowerment: Self-Management and Co-Leadership - real life

Beyond Empowerment: Self-Management and Co-Leadership - real life

This webinar addresses employee disengagement by exploring self-management as a modern alternative to traditional corporate hierarchies. Featuring experts from pioneering companies like Morning Star and Clever, the session will delve into the practical application of distributed leadership. Attendees will learn from real-world examples how to move beyond simple empowerment and begin implementing self-organizing teams within their own organizations.

October 15, 2025 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM (UTC)

Employee disengagement is a widespread challenge, and many organizations are questioning the validity of traditional hierarchical management. This webinar explores how you can move from a culture of mere empowerment to a practical, self-managed approach for the modern workplace.

Empowerment is a great thing, but what if you didn't have to empower at all? What if the power was already distributed? Imagine an organization without traditional leaders, where everyone is in charge of their own work and projects progress without formal hierarchy. Where people feel energized and can contribute their best work without having to wait for formal approval.

To some, this may sound like an ideal workplace—offering freedom, responsibility, and meaningful work. To others, it may seem like a utopian fantasy that isn't possible in reality.

This begs a number of questions:

  • Is the concept of self-management and self-organizing teams utopia or the real deal?
  • Why is there a growing interest in exploring the concepts behind self-management?
  • What is the difference between a self-managed organization and a co-led organization?
  • If I, as a manager, employee, or HR professional, want to help my organization move toward self-management, where should we start?

In this webinar, we have invited two expert panelists to help us answer these questions and see the bigger picture.

Doug Kirkpatrick, co-founder of the Morning Star Self-Management Institute and a pioneer who helped implement self-management at the American food-processing company Morning Star, will join us. He will enlighten us with his experiences of helping companies, large and small, take the leap into the daring adventure of going "beyond empowerment" (the title of one of his books) and truly setting their employees free.

Thea Tolstrup Bramming, Co-Leadership Partner at Clever, an electric mobility company with 400 employees operating through distributed leadership, will help us understand Clever's journey. She will share what processes and structures they are using in place of traditional hierarchy, and what outcomes and benefits this way of organizing has provided.

The webinar will be moderated by Session’s CEO, Pernille Hippe Brun.