#85-Agile Leadership

What is the best way to lead an agile team?  Is the concept of a "leader" a different thing in an agile environment?  These are the questions addressed in this episode.

Transcript

Agile Leadership 

Over the past few episodes, I have examined how agile can apply to business areas apart from software, how we should best measure agile processes in order to achieve our goals, and a series of common misconceptions that lead people to resist agile transformation. 

These three episodes, especially the last one, has led to a question that many of you have asked: “How much does leadership style and organizational culture determine the success of an agile process?“

The short answer is: profoundly. 

This week I want to talk about effective agile leadership.  Next week I’ll examine the impact of organizational culture on agile success.

In my experience you can adopt every aspect that agile suggests: daily stand-up meetings, iterations of work, constant prioritization and feedback, scrum boards with swim Lanes, and still completely fail in your attempts to be agile if the leadership context of your organization is not addressed. 

I do not mean to suggest that an agile organization must be hierarchically flat, that leadership needs to be minimized. On the contrary – good leadership is all the more important when it comes to agile. 

The difference starts with what we mean by the concept of leading. The pioneering business theorist Peter Drucker once made the distinction between the terms Boss and Leader. He said, essentially, that a boss is someone who uses people to get work accomplished, whereas a leader is someone who uses work to develop people.

The boss mentality states that those in charge mandate activities, control their execution, measure their output, and hold employees accountable.  It creates an environment of threat.

The leadership mentality focuses on enabling good work, coaching through impediments and blockages, and the empowerment of the team. Leaders acknowledge that one of the most valuable things an organization possesses is its workforce and the capabilities it provides. Leaders understand that if you have good, dedicated, smart people working for you then all you need to do is empower them to do that work… and if you do not have such people working for you then it will not matter what you do.

Agile leaders trust their team members, or they replace them.

A traditional leadership hierarchy will actually impede agile because it creates fear, bottlenecks, dependencies, and arbitrary ceremonies that needlessly block progress. Also, teams who are constantly waiting for approval are loathe to experiment and innovate. They are cautioned against creativity.

Agile leadership is not about dictating and steering so much as it is about tending to the health of the process and removing impediments to progress. Agile leaders hold themselves accountable to these priorities rather than demanding specific metrics be met by the team. 

Being a boss is something you choose for yourself and dictate to others by controlling their future.  Being a leader is something that you are selected for by those you lead, because they see you as a source of solutions rather than a problem to solve.

I like to think of it this way: When I call someone and they see my name on the caller ID, what is their immediate response?  If it is “uh oh” then I am a boss, which is a weak thing to be.  If it is “oh, good”, then I am a true leader and a valuable resource.

Next week I will investigate how the overall organizational culture will impact agile success.  I hope you’ll join me.