Book Description Are you new to leadership but have a history of working with Agile methodology? Are you working with a new team and want to apply agile leadership? Do the younger generations you work with have a different perception of agile methodology? Are you tired of reading the same agile leadership tips time and again? This book was written to break the mold and pull together great leadership practices with Agile methodology principles. It will provide you with a better understanding of how to approach key leadership challenges such as communication and how to motivate your team. In this book, you will: • Learn how to accurately assess your current leadership abilities. • Understand the need for constant reflection on your professional approach. • Identify your role as a leader within an Agile team. • Discover how to bring teams back to the core of Agile principles. • Figure out how to let go of modified Agile tools. • Understand how to evaluate when tools aren't serving your team. • Learn what mentoring means within an Agile career path. • Tips on how to start working as a mentor. • Determine if you should implement coaching within your team. • Explore self-mastery to represent your team. • And so much more! Don't rely on those around you to build your leadership skills. Get started now by assessing your Agile leadership abilities and figure out how to improve yourself and empower your team. This book

provides a number of actionable tips that you can easily implement within your day-to-day work habits. What are you waiting for? Download your copy of this book right now to start on your path to Agile Leadership!

Agile Leadership Secret Practices and Tips for Successful Agile Leader

© Copyright 2021 - All rights reserved. Alex Campbell. The contents of this book may not be reproduced, duplicated or transmitted without direct written permission from the author. Under no circumstances will any legal responsibility or blame be held against the publisher for any reparation, damages, or monetary loss due to the information herein, either directly or indirectly. Legal Notice: This book is copyright protected. This is only for personal use. You cannot amend, distribute, sell, use, quote or paraphrase any part of the content within this book without the consent of the author. Disclaimer Notice: Please note the information contained within this document is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Every attempt has been made to provide accurate, up to date and reliable information. No warranties of any kind are expressed or implied. Readers acknowledge that the author is not engaging in the rendering of legal, financial, medical or professional advice. The content of this book has been derived from various sources. Please consult a licensed professional before attempting any techniques outlined in this book. By reading this document, the reader agrees that under no circumstances are is the author responsible for any losses, direct or indirect, which are incurred as a result of the use of information contained within this document, including, but not limited to, —errors, omissions, or inaccuracies. The information herein is offered for informational purposes solely, and is universal as so. The presentation of the information is without contract or any type of guarantee assurance. The trademarks that are used are without any consent, and the publication of the trademark is without permission or backing by the trademark owner. All trademarks and brands within this book are for clarifying purposes only and are the owned by the owners themselves, not affiliated with this document.

Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1: Assessing Your Agile Leadership Abilities Chapter 2: Lead a Purposeful Conversation Chapter 3: Don't Cling to Anything (Except Core Agile Principles) Chapter 4: Multi-Level Mentoring Chapter 5: Prioritize Team Development with Clear Actions Chapter 6: Work as a Spokesperson Chapter 7: Agile Leadership Through Self-Mastery Conclusion References

Introduction Working within the agile methodology often calls for you to build upon your leadership skill set quickly. How have your leadership skills developed over the years? It's likely that you've already read several books on Scrum, daily leadership habits, and of course, the core of agile methodology. In this book you will find a variety of tips, tricks, and daily habits to help you develop your agile leadership abilities. In this book you will learn how to assess your leadership skills and how to use that assessment as a starting point. Working within leadership is a journey of ongoing personal and professional development. Through that journey, you'll learn how to help others develop their skill sets and how to help companies adapt to the agile methodology. Everything within agile methodology revolves around specifics to software development teams. In this book, you'll have the opportunity to identify core leadership principles and tactics and introduce them to your agile team. Unlike other books on agile leadership, this does not rely on the core of scrum tactics. Instead, it evaluates the principles that drive high-quality leadership and the core principles of agile methodology. There are several brief mentions of modified agile and updates in the methodology that have emerged since the initial 2001 founding of the agile manifesto. Even those brief mentions don't override the absolute principles that drive agile methodology. The core principles are still impactful and present in modern software development teams. Here you'll learn how to lead conversations with purpose, reframe challenges into goals, operate as a spokesperson for your team, and develop self-mastery to set an example for any team you encounter in your career.

Chapter 1: Assessing Your Agile Leadership Abilities You've already known about Scrum, the principles, and, of course, the Agile Manifesto. As an Agile leader, you might feel as though you've developed that knowledge to the max. Or you might be fairly new to Agile leadership and know that you could benefit from any information on the topic. This book does not cover the basics or foundation of Agile methodology. Instead, it looks closely at actionable tips and methodical practices that any Agile leader could implement into their day-to-day work. There are also elements here that focus exclusively on key challenges that Agile leaders experience. The first step is to assess your current Agile leadership abilities. An Agile leader must fulfill key roles to keep their team moving forward, protected from external factors, and supported internally. It is not an easy role. An Agile leader will: • Create a culture that embraces experimentation • Encourage constant learning • Collaborate with employees across all levels of the company • Find/establish methodology.

common

values

aligned

with

Agile

• Create an organizational structure consistent with Agile principles • Drive their team toward the company's greater goals This list is not exhaustive, but any Agile or manager is well-aware that this list could continue. They are the guiding light, the visionary, and often the go-getter within the company. Leadership skills are a must.

Agile Leaders Must Frequently Reassess Their Skills Even those who were leaders before the Agile Manifesto was written should regularly assess their leadership skills. A lot has changed in the world, in technology, and across many workplaces since 2001. But how often should you reassess your leadership skills? We recommend that you assess your skills and performance annually, the same that you do for your staff. Conduct your own annual review and see how you held up to your expectations. Developing your leadership skills is a life-long journey. To assess them, you can start with these simple and straightforward steps. 1. Identify what you are doing right. These aren't necessarily your strengths, but areas where you're already performing at or above the benchmark. 2. Evaluate your skillset, not for your position, but for the needs of your company and team. 3. Address potential opportunities that are just beyond grasp because of skill set gaps. 4. Question whether there are any barriers blocking you from access or entry to specific departments or resources. 5. Survey how you spend your time; consider using an app such as Toggl or Hours to monitor how you spend your time during the day. There are some skills that are difficult, if not impossible, to selfassess. Ask your trusted colleagues to provide feedback on your communication and planning skills. Many leaders feel as though they're successful planners but don't realize how they've missed meaningful moments because of poor planning. Additionally, many leaders may feel as though they're providing all the communication the team needs, but the team isn't receptive. Communication and planning are mission critical soft skills for Agile teams and projects. Most people cannot judge their skill set accurately.

If you're struggling to truly gauge your most important skills, then consider these options: • Speaking with your direct manager • Survey your team using anonymous response • Use skills assessments from reputable sources • Meet with a career counselor (even if you don't job seeking) Again, you should assess and reassess your skills and development at least once a year. As an Agile leader, you devote a substantial amount of time to helping your team develop and grow, don't neglect your growth in the process.

Tips and Practices to Implement into Your Daily Leadership Approach Not every blog post from Scrum or Agile industry organizations is helpful or even reasonable. It is a challenge to find appropriate and useful tips or practices. In this book, you'll find a collection of actionable changes and improvements you can make to your workday immediately. These practices center exclusively around the core of Agile principles and methodology rather than "modernized" or updated Agile. The trouble that most professionals report that changing the Agile manifesto and Agile practices is a key problem. Change itself isn't the problem, and Forbes thoroughly covered how Agile would naturally adapt and evolve to changing conditions and demands. The problem is that those outside of software development are pushing Agile to become something it is not. The Agile Manifesto was written to protect software development teams and their work. That manifesto represents principles and key areas of compromise where developers could meet client and end-user needs. Project managers and leaders across nearly every conceivable department have seen the success of Agile teams and naturally wanted to reconstruct this triumph with their own teams. Imitation is a compliment, but in this case, it's muddled the purpose of the methodology.

When evaluating whether a tip, trick, hack, or practice is right for you and your team, compare it to the manifesto's key ideals. • Will it serve to satisfy the customer? • How will this trick to tip impact value? • Is it accepting of change? • Does it foster collaboration? • Will the practice support and encourage the individuals on the team? • How does it impact communication? • Is it in line with good design and consistent pacing? If there is any part of the proposed tip or practice that goes against these core elements of the 12 principles, then reconsider it. Most tips and hacks seen online look to cut corners or trim down working time and result in lost value. Don't accept any practice which takes away value from the team, company, or end-user. Additionally, don't accept tips that restrict change or reduce collaborative efforts.

Consistent and Iterative Improvement

Chapter 2: Lead a Purposeful Conversation Communication, specifically face-to-face conversations, is a keystone of Agile. Any agile leader should consistently work to improve their communication skills, no matter their experience or skill set. It isn't enough to respond to emails quickly or answer every call. The better quality comes from meaningful conversations that require your presence and undivided attention. Although it's extremely important to meet the baseline expectations, there are other elements you should work on throughout your career. One is conversation leading. Now, many professionals will argue against conversation leading. These professionals cite the key issue of leading a conversation in only the way that you want it to end. That is not the point of this tip. You will not need to lead every conversation, and you will not need to employ this tip at frequent turns. It's likely that after you use this with your team members a few times, they will quickly identify your point. Using conversation leading does not need to be manipulative or even biased. Here are the elements that contribute to conversation leading, how to do it, and what you can accomplish as a leader with this tip.

Agile and Conversations When companies or leaders see that Agile is not as effective as it should be, they often respond by "Agiling harder." The answer isn't to spend more time with Agile practices, but instead focus on the quality of your conversations. Agile principles prioritized face-to-face communication and emphasized the importance of clear and concise communication efforts. All too often, people try to work through difficult conversations but struggle because of defensiveness and rigidity. These two elements, which are quite common and completely normal in conversations, can destroy an Agile team and undermine the leader. Keep in mind that at its core, agile is about the development of human skills, including communication, to foster collaboration.

Leading difficult conversations or conversations with varying opportunities can be a challenge. Before diving into how you can lead a conversation, it's important to identify some distinctions between agile communication and standard business interactions. Agile communication includes both formal and informal methods of exchanging information and discussing ideas. Agile principles identify these core differences: 1. Developers, particularly Agile leaders, must collaborate and communicate with other business professionals. 2. The most effective and efficient method for conveying information is face-to-face. 3. Simplicity is paramount. 4. Reflection is key to progress. Everyone must reflect at regular intervals on how to become more effective. Andrea leaders must be able to clearly communicate with their own development team and the other business professionals involved across the company. This is best done through face-to-face conversation. As the person often representing the agile team in various forums, it's important that the agile leader understands how to communicate the value of working software, as well as how the team prioritizes and evaluates documentation. Indirectly comparing traditional approaches to communication management and agile approaches, it's evident that agile leaders take the bulk of the responsibility. In a traditional management approach, team members might not make any particular effort to participate in in-person conversations. Traditional communication in the workplace often takes place through email, memorandums, companywide notices, and phone calls. With agile project management, the leader must make an effort to establish face-toface communication and to involve the team members. Traditional communication management methods also placed an extraordinarily high value on documentation. Given the nature of software documentation and the methodology of working in

iterations, documentation within an agile project is constantly undergoing change. Simplicity and functional software take priority over detailed documentation. The lack of detailed documentation makes effective in-person communication even more important. Business professionals involved in the project can’t rely on agile documentation to make conclusions or to proceed with their own duties in the project. Finally, team members in traditional projects would attend a high volume of meetings, and many of those might not be useful or necessary. Agile projects work with many restrictions on meetings. The agile leader may take part in a daily scrum or daily standup meeting, but most other meetings have a set time limit and structure to improve efficiency and to promote effective communication. That means that each team member and the agile leader must carefully identify which conversations are important and establish their staff on known issues or challenges before entering the meeting. Now that you have had the chance to review the conversation relevant aspects of agile methodology, we can dive into how to lead a conversation and why you would choose to do so.

How to Lead a Conversation Leading a conversation often relies on principles from the Art of Conversation and Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. These two texts look at affective conversation structures, how a leader should establish themselves in a conversation, and how to employ active listening. Again, leading a conversation is not about accomplishing your ideal outcome. The purpose of leading the conversation is to make sure that the interaction results in clear and effective communication. Lead with a Smile and a Compliment No one wants to have a conversation with someone who is already in a bad mood. You may know the situation all too well. An employee knocks on your office door while you're in the middle of working on something, and after a grumble, they open the door and quickly identify you're not only busy but also not in a good mood. They ask

their question in a hurried and mumbled voice only to get a quick reply, and then they're off. This situation probably covers most office communication interactions. It is not effective, and it doesn't promote future communication efforts either. Even if you are not in a good mood, even if this particular team member is not your favorite person, and even if you are busy, stop what you were doing when the conversation starts. Every team member and every businessperson involved in the agile project deserves your undivided attention because the project deserves it. They also deserve to have that conversation start out on a good note. Always begin your conversations with a smile and a compliment. Make sure that your compliment is genuine, clear, and specific. Here are a few examples: "Hi Jennifer, I saw your email last night. It was really clear." "Hey, Markus, your question in the standup this morning addressed a key issue. Thank you for speaking up." "Allison, you accomplished a lot during our reflection meeting," Of course, your compliments don't have to be work-related. They simply need to be sincere and specific. These opening lines might seem like fluff, but they helped push open the door for discussion. By delivering a smile in a compliment, you can help drop that person's defenses if they might be coming in with the belief that you would get defensive or you might not agree with what they have to say. Ask Questions and Repeat People love to be asked questions because it gives the sensation that they have the validation you need or that they have the answer you want. You can start asking questions through small talk, or you can dive right into the meat of the issue. Essentially questions lubricate the conversation and make everything move smoothly. Asking questions isn't enough. You need to employ active listening at your highest ability level during this part of the conversation.

This can mean answering a question with a question through "tell me more" opportunities. For example, if an employee comes in with a question and they're not being upfront or completely transparent with what they're seeking, then ask a bit more about the problem they are facing. You can ask when they noticed the problem, what led them to this concern, or how highly they would prioritize this particular issue. If they come to you with a concern that doesn’t necessitate a question, then you can start diving into how that matter would affect the team or the project. By asking questions, you're establishing your role in the conversation. You are the recipient, but also the leader. Being inquisitive allows the other person to engage more actively in the conversation, and it opens them up to being more transparent with the information they are trying to convey. Use questions to let the other person communicate clearly. Finally, repeat the answer you receive. Slightly rephrase what they told you in response to your question. Some leaders find this frustrating because they expect their team or other business specialists to provide able to provide the specifics and move on quickly. That is the underlying problem in most instances of miscommunication. What one person told you and what you understand could be two different things. You don't need to do this aggressively and don't need to repeat the answer every single time. Here are a few guiding rules to help you establish when to repeat the answer you received and when you can just move on: • If the answer was more than two sentences long, then repeat the key takeaways to confirm that you understood clearly. • If the answer did not directly address your question or lead to more questions, rephrase their answer, and follow up with the elements of the question that weren't answered. • If the answer was unclear, then explain that you didn't understand but fill in what details you did understand from the answer.

Establish Clarity on What Really Matters At the end of the conversation, it's important to extract the most important elements to identify what really matters. Nearly every conversation will impact a team member, you directly, the project, or someone involved in the project. It is vital to end a conversation by clearly identifying what is more important and whom the conversation will affect. Of the many ways that you could end a conversation positively, sorting out key takeaways is one of the most useful methods. You certainly don't want to awkwardly sit in silence and then mention you need to make a phone call. Instead, identify one or two key takeaways from the conversation you just had. These could be outstanding questions that you need to answer or issues that the employee needs to review. The key takeaway could even be that this is a team matter that needs discussion at the next daily Scrum or the next reflection meeting. It is important to establish clarity at the end of the conversation to assure the other person that you were genuinely listening and intend to take any necessary actions. Agile leaders must act quickly because of the rate at which these projects change. If something needs action, but the leader waits a week, that action could be null, or it could have seriously disrupted the current iteration.

When Should a Leader Control an Agile Conversation? One important aspect to cover before moving on to the next practice is the key difference between directing and controlling conversations. A leader should never control a conversation in regard to an agile project. In traditional management methods, it could be reasonable or even necessary for a leader to control a conversation. This often happens during discussions of disciplinary action, employee coaching, and establishing processes within a team. Those traditional methods of handling communication do not align with agile principles and don't fit within the agile methodology.

Agile leaders must take care that they are only directing the conversation. Lead the person that you're engaging with into clear communication and encourage their participation in a volley rather than you speaking at them. Even for simple questions, an employee may want a yes or no answer, but within an Agile leader's role as a mentor, the leader should strive to constantly enhance their team members' skill set. It may be easier to provide a yes or no answer, but that does not mean that it is the appropriate way to address the conversation. Using the techniques above, such as asking questions and identifying key takeaways at the end of the conversation, can help direct your team member into improving their communication skills. Not only are you helping improve their communication skills set, but you can also assist them in better identifying problems. An employee may approach you with a specific problem but might not realize that they have not identified the root of that problem. By asking questions, you can help the employee identify the root cause of an issue without just giving them the answer. Another reason to lead rather than control in agile conversation is to cultivate collaboration. When a leader controls a conversation, they are explicitly refusing to accept any answer or outcome that does not align with their goals. Agile methodology places a heavy emphasis on collaboration; meaning that their leaders must be exceptionally skilled in active listening and accepting of a compromise. If you are controlling a conversation, then you are not giving that team member the opportunity to work within agile principles, as well as showing that you have no interest in collaboration. To take away from this trip, always provide your undivided attention when a team member or agile involved businessperson needs to have a conversation. As you have this conversation, make sure that you start out on a good note. Smile and offer a compliment. Then, as you move into the meat of the conversation, make sure that you are asking questions and explaining how you understood that person's answer. Finally, and your conversation by quickly identifying or reviewing action items or those affected by your conversation.

Chapter 3: Don't Cling to Anything (Except Core Agile Principles) You may have noticed there's been a lot of discussion in recent years about changing agile. Some have even called this modified agile, or modern agile. Neither of those terms refers to the actual agile methodology. The trouble is that when business professionals talk about changing or updating agile, they aren't referring to the manifesto or the methodology but instead the tools. That only goes to show that these professionals don't clearly understand the agile methodology. As an agile leader, it is imperative that you only hold fast to core agile principles. Those 12 principles outlined in the original agile manifesto will help guide your team through the project. There are many times that these projects will not benefit from the tech-savvy tools that have emerged, such as Atlas Asian or Monday. Both of those tools could be extremely useful and make communicating and exchanging information easy throughout your team. That doesn't mean that these tools or any other "Agile" tool are right for every agile project. We often find agile leaders who have a set of systems that they use time and again. The trouble is that agile projects cannot function based on a template, as it doesn't promote collaboration or innovative thinking. Implement these practices and tips to make sure that you are not allowing modern tools and systems for agile to overtake your agile project.

Workplaces Change – The Methodology Does Not The workplace will always change, and we've seen in the past few months that workplaces can dramatically change overnight. The principles of the agile manifesto will not change. These were brought together by a think-tank and agreed upon by the big names in software development of the time. Changing any one of these principles would insinuate that agile no longer represented valuable software, customer satisfaction, or collaboration between developers

and businesspeople. Certainly, none of those changes are reasonable. So how can you handle workplace changes without changing the methodology? You're going to accomplish this by cultivating a team that understands agile inside and out. Then you're going to work with that team and with any future agile team to eliminate poorperforming tools. Finally, you will need to take the helm on eliminating processes or procedures that don't work for your team. For an agile leader, this seems a bit more disruptive than what is typically done in an agile project. The trouble is that as companies and business professionals have adapted their understanding of agile, it has worked away from the core principles and put software development teams at risk. It is possible that due to workplace changes, you may need to take a more assertive role as a leader to protect the agile principles and your team. You can accomplish all of these things as a leader.

Cultivate a Team that Acknowledges the Core of Agile There are many ways that you can cultivate a deep level of agile knowledge within your team. You can start by ensuring that you don't refer to people as resources. Every individual team member not only deserves to be treated as a person but based on agile principles, expects that treatment. People are always people, and that means that you must devote time to make sure that those people have access to actual resources. The people themselves are not a singular or standalone resource. After you stop referring to your team as a resource, you need to dive into what is important to them. This seems like it may a little off the beaten path from teaching your team about agile, but it is an important step in making sure that the team is dedicated to their career development. You and the team members should not waste time developing a skill set or knowledge base that the person has no interest in using.

There are people who are natively wired into identifying passions and having an intense drive. Others don't have that intensity, but it doesn't mean that they don't have interests or a passion. Dedicate time to exploring what is important to your team. Then assess how you can tie that into the agile methodology and the person's day-today work. For example, you may have a team member who is not particularly dedicated to development but does have a passion for quality software. You may see this expressed through a consistent frustration with slow or problematic software and tools that you use daily. Sit down with that person and dive right into the agile principles of producing valuable software created with the end-user in mind. Together you can look at the different ways that various software systems could improve if those developers had focused on the enduser instead of the company's goals at the time. It's easy to spot the outdated software that was clearly meant to meet specific company goals of 10 or 15 years ago. That software wasn't designed with the end-user in mind.

Start to Fix Things Together Leaders often find themselves as the key problem solver or the point person for discussing organizational issues. Because of the scrum system, this really should not fall too like one person. The agile team is collectively responsible for the organization of the team and the project. All the same agile projects frequently face this common challenge. Stop having discussions or meetings about organizational issues and instead focus on fixing them together. The best way to approach this is to use a double-pronged response. First, lead by example and take ownership of difficult issues, acknowledging that they require adjustment or retooling. Then give ownership to people within the team. This is a handing over power given that most agile teams don't work with the hierarchical system. One of the major benefits of agile teams is that organizational issues should, in theory, be easy to solve.

The trouble is that the team members often have different ideas on how to resolve problems, particularly organizational issues. Often the best solution is to reduce the level of management. Always refer back to the original agile principles, which site that businesspeople and developers must work together. The agile leader or process owner will be the one who operates as an advocate or spokesperson for the developer team. When there are organizational issues or key issues within the team, it is often because the spokesperson for the developer team is speaking too much. It's likely that you may need to step back and allow the developers to speak for themselves. It's imperative that functional leaders, executives, sponsors, and developers all have open lines of communication. This allows everyone to be truly effective.

Eliminate Poor Performing Tools Common tools for agile teams include Kanban boards, Trello, Monday, git, Jenkins, and many others. Atlassian and many other companies have established themselves as tool creators for agile teams, which means that there are vast amounts of agile related software solutions and systems. There are, of course, pen and paper tools as well, such as Kanban boards, 4D boards, and some agile teams have even been known to use stream mapping for complex systems. So how can you identify which tools are poor performing and which tools you should eliminate? Unlike the early days of agile, many tools, including Jenkins, can help identify a continuous integration and build or test the software project during integration changes. However, Jenkins is not the only tool. It is simply one of the best known that serves this function. You should always reference your team to identify if they are aware of a better tool or if they've worked with a different integration tool that could serve this project better than Jenkins. Agile principles largely showcase the idea that tools and processes are secondary to everything else. Unfortunately, a natural habit among humans is to stick with what we know. If you've used Jenkins in the past, then it's likely it would be a top choice for you to use again in the future.

If you suspect that a tool is poor performing, or it seems as though the team is spending more time learning to use the tool or tinkering with the tool, then it's time to pull the plug. The team should not have to manage a tool. These tools should work effectively and with little maintenance or attention. There are countless agile tools available. You are not stuck with one individual tool. If you're working within a company that is strapped on budget, then there are a variety of free or open-source agile tools that are still secure and safe to use. The core here is that you're urging the team to interact and explore more performance tools related to agile. By accepting that you do not have to use the same tools repeatedly, and by searching out the easiest, most effective tools available, the team is encouraged to work on agile principles rather than within the confines of a system.

Embrace Change One of the most important insights on agile leadership and methodology over the last few years comes from Walter Stulzer, an executive director with Future Works. He emphasized that software developers have already solved some of our biggest issues, and that is true for agile teams as well. Sulzer addressed a few key goals within Future Works. This is one of the unique situations where an agile approach, not related to software development, had a meaningful and apparent impact. He stated, "We wanted to change, but literally could not." Future Works had specific goals, and over the course of two years, they had not accomplished any of them. After adapting to the agile methodology where people and collaboration were prioritized, they accomplished about half of their goals in a sixmonth period. They identified that many of their initial ideas were not necessary and that the results they were looking for didn't serve their customers, so they pivoted on those goals. Fighting change is not aligned with Agile principles, the core of Agile circles around embracing change, which means that you must keep that as a central focus throughout your project. As the Agile leader, you must set the example and teach your team to embrace change. Here are additional ways to help your employees embrace change:

• Create community forums for discussing change outside of already arranged or scheduled meetings. Establish a Slack channel or email where everyone can drop their concerns, questions, and suggestions. • Ask for employee feedback and actively seek to improve employee engagement. • Dedicate time to training your employees on the principles and actively exploring what they mean to your team. You can cultivate a desire to learn about change management and Agile methodology through your leadership. Showcase what it takes to lead organizational change, lead a team, and have pivotal conversations about change and Agile principles. While a knowledge of the Agile principles is key, those principles must act as a stable foundation. It is a question of whether your team acknowledges them as carved in stone or if the see them as interchangeable. Cultivate an environment of embracing change, and you will have established the foundation of what your team members need to thrive within the Agile methodology.

5 Things You Can Do to Help Your Team Embrace Change and Agile Principles While you can have agile tools around, such as Scrum and Kanban, a leader should look for other ways to introduce the values and principles of agile. You want to make sure that your team understands how agile really works and why the principles stand the way they do. You'll also want to evaluate how lean, Kanban, and scrub lend themselves to these guiding principles and support the team through favorable conditions. Emphasize the Importance of the Conditions Surrounding Software Innovation The reason that agile cannot be adapted for various departments and certain types of companies is because it is best suited for the conditions found in software innovation. Teams that are working

together to solve a complex and mostly unknown problem basically require the principles of the agile methodology to thrive and succeed. Work with your team to explore these conditions and how they are present in your workplace. Ask questions such as: • Does your team need to work in modules or small and contained chunks? • Will much of your work rely on creative problem-solving? • Does the project or team require collaboration from endusers? • Is the problem or end-result at least partially unknown? Focus on Keeping Things Small As you build your team and help them develop their understanding of Agile principles, it's important to keep things small. Keep the team small, the meetings small, and the iterations small. Usually, companies will introduce Agile methodology slowly, so you may be the first Agile professional in the organization. Agile also tends to spread quickly. The trouble that many Agile leaders face is that they need to introduce it slowly, making sure that other departments don't distort the principles within company practices. Allow for Customization Don't confine your team into working in one specific way. If your team arrives at different times, then your daily Scrum may not happen as soon as you get in the office. Make sure that when your team or organization customizes or adjusts the typical agile approach that you discuss it as a team. It's imperative that you use agile purposefully and employ agile techniques as often as possible. Working in project cycle times, undergoing review after each iteration, and carefully tracking the work in progress and changes applied to the project are core elements of the methodology. That does not mean that your team must follow a prescribed scrum approach.

Respond Immediately Some of the most common mistakes that happen in a new agile team revolve around response time. Software development teams must take on changes with lightning speed, and that often means that agile leaders must respond just as quickly. When a team member has a question or when a process owner is involved, the agile leader cannot delay. This often brings in the value of improvisation. A team may have the opportunity and flexibility to modify particular practices or approve changes to certain elements of the project. Often work velocity and immediate response are prioritized over other facets of daily work. These tips and practices can help you build agile principles right into your team's daily work habits. Ideally, your team will understand agile methodology as well as you do and be able to identify when they can move forward and when they need to discuss something as a team. Work closely with each team member to make sure that they have a foundational knowledge of agile principles and to build successful Agile habits.

Chapter 4: Multi-Level Mentoring All Agile leaders should conduct multidirectional mentoring as a standard practice. That means that you should both have a mentor and mentor those who work on your team. If you are a Scrum Master or an Agile leader, then it is likely that you are already filling the role of teacher, mentor, facilitator, and coach. How much time you dedicate to these aspects of your role and how you approach this position can determine your success with the project and that team. Many Agile leaders incorrectly assume that they don't have to provide coaching or mentorship because of the freedom and collaborative efforts established within the Agile methodology. Just because there is an obvious lack of a hierarchical structure does not mean that there isn't a single person or source within the team that offers guidance and insight. While your role is certainly different from a standard supervisory position, you must still strive to help the team members improve their skill set and develop their abilities.

Understand Agile Mentoring and Coaching Before diving further into multidirectional mentorship, it's important to distinguish the differences between a mentor and a coach. Agile leaders are expected to fulfill both roles, but what should that look like? As a coach, you must cultivate a conversation that can open up the exploration of different values and career directions. The coach will direct the conversation, and the conversation will revolve exclusively around the coachee. These conversations should start with a clear end result, such as creating a plan or specific action the coachee can take to improve their work or professional development. Agile coaches should have faith in their team members. It's not always transparent, and there are times that a coach should or will intervene when they don't agree with their subject's plans. A coach and a mentor have shared experiences and are similar. Both have a deep commitment to the individual's success. A coach

is more involved in helping someone take decisive action that will eventually lead to more confidence in decision making and problemsolving. As a mentor, you must act as a trusted advisor or sage. The conversations that a mentor and protege have won't always result in a singular action, and they won't always revolve around the individual receiving mentorship. The person that you are mentoring will understand that you have a decent level of experience and have worked in your field or industry. This puts you in a position to provide practical advice and assistance to foster professional development and personal growth. As a mentor, you have a lot more opportunity to help this person grow and encounter new experiences. Where a coach is seeking to push someone in the direction of success, a mentor is there to provide advice that could lead to the development of greater experience and skills.

Should You Be a Coach? If your organization is new to using Agile, then you may unintentionally become the Agile coach. As an Agile leader, you are likely the point person for information regarding Agile methodology and change management. The volume and complexity of digital transformation, transitions, and initiating a software development project can easily become overwhelming. Taking on the mantle of an official Agile coach does bring additional responsibilities. Some of these you may have handled out of sheer necessity, such as handling the transition backlog, and other responsibilities may have fallen by the wayside entirely. An Agile coach should develop a high-quality Agile training program for the organization. Not only does that mean implementing Agile within the software development team, but also assessing where that team affects other workflows within the organization. In Agile culture also devote themselves to acting as a guiding hand or providing short-term training to those who need to work with the software development team. As an Agile leader, it's likely that you

have already spent time working with business professionals to enhance their understanding of the Agile methodology. Working as a coach allows you to support your team more, but it does require more of your time. It is possible that you could emphasize to the Scrum Master or your direct manager that an Agile coach, separate from your position, would benefit the organization. Keep in mind that not every manager, supervisor, or Agile professional is fit for coaching. There are key business coaching skills that lend themselves to effective work. If you lack these skills, it is possible to cultivate them and improve as part of your professional development, but there are many times that people lack the soft skills or basic necessities to act as a proper and effective coach. Goal setting is a key function of coaching, and given that Agile is extremely goal-focused, it's likely you do have this skill. The question is whether you can help others set and meet goals. A good coach should help individuals reframed problems as goals. For example, if the coachee discusses a difficulty or obstacle, the coach should step in and work to create an action plan to overcome that obstacle, resulting in a clear goal. Another key skill is the ability to insightfully extract unsaid information. This skill usually sums up to the word, looking. How effective are you at looking at the body language of others and learning about that person's emotional state or level of commitment? Much of our culture downplays the usefulness of the skill by emphasizing the rudeness associated with staring or that intently looking at someone may be overbearing or intimidated. Regardless of the cultural feelings surrounding this skill, it's important that you can visually identify obstacles, commitment levels, and key information delivered only through body language. Although there are many other skills that play a role in coaching, the final one that we will visit here is the ability to question. Asking questions is not enough; you must ask the right questions and in the right order. The series of questions that a coach should present to their coach E is that the first should focus attention, the second

should elicit new ideas, and the third question should foster commitment. Similar to how a counselor or therapist would ask questions of their patients, allowing them to naturally arrive at their own conclusion, a coach should ask questions in a way that focuses attention, pulls out creativity and innovative thinking, and secures a commitment to action. The best-case scenario for most Agile leaders is to have another coach brought on during the early stages of introducing Agile methodology into a company. That way, you can take a back seat to the initial training and focus on guiding the project through its early phases. If the company has used Agile methods for a fair amount of time, then it is possible that you could serve as both the mentor and the coach.

Before You Start to Mentor, Get a Mentor It can be hard for many professionals to hear, especially if they are at a midpoint or later in their careers. It is likely that no matter your years of experience, you need a mentor. Even C-Suite executives can benefit from having a mentor to rely on and to use as a sounding board. Finding the right mentor can change your career, and it can dramatically affect your perspective on project management, working with people, and how you can make an impact in your industry. Many people struggle and finding a mentor or finding the right mentor. You certainly don't want to rely on someone for feedback or input when they aren't aware of your career goals or their goals don't align with yours. It is not enough to have a mentor. You must have the right mentor for your career path and your goals. For Agile professionals, this is exceptionally difficult because many feel as though they must have a mentor who is also proficient or extremely experienced in Agile methodology. That is not exclusively accurate. It is beneficial for an Agile professional to have a mentor who has an in-depth knowledge of Agile methodology, but that does not mean that you should only look at Agile professionals as mentors. Bear in mind that much of Agile methodology is intuitive and fairly reasonable when it comes to human or workplace management. A

good leader, regardless of the team they lead or the Department in which they work, should understand that processes are more important than people. Those same great leaders should inherently understand that progress is better than perfection. Much of Agile methodology is present in other departments, and much of Agile methodology can be easily explained in a short period. If you have a professional that you look up to, who understands your goals and wants to help you actualize those goals, then whether they know Agile or not is less important than what they can deliver to you as a mentor. So, where should you start on your search for a mentor? You should reach out to professionals that you've encountered personally in your career that you looked up to. If you can't think of anyone that would be a good fit for you, then consider looking for a mentor through a platform such as SCORE. Even platforms like Meetup can provide the ability to connect with other professionals in your industry and open the door to possible mentorship agreements. When discussing the possibility of having a mentor relationship, you should discuss specific goals and how you believe their input and guidance could help you in your career. It is also important to discuss the key goals you have in the upcoming weeks or months. For example, you might explain that you're leading a new team that is not familiar with Agile, and you need help and developing better communication skills. That mentor should work with you to identify two or three key milestones or goals that you can accomplish quickly to enhance your communication abilities. One of the most important reasons to get a mentor before you become one is to understand the role of a mentee. In this role, it is your responsibility to make sure that you establish achievable goals, meet consistently, and accept or appropriately respond to feedback. You are the person responsible for taking notes, following up, and establishing expectations within the relationship. Being a mentee is a lot of work, and many who jump right into working as a mentor don't realize how much effort the mentee should devote to the relationship.

How to Begin Mentoring Your Team Members Mentoring relationships are entirely voluntary, and they rely on the mentee to initiate that type of relationship. You cannot force your team members into accepting you as a mentor. The best you can do to kick off the idea is to present your experience as a mentee and discuss how your mentor has helped you through your career or in recent weeks if it's a new relationship. If your team members approach you with the idea of you acting as their mentor, then it is important to start that relationship on a good foot. It is important that you understand your role as a mentor since it is so different from acting as a coach or a mentee. Understand that you are a confidant, but you are not a therapist, and you provide resources but not solutions. Many leaders have to work to draw the line between being a resource and offering answers or actively listening to this person's challenges without acting as a therapist. The best place to start with a new mentoring relationship is to establish clear goals. Make sure that you don't pull this person away from their goals and that you instead foster innovative thinking that will help them attain goals. Ask this person questions about what they hope to accomplish through a mentoring relationship and what they expect from you. Then explain to them what a mentee should do to uphold and cultivate this relationship. Always be sure that you close your meetings with a clear statement about the next steps your mentee needs to take to achieve their goals. Always bring the focus back to what they are attempting to accomplish and what actionable steps should lead them to success. To prompt clear communication and follow up on your mentee's part, you might ask them to email you meeting notes and an outline of their actions over the next week or two that should lead them to their goal. The best you can do is to operate as an approachable resource. A mentor should always want to be helpful but serving as a good listener usually isn't enough. In addition to being a good listener, you must act as a supportive person. The thin line for many mentors is

being supportive, while also being clear on the level of commitment and attention the mentee needs to devote to reach their goal and support the relationship. Finally, there is the matter of when to end a mentoring relationship. This is something you'll experience both as a mentee and a mentor. As a mentee, you may work through many mentors in your professional life, and it's possible to have more than one at the same time. In the event that these are positive and ongoing relationships, they may lead to long-term professional friendships that naturally worked out of mentorship without a formal ending of that agreement. There are also times when a mentorship doesn't work out. If, as a mentee, you realize that your mentor is simply telling you what to do or holding you accountable but not providing insight or resources, then it is time to end the relationship. Additionally, if the mentor doesn't have the time you expect to work with them, then it may be an option to put the relationship on hold, or to find another mentor who does have time available for you. Serving as a mentor if you realize that the mentee is not devoted to the relationship, then it may be time for you to end the mentorship. If you identify that the mentee is not following through, then it is fair for you to end the relationship. You can explain that because they were not taking discussed action or attempting to reach their goals, then you can't devote your time to their professional development. If you need to end a mentorship for this reason, make sure that the conversation centralizes around the lack of commitment rather than elements of their personality or skill set.

Chapter 5: Prioritize Team Development with Clear Actions In most workplaces, managers feel as though they are responsible for their skill set but not that of their staff. Many companies and managers will only prioritize development when a team is clearly lacking a skill necessary for conducting their day-to-day work. As an Agile leader, you are only as strong as your team's abilities. Additionally, your projects are only as effective and productive as your team's skill set allows. Take this opportunity to deliver something that most leaders and managers fail to provide personal and professional development. Think back on your favorite managers and teachers, and you'll see that they often cultivated the desire to learn an advance. What you want to establish through these practices and experiences is the desire for consistent betterment. You want to establish this within yourself and within each individual of your team. Unlike the mentorship tip, this is something that you can implement without voluntary agreement from your staff. This is a time where you may need to advocate for the need to do these extra activities or additional training sessions for those outside the Agile team. Emphasize that employee and team development can result in greater consistency and the ability to respond to changes quickly. Those are two vital Agile skills that your team must showcase to the company.

What Does Team Development Mean? Professional development, employee development, and team development are all buzzwords that have circled through many circuits over the last 20 years. Team development refers to the advancement of skill sets and abilities across the entire team. That is not possible without a plan for employee development and a focus on professional development. Leaves 3 hot words are interdependent.

Starting on a small scale, professional development refers to the leadership's attention and focus on aiding employees in improving their skill set on a professional scope. Employee development backs out slightly and focuses on using professional development to improve morale, reduced turnover, and encourage top performers. Employee development spans outside of the scope of professional development and seeks to promote improving those skills that don't exclusively serve the company. For example, professional development may refer to using specific software that the company uses regularly. On the other hand, employee development may refer to improving communication habits or building resources, which would enable that employee to more clearly understand how to approach learning new software. Team development again operates on an even bigger scope. It looks to address the employee and professional development individually in a way that affects and builds up the entire team. These activities listed here will help you focus on team development while giving each individual the attention for purposeful employee development that they need.

Team and Employee Engagement On a final matter, team and employee engagement also fall within the scope of development. Employees that are often undergoing personal improvement are likely to show higher levels of engagement and loyalty to their managers and their company. When employees are engaged individually, it's possible for the team to act as an engaged unit. Ultimately dedicating time to team development will promote employee engagement and team engagement.

What Skillsets Should You Cultivate? Many professionals don't put much effort into team development or employee development because they don't know where to start. Which skills should you cultivate, and what skills are most important to your team? As an Agile leader, you already have some of the components necessary to make these decisions. There is no clear answer on which skills will best serve your team. You'll have to use

your position, your experience, and an assessment of your team's current skills to make the best decision.

Conduct a Training Needs Assessment A training needs assessment is not a popular option among workplaces, but it is a valuable tool. You can find a variety of training needs assessments online, or you can create your own. Using tools such as SurveyMonkey or similar websites, you can construct a quiz that helps you evaluate the current skill set of each individual team member. It's best to evaluate a combination of hard and soft skills. Soft skills can offer your employees a lot more value in terms of training and development. Hard skills can serve the team with a more immediate impact. You might want to balance training one hard and one soft skill at a time or use the training needs assessment to identify which skills are most pertinent to the team currently. These are the most common soft skills that employees are lacking, employers are seeking, and they all tie into Agile methodology. If you're not sure how to extract meaningful information from the training needs assessment or you feel that the assessment would be invasive to the team, then you can start with any of these skills right away.

Communication Poor communication in the workplace often leads to high-stress levels, unmet needs, delays in deliverables, arguments, low morale, and even physical health issues. The trouble here is that many people are not taught effective communication through the public school system or in their youth. Communication is a skill learned through years of interacting with peers. It's likely that many people on your team and possibly even you, struggle with effective communication. A common obstacle for managers is that they don't understand how to teach effective communication and how to address issues of miscommunication. Communication plays a pivotal role in Agile, given that the importance is taken away from proper documentation. The lack of

documentation often means that what processes or elements were documented must be clear, concise, and accurate. There's also the increased need for height and did communication abilities because of how these types of teams work together. Get started with communication building activities, something that you can do during team building. It is important during these activities to not get lost in the tools of communication. Your team does not need a lecture on the different types of communication or how to more effectively attune their type with another person's preferred communication method. These lectures can be important, but when it comes to communication, they often fall short because people don't understand how to take the tangible information and implement it into everyday conversations. Through these team activities, you're going to take that information but deliver it through hands-on activities, which should provide a much more effective learning experience.

Zen Counting This first activity could be done at your desks or in a private meeting room. It is called Zen counting. You have everyone sit in relatively close proximity with their backs turned to each other. Because they can't see each other or see who has just spoken, it places emphasis on active listening. A person will start and say one. Then team members must take turns counting to 10. If someone speaks over another person or doesn't say the right number, the exercise starts over.

Minefield The minefield activity is a fun opportunity to engage outdoors or in a large space such as a parking lot. You pair up team members and blindfold the person who will be walking into the minefield. The second person has to shout directions to navigate the blindfolded person around mines, which could be cones, balls, or even desk chairs.

There is another variation of the minefield activity and could serve better for teams that work remotely. The manager would create a series of folders nested within each other, and some of those folders will contain documents that are "mines." Instead of having one person give directions to the other, the team would have to communicate together as they work through the folder. Although they may initially explore the folder series independently, the goal would be for all of them to reach the final folder or document together.

Prioritization Prioritization is a challenge for many working professionals. Even CSuite executives report struggling to prioritize tasks. On an Agile team, a lot of the elements of setting priorities are placed on the Scrum Master or the product owner. What happens is that the skill of prioritization atrophy's given that the team works in small iterations and usually does not have to determine the level of importance until the reflection period. It's likely that during reflection times, your team sees that there were other more important elements to the project that were left undone because they did not prioritize.

Stranded on an Island The stranded on an island game is engaging and offers a different take on prioritization. This is also a game that people could play on their own time or do independently. The promise is that you have crash-landed and are now stranded on an uninhabited island. The leader will create a list of 20 to 25 everyday items that could be the key to survival. Some items should obviously be throwaway options, but ultimately you want to give the employee some struggle and reasoning elements to choose certain items over others. Ultimately, the employees must select only five items to keep and give explanations on why they are the most important options for survival and potential drawbacks. There are many variations of this game readily available online.

Task List

This team-building activity is best done in a closed meeting. First, create a list of 15 or 20 tasks that anyone could do in your current environment. Second, split your team into small groups. Finally, explain that the task list challenge is meant to establish prioritization by forcing these small groups to two-place greater importance on tasks based on points. Your task list will have items such as walking a lap around the room or writing down something unique about each team member. Each task item will have a number of points assigned, with the easiest tasks having two or three points and the more difficult tasks having 10, 15, or even 20 points. Teams may take different approaches such as doing as many small activities as possible and others, focusing on gaining more points through fewer activities. Here is a short example of a task list: 1. Make a paper airplane that can glide all the way across the room. (10 points) 2. Name your team (5 points) 3. Give each team member a code name (5 points) 4. Each team member writes down something fun/unique about the other team members (10 points) 5. Convince someone from another team to leave their team and join yours (25 points) 6. Draw a picture (5 points) Give the teams a time limit, and whoever has built up the most point by the end wins.

Resourcefulness Resource fullness is almost always vital to professional success. The ability to be resourceful means that the individual understands how to seek out information, confirms the information is accurate, and can produce the desired results. Resourcefulness is the ability to get things done, and it often means doing it yourself. Other skills such as

delegating may weaken resourcefulness. Often people don't realize how they diminish their resourcefulness skill.

If You Don't Have It, You Don't Need It The phrase, “If you don't got it, you don't need it” is common in Appalachia. Among many rural communities, children play a game centered around this phrase where they take an everyday object or a commonplace object and then create as many uses for it as possible. Ideally, you create this list without using other objects or only using objects you have on your person. Push your team to try this task both independently and collectively in a meeting. To start the activity off independently, you may email each person a single item and ask them to list out as many users as they could think of and then email it back. You can discuss these different items in your meeting when you bring everyone together to do this collectively. Then in the meeting, you may use these items, but disqualify duplicate answers or think of new items entirely. Here's an example with the commonplace item "pen": • Writing utensil • With a scrunchie/cotton ball, it becomes a paintbrush. • Back scratcher • Q-tip replacement (unappealing but possible) • Use it as a level • Hold up your hair with it. • Take it apart, and now it's a straw. • Use the pen end to scrape or carve. • Hiding place to exchange secret messages • Ruler • Blowgun for spitballs

An exceptionally handy person can even create a homemade resistor from your average BIC pen!

Creativity For decades or possibly centuries, people have worked with the belief that creativity is something inherent and that it isn't something you can teach. Recently major publications and research facilities have established that you can teach creativity to both children and adults. Through team-building exercises, you can teach creativity to everyone on your team at the same time. There are challenges that are worth addressing before jumping into the activity. First and foremost, your extrovert and outspoken individuals do pose a risk of overrunning your laid back or introverted team members. It is on the leader to make sure that everyone has a chance to speak and engage.

Storytelling Many people feel as though they don't have well-developed writing skills, but that doesn't mean they aren't capable of cultivating a story. There are a few ways to use writing and storytelling to teach creativity. 1. Bring together the whole team to create a new ending to a favorite show. Recreating the “writers room” setup, you're not asking anyone to actually write, only to pitch ideas. 2. Ask each person to spend one or two minutes describing their morning as though it was a movie trailer, action movie, rom-com, or similar. Encourage exaggeration! 3. Assign each person another team member and ask them to come up with the ideas for that person's superhero origin story.

Sharing Creativity does not result in one widely accepted product. Some people enjoy sci-fi stories, while others enjoy workplace comedies. Some people enjoy classical music, and others prefer electronica. Ask each person or the group to share one of their favorite creative

products, which can include a book, show, movie, song or piece of music, artwork, and more. But ask each person to take a few minutes explaining why that is among their favorite creative works. Encourage the rest of the team to ask why or to approach the speaker with compelling questions. This may be slightly challenging for introverts, but there are no wrong answers. For example, a person may share that they really enjoy A TV show because of the continued character development. Sharing this kind of information usually doesn't happen in the workplace. These discussions open up insight into how different people perceive and enjoy various products of creativity.

Use the 70:20:10 Model In this chapter, there are a lot of activities that can pull your team away from their work. That is one of the primary issues that managers and companies have with employee development. It is difficult for leaders to justify taking their team away from meaningful work for long periods of time. Research has also shown that working on employee development in meetings and exclusively in teambuilding activities is not as effective as implementing it throughout the workday. The activities listed here can promote engagement, cultivate creativity, enhance communication, and more, but these activities don’t guarantee that your team will put those skills to use without support from you. Researchers in employee development and adult learning suggest that the 70:20:10 model is the best method for learning. This calls for 70% of the learning to happen through experience. Then, 20% happens through conversations or meetings, and 10% of learning happens in traditional training environments. The time that you spend in traditional or classroom style training maxes out with a 10% effectiveness level. Using this model, you can reasonably scale back the traditional training, use activities in this chapter to cover the 20% of conversational learning, and attempt to implement these activities into daily work to cover the 70% of experienced-based learning. These activities and results can have a dramatic impact on your

team, so be sure to tie them into your daily Scrum and throughout your regular work.

Chapter 6: Work as a Spokesperson One of the key roles of an Agile leader is to operate as a spokesperson or advocate for the development team. Many great leaders don't understand how to execute this particular expectation. Working as a spokesperson uses a combination of skills usually found in marketing and sales, which are a far cry away from software development. What often results of an Agile leader is effectively acting as a spokesperson is that others in the company perceive the software development team as needy or entitled. That clearly isn't the message you want to send about your team. Here are a few tips for working as an advocate for your team and for representing them as a true leader within the company.

Agile Expectations of a Leader As always, bring it back to the core of the Agile methodology. It is vital that the leader represents the team well by sharing successes, minimizing criticism, and ensuring that the team doesn't overpromise on deliverables. To accomplish this, leaders should establish themselves as authentic and trustworthy. If you don't have a reputation as a credible resource, or reliable person within the organization, then you have a lot of work ahead of you. Unfortunately, these are all aspects that come down to reputation, and if your reputation doesn't align with Agile expectations, then you need to work extra hard to show that you can be transparent, credible, and reliable.

What It Means to be a Spokesperson Acting as a spokesperson or advocate with your team requires a two-pronged approach. First, the leader must effectively understand the employee's needs and identify elements that are hindering the team's success. Agile teams are highly effective at identifying their roadblocks, and it is up to the Agile leader to advocate with other team leaders, department heads, and executives to help the team overcome those roadblocks. The second prong is to alert those within the organization and the end-users of the team's

accomplishments. Shout it from the rooftops, or at least celebrate it with those involved in the process. A spokesperson must get the word out about the team's success and the future obstacles they face. For many organizations, this is confusing given that Agile teams don't work with a traditional hierarchical structure. Many people look at Agile teams and view their leaders as laid-back or laissez-faire managers, but that's not quite the case. As an Agile leader, you do work with them in a certain capacity, but you also serve to bridge communication, advocate, and represent the team to other departments. You're responsible for ensuring that the software team isn't operating in a silo and that they have a meaningful connection with others across the company.

Characteristics of an Outstanding Spokesperson There are key characteristics that distinguish excellent spokespeople. As an Agile leader, your technical prowess needs to reach others. Must always start with identifying your audience. As a spokesperson, you'll need to identify whom you're approaching and what you're attempting to get out of that communication. Always tailor your discussions based on that other person's knowledge level and position. For example, if you're speaking with a marketing director, then it's not likely that they'll have in-depth knowledge about software development. To that extent, they don't need to know the ends and outs of how your team accomplished their latest milestone. What they need to know is how that accomplishment will impact the enduser and how to market that for the company. In addition to understanding your audience, you'll need to understand how to capture attention. Giving a long-winded explanation about how a recent update will change the game for end users is probably not compelling, so segment how you distribute content and how you provide information. For example, you may put together a case study or walkthrough to cover technical details and then leave those details to the side when you're discussing elements

of the project face to face. You can always reference that document and if the other person is genuinely interested, you hand it off to them for review. There are a few great ways to immediately capture your audience's attention. Start with a question or provide a real-world example so they can correlate the information here providing to something they've experienced first-hand. Don't forget that it's important to adjust the conversation and information depending on whom you're interacting with and the goals of the conversation. If you know that the current company goals are focused on a competitor's recent accomplishment, then it may be necessary to use that in your conversation. Adjust your conversation to reflect differentiation in your offerings, recent accomplishments, trends in your industry, or recent developments from thought leaders. As a spokesperson, you should have a considerable amount of knowledge about what is going on in your industry and how it affects your project and team. Finally, a great spokesperson knows how to close a conversation. All too often, adults end conversations with awkward pauses or excuses to leave the immediate environment. After you grab your audience’s attention, and supply the necessary information, you'll need to restate the key points of your discussion and confirm that person's commitment. It can seem awkward at first, but a great spokesperson asks bold questions at the end of a meeting or face-to-face conversation. If you're not sure where to start, then consider these questions: • Is there anything you need to do (action)? • Is this something that you can cover for us? • Will you have time to dedicate to (matter at hand) before the end of the week? • Was this information useful?

• Does (recent accomplishment) affect the end-user the way we planned? • Would you like to speak with the team about this? Closing the conversation is key because you're confirming exactly what this other person needs to do or expects from your team. As a leader, you probably already know how important it is to clearly know where you stand after any conversation. It's even more important to establish this when you are handling matters for your team that could affect your project.

How to Improve as an Advocate or Spokesperson There are key ways to improve as an advocate or spokesperson, and you don't have to go to a specialized class or seminar to get started. As an advocate, it all starts with you. Always question and challenge your biases. This process can be uncomfortable, especially when you sincerely believe in the project or your team. There is always the very real possibility that your position on the matter you will discuss heavily weighs only on what you care about. Seek first to find the edge of your comfort zone and continue to push that edge further and further out. As the first few steps you might take to develop as an advocate, always question what you're about to say to your audience. You can do this before the morning Scrum, you can do this before your meeting with the Department head, and you can do this before oneon-one meetings with team members. Think about what you want to say and think about how you might be a proponent for the opposite. Essentially, you want to act as an attorney for the opposite of your idea or thought process. Can you argue against your bias, and could challenging your bias actually open the door to an effective discussion? Changing your mind is not part of this exercise. You don't have to argue and compel yourself to agree or back up something that you don't believe in. The exercise itself opens up your ability to foresee and address issues that might associate with your bias on the subject.

Share Performance Across the Company As an advocate, are you want to use multiple mediums to share performance and applaud your top performers. The agile methodology does not call for the traditional structure of the manager and employees. Many team members who work on Agile projects cite that one of the struggles of this is that there's no one out there to say, "Good job." As an Agile leader and as an advocate, you could get in touch with the marketing team, the person responsible for keeping up the company newsletter, or even with HR to send out a memo. Use email, paper notices, and more to celebrate good performance and success across multiple teams. An additional benefit of this is that by operating as an advocate who focuses on positive impact, you can empower other leaders within your organization and industry to do the same for their teams.

Focus the Conversation Around the End-Users The language you use will directly impact the effectiveness of your communication. As an advocate, you need to use language that connects to end-users. This is a serious struggle for software developers and managers of development teams. Even when it comes to development outside of software, most people outside of development teams don't understand the effort and time that goes into a project. There's also the trouble that comes with Agile, the specific concern that a functioning version is available, so updates and repairs aren't necessary. Many people outside of software development don't understand that the first software rollout or the first functioning version is not what the company intends to deliver to its end users. How can you use language to better connect with your end-users? Work away from jargon and work away from terms that sound too technical. You're not “dumbing down” the conversation. You're having the same conversation with language that everyone involved can clearly understand. For example, many people understand the word “iteration”. Applying that to software development is not clear for the majority of people who don't have first-hand experience with

the Agile methodology. If you enter a conversation and say, “We are about to end our current iteration”, you'll leave a lot of people confused. Alternatively, if you say, “We're about to reach our next milestone”, you'll have a much more engaged audience because now they think that this milestone will directly impact the end-user.

Work as an Advocate Working as an advocate is not easy, and it often requires that you revisit your language, your approach, and your biases. Sharing positive feedback and performance is usually the easy part. You might have to go up against the entire board of executives to argue that your team needs access to a specific resource or that your team may have over-promised on deliverables. Always bear in mind that operating as that transparent and reliable connection to the Agile team is one of the primary functions of your role as an Agile leader. It may be easier to use excuses or utilize loopholes, but when it comes to working as an advocate, reliability will take you further. You might consider keeping a record of your most difficult and rewarding conversations as an advocate. You can do this through private note taking or making small notes on your phone's calendar that you can return to later. Always consider what went right in a conversation and how a difficult conversation ended using these tactics, such as exploring biases.

Chapter 7: Agile Leadership Through SelfMastery Many Agile leaders struggle to accept the self-organized team and understand their role in a leadership capacity. Typically, Agile leaders are not responsible for assigning tasks for the day or necessarily telling people what to do. A leader should quickly identify that they don't fit the Agile system if their micromanaging or constantly looking over their team's shoulders to check on their progress. The answer to Agile leadership affectedness comes through self-mastery. It is one of the few careers around building your personal development that will have a direct impact on your team, the projects you work on, and your ability to perform with precision.

Embrace the Self-Organized Team The self-organized team is truly the heart of Agile methodology because there usually isn't a centralized authority or external element involved in the planning. Agile leaders stand out as advocates more so than a supervisor or a manager because they act as the bridge from the development team to everyone else. This does lead to some complications when Agile leaders make promises on deliverables or provide information that later changes within the Agile team. The purpose here is to not fight self-organization. Self-organized teams are so widely embraced because they perform at a higher speed, operate with greater response to change, and ultimately deliver higher quality and customer-focused products. Self-organized teams work in software development, and it is up to the Agile leader to adapt to the team's needs, personalities, and modes of work. When it comes to Agile leadership, adopt the mindset that the team is who they are, and it is only through monitoring yourself and your performance that you can encourage their progress as well.

Create a Culture of Personal Mastery

Through focusing on self-mastery, you can also create a culture of personal mastery within the organization. Through personal mastery, you can improve your ability to respond to change, cultivate positive and effective communication, and more. When you can work with high levels of agility, you can better enable your Agile team. The first step to creating this kind of culture is to develop both awareness and self-awareness. Most Agile leaders start doing this by soliciting feedback from other leaders and Department heads within the organization. By emphasizing your desire to hear feedback about your performance, communication habits, and personal conduct, you also draw attention to that person's response to feedback and their own personal conduct.

How to Build Self-Mastery in Your Work Now you have insight into the purpose and the benefits of personal mastery or self-mastery, and the big question is how to build it. Building self-mastery is a lifelong process, but you can start today. A lot of these steps are things you will need to revisit on a regular basis, and you can do that through the very last step here. Make Peace with Mistakes The very first thing you need to do is to make peace with mistakes. Every single person makes mistakes no matter how high up they are on the leadership ladder or how long they've been in their position. It is safe to say that the longer someone has been in leadership, the more mistakes they have made. If someone claims that they don't make mistakes, then it might be time to accept that the person you're referring to or thinking of simply doesn't accept that they make mistakes. How can you make peace with mistakes? The most widespread advice is to journal or write out the event. This is certainly a good start. When you put the event into writing or revisit the mistake with the complete privacy of a Journal, you can evaluate the event from an outside perspective with insight into your thought processes. When you are revisiting, it's important to not dwell on the one or two things that you might feel really bad about. Instead, think about the

actions of those around you. Did they jump in to take action to correct the mistake? If so, then it's evident that their priority wasn't on what you said or did but on repairing the damage for the company. Did they ridicule you for the mistake? If so, then the mistake itself wasn't so damaging that their focus was on repairing the issue, but instead, they focused on your performance. Now it's important to not fall into a vortex of self-criticism during this exercise. Keep in mind as you write through or Journal about your past mistakes that you came out of it and you're currently in a leadership position. Talk to Future-Self Self-mastery does call upon you to think about your actions and your language frequently. The best way to do this is to talk to your future self. As you go through your day, think to yourself in terms of the upcoming days or weeks. If you accomplish a task, say a quick, "You're welcome" to your "tomorrow-self." By talking to your future self, you have certainty that there is a future self and that your future self is in this position or higher. As people, we tend to believe that the near future will bring greater happiness and positive things than what is happening in the current time. You can also leave notes for your future self with post-its or scheduled text message or email deliveries. This is a great way to acknowledge positive things you've done after you've had time for those thoughts to settle. For example, you may have handled a difficult discussion and want to revisit it later. At that moment, you could schedule an email to send to yourself, including notes or feelings you had about the discussion. When you receive the email a couple of days later, you can review the conversation or interaction without the emotional attachment of that moment. Create a conversation with your future self. Challenge Everything When you work as an Agile leader, you need to properly prepare for the possibility of drastic change at any moment. This environment fosters creative thinking and the ability to work well with rapid

change. You can make this much easier for yourself if you challenge everything. Continuously ask why the team is changing something or why the team needs resources. Don't do this in a way that confrontational with the team but seek to understand. When you would challenge someone with a simple question, many people jump onto the defense, and you need to actively work to disengage that response. You can establish a reputation for challenging everything by asking your team for detailed explanations. By doing this you will be laying out the foundation to better understand their reasoning and desired results Always Be the One to Take Action There is something that often goes undiscussed in the workplace, and it is the diffusion of responsibility, otherwise known as the bystander effect. The most commonly cited example of the bystander effect refers to the murder of Kitty Genovese. She was killed in Queens, NY, while approximately 54 witnesses stood by and did nothing. Why did they not do anything? They all assumed that someone else had already alerted authorities. Although the bystander effect isn't a buzzword within the business community, it is present in almost every workplace across the nation. Someone says something that is out of place, needs repair, or demands attention, and they assume that someone else has already taken action. Make sure that you don't fall prey to the bystander effect by always being the person to take action. In the worst-case scenario, something has been done twice, or someone has been notified of the problem twice. It is better for leaders and decisionmakers to have more information or alerts that something needs attention, than for an incident to go unaddressed. Audit Yourself Often The best way to enhance your self-mastery is to audit yourself frequently. As you begin your path to improving self-mastery and gaining awareness of your skill set, you may audit yourself as frequently as once a week. Those who are proficient in assessing

their actions and addressing and moving forward from their mistakes may only perform an audit quarterly. The good news is that you probably won't have to create an audit from scratch. There are a few structured ways to conduct a selfaudit, and the first step is to establish a MadLib. Create a page with sentences like this: My primary duty is to ____________ and I perform this task _____________. My biggest challenge is ___________ and my most common excuse is __________________________________. Sometimes I wish I could ______________ but ________________ is stopping me. A short template like this is something that you could use for years into the future, even as your position or duties change. In addition to a MadLib template, you want a score chart so you can easily compare your progress from one audit to another. You can create your own score chart or look around for a leadership self-assessment score chart online, but ultimately, you want something simple that can adapt with you. You're creating your own assessment, then work on a one to three scale range where one is not working well, two is benchmark performance, and three is above expectations performance. Then address key things such as timeliness, attention to active listening, and communication. Ultimately a self-audit should help guide you on your road to selfmastery. This audit will serve as a reminder to course correct when necessary or to pivot when your attention has shifted from your core duties.

Conclusion Agile leadership requires that the leader leads through example. With these tips and methods, you can become the leader that your team needs while highlighting the core of Agile principles. Through self-mastery and working as an advocate for your team, you can elevate your leadership abilities on a regular and systematic basis. But self-mastery isn't a lonesome road. You must also work with others to emphasize your abilities and enhance your skills. Find a mentor and then begin mentoring others to help them develop their careers as well. Through this book, you should now have a stronger grasp on: • Promoting productive communication within your team • Using time to reflect on your leadership skillset • Cultivate mentor relationships • Help your team understand the core of Agile principles. • Empower your team to build skills that serve the team and their professional development. Through Agile Methodology, you can lead a team through software development projects and modern IT teams too. Over time the methodology has begun to evolve but returning to the core principles, you can focus on implementing the highest quality leads possible. Then, tie it together with a mindset that focuses on the basics of Agile and on cultivating communication. Your path in Agile leadership will continue, and you will surely find new habits and practices that suit your leadership style best. Using these tips, tricks, and practices, you can explore new opportunities in your approach to leading a team that works in iterations with short and long-term goals.

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