Agile 2 and Leadership
Importance of Leadership
Understanding leadership is core for understanding how a group of individuals can work together effectively.
Leadership is a complex and multifaceted issue.
Leadership is any means of getting people to follow, including inspiring people and gaining their trust. Leadership is influence
Different leadership approaches
A team often needs more than one leader, each of a different kind
A person is a leader if they have influence over others.
A Manager is a leader who has authority.
Authority: The Path-Goal Leadership Model
Guiding to choose the best paths to reach goals. Leaders job to assist and provide direction and support.
Direction to ensure individual goals are aligned with organization’s goals.
Leaders should be flexible and adjust leadership style as situations require.
Directive Leadership Behavior
Tells how to perform their tasks.
Achievement oriented Leadership Behavior
Hands-off but sets objectives. (often seen in sales, science, engineers, entrepreneurs)
Participative Leadership Behavior
Collaborative and engages in group decision making Involvement at least on level consult.
Often chosen when there is high personal involvement from subordinates.
Delegation Matrix [[Delegation Poker]] by Jurgen Appelo (Management 3.0 Book Summary)
Supportive Leadership Behavior
Focussed on satisfaction of members needs and preferences. Psychological Well-being. Especially needed with circumstances that are psychologically and physically distressing.
Authority: Soft Forms of Leadership
Leadership that does not work through making commands
Coaching
Mentoring
Teaching
Train someone in a specific domain of knowledge and shift between coach, mentor too
Coordinating
take charge of dependencies
Facilitating
- leads a group by coordinating the interactions
- ensures everyone is being heard
- ensures discussion stays on point
- the point of not actively participating
otherwise inspiring or motivating
Authority: When to use and when to let subordinates decide?
Agile 1 Principle: Build projects around motivated individuals, give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
The capability is highly relevant to how much autonomy a team should be given.
Socratic Leadership
Socratic leadership provides an interesting approach to provide leadership tuned to the capability. While working with Socratic Leadership one can also access the teams capabilities and start with high drive by the group. Based on gaps discovered one can decide what form of leadership to apply.
Servant Leadership
Term coined by Robert Greenleaf - [[The Servant as Leader - Robert K Greenleaf Robert K Greenleaf Center]]
Team follows by choice.
Problem if interests of team are not aligned with interests of the organization.
Scrum Master lacks authority. Therefore they are unable to make promises or deals on their team’s behalf.
Collective Leadership
Mission Command
Decision making pushed to lowest level.
- use own judgment (not having to wait for orders)
- to make competent decision it requires sufficient knowledge and leadership skills
Comment: Indicator that everyone should develop basic leadership skills.
[[THE ART OF STRATEGY]] [[Team of Teams]]
Self organization
Problems
Leads to hidden power structures
Informal authority develops
Disagreements might evolve into conflicts. It needs leadership to resolve conflicts.
Situational Leadership
Use judgment when deciding whether to let a team decide or when intervention is necessary.
Can a situation tolerate learning through failure?
Connects well with [[#Authority: The Path-Goal Leadership Model]]
Authority: Inside, Outside, Get-things-done
Mentioned by Peter Drucker (Source?) Outward-focused leadership is about representing and advocating for a group; inward-focused leadership is about the relationship with the group, and it can be planning, organizing, directing, coordinating, or controlling (managing risk). — location: 3235 ^ref-4649
Inside Person
An Inside person is someone who can form relationships of trust, someone they look up to. E.g. a visionary CTO or product designer.
it is someone who people admire or trust or feel is competent to make big decisions. — location: 3864 ^ref-17887
Outside Person
An Outside person is someone to deal with the outside world. Outside world means the larger ecosystem a team is embedded in. Needs some form of authority to be able to make promises, to negotiate deals and to invest in resources. This person needs to manage expectations and come across personable, trustworthy, competent and visionary.
Someone to Get Things Done - The Organizer
The Organizer is someone who stays on top of everything, watches for problems, takes actions as soon as there is a problem and orchestrates discussion and timely decision making.
Leadership roles within product
Leadership roles in product development
All Leadership
- Personal involvement in the organization’s products and services seems to be a characteristic of highly successful tech companies
Insights for different functional lead roles
Linking
- Socratic Leadership
- [[Kurt Cagle-Agile 2]]
- Leader Member Exchange theory
