“Leadership is the ability to influence or inspire others to achieve
shared goals.”
Dees, et al., 2007
When an organization transitions from traditional project
management to using Agile Methodologies, one of the first things I see most of
my clients do is have their traditional managers basically switch titles to
become Scrum Masters. Asking someone to
transition from a manager position to a leadership role is difficult at best.
Especially when we do not take the time to define what is needed for that
leadership role; much of which has to do with corporate culture, but also with
defining other aspects such as discipline, human and emotional intelligence,
ethics, establishing trust, Learning etc.
This sounds easy, but it is not. Think about what defines
leadership and how you would be able to quantify any definition.
And then there is the holistic part of quantifying good
leadership. I’ve been very fortunate in my life to have experienced excellent
leadership. As a child, I had good leadership and didn’t know it, as a United
States Marine, I experienced good and bad leadership, and the results were self-evident.
As a professional in the civilian world, I have had great managers, but few
great leaders.
When I look back and try to define good leadership, the
first thought that comes to mind is “they’ve got my back”. Regardless of the
decisions I have made, a good leader was there to guide me and protect me. I
think that a good leader will always try to encourage everyone to take the
initiative and help guide through the judgment.
This leads to the second immediate thought I had when
thinking about good leaders: “They let me use my own ideas to accomplish the
goal”. So, these leaders usually came to me with a goal and let me figure out
how to achieve it. And when I “failed”, I really didn’t. I just had an
iteration of prototyping. It was ok. As long as I learned from it and improved.
Sound familiar?
So, my message is to be more thoughtful to the leadership
roles you are seeking and those you put into those roles. Good managers are
typically very organized and can whip trough administrative activities quickly
and accurately. Good leaders can achieve results and growth in their teams.
