The article uses terms leader and manager interchangeably, but they’re clearly not the same thing. Teams can operate quite happily without a direct manager, tho

The article uses terms leader and manager interchangeably, but they’re clearly not the same thing. Teams can operate quite happily without a direct manager, though they still need it on some level to define what the goals are. But no team can operate without leaders. Leaders and managers are different things. You can have a team where the leader and the manager are different people. You can have a team with more than one leader, where they each lead in a particular competency, or on a particular project, or on a particular day because everybody else is in a bad mood. Properly functional teams tend to self select their own leaders, based on how they view their competency (both technically and socially). Every team that works well will have one or more people that the other team members trust to make decisions, provide feedback, guidance and advice. A leader doesn’t need to have a job title. The behaviour of the team members determine who the leader is, it’s not a role management can assign to somebody. If you’re lucky, the leader of a team and it’s manager will be the same person, because the leaders will usually have more clout than the managers. But that’s often not the case.