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Overview
Elastic leadership is a framework and philosophy that can help you as you manage day-to-day and long-term challenges and strive to create the elusive self-organizing team. It is about understanding that your leadership needs to change based on which phase you discover that your team is in. This book provides you with a set of values, techniques, and practices to use in your leadership role.
Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.
About the Technology
Your team looks to you for guidance. You have to mediate heated debates. The team is constantly putting out fires instead of doing the right things, the right way. Everyone seems to want to do things correctly, but nobody seems to be doing so. This is where leaders get stuck. It's time to get unstuck! Elastic leadership is a novel approach that helps you adapt your leadership style to the phase your team is in, so you can stay in step as things change.
About the Book
Elastic Leadership is a practical, experience-driven guide to team leadership. In it, you'll discover a set of values, techniques, and practices to lead your team to success. First, you'll learn what elastic leadership is and explore the phases of this results-oriented framework. Then, you'll see it in practice through stories, anecdotes, and advice provided by successful leaders in a variety of disciplines, all annotated by author and experienced team leader, Roy Osherove.
What's Inside
- Understanding why people do what they do
- Effective coaching
- Influencing team members and managers
- Advice from industry leaders
About the Reader
This book is for anyone with a year or more of experience working on a team as a lead or team member.
About the Author
Roy Osherove is the DevOps process lead for the West Coast at EMC, based in California. He is also the author of The Art of Unit Testing (Manning, 2013) and Enterprise DevOps. He consults and trains teams worldwide on the gentle art of leadership, unit testing, test-driven development, and continuous-delivery automation. He frequently speaks at international conferences on these topics and others.
Table of Contents
- PART 1 - UNDERSTANDING ELASTIC LEADERSHIP
- Striving toward a Team Leader Manifesto
- Matching leadership styles to team phases
- Dealing with bus factors PART 2 - SURVIVAL MODE
- Dealing with survival mode PART 3 - LEARNING MODE
- Learning to learn
- Commitment language
- Growing people PART 4 - SELF-ORGANIZATION MODE
- Using clearing meetings to advance self-organization
- Influence patterns
- The Line Manager Manifesto PART 5 - NOTES TO A SOFTWARE TEAM LEADER
- Feeding back
- Channel conflict into learning
- It's probably not a technical problem
- Review the code
- Document your air, food, and water
- Appraisals and agile don't play nicely
- Leading through learning: the responsibilities of a team leader
- Introduction to the Core Protocols
- Change your mind: your product is your team
- Leadership and the mature team
- Spread your workload
- Making your team manage their own work
- Go see, ask why, show respect
- Keep developers happy, reap high-quality work
- Stop doing their work
- Write code, but not too much
- Evolving from manager to leader
- Affecting the pace of change
- Proximity management
- Babel Fish
- You're the lead, not the know-it-all
- Actions speak louder than words
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781638351085 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Manning |
| Publication date: | 10/18/2016 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Sales rank: | 834,149 |
| File size: | 734 KB |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Preface xv
Acknowledgments xviii
About this book xix
Part 1 Understanding Elastic Leadership 1
1 Striving toward a Team Leader Manifesto 3
Why should you care? 5
Don't be afraid to become management 6
You can make time for the things you care about 7
Take the opportunity to learn new, exciting things every day 7
Experiment with human beings 7
Be more than one thing 7
Challenge yourself and your team 8
The Team Leader Manifesto 8
Next up 10
Summary 10
2 Matching leadership styles to team phases 12
The role of the team leader 13
Growth through challenge 13
Challenge 14
You're the bottleneck 14
Crunch time and leadership styles 14
Which leadership style should you choose? 15
Command and control 16
Coach 17
Facilitator 17
Leadership styles and team phases 17
The three team phases 18
Survival phase (no time to learn) 19
Learning phase (learning to solve your own problems) 19
Self-organizing phase (facilitate, experiment) 20
When does a team move between phases? 20
Next up 22
Summary 22
3 Dealing with bus factors 23
Bus factors 23
A single point of failure 24
A bottleneck that slows things to a crawl 25
Reducing morale and inducing job insecurity 25
Discouraging team growth 26
Removing bus factors 27
Pairing and coaching 27
Bus factor as teacher 28
Avoid creating bus factors 28
Pairing 28
1-1 code reviews 28
Rotation (support, scrum master, build) 29
Pushing people out of their comfort zone instead of asking the veterans to do it 29
Next up 29
Summary 29
Part 2 Survival Mode 31
4 Dealing with survival mode 33
Are you in survival mode? 33
The survival comfort zone 34
The survival mode addiction 34
Getting out of survival mode 35
How much slack time do you need? 36
Making slack time-required actions 36
Find out your current commitments 36
Find out your current risks 37
Plan a red line 38
How do you remove commitments? 39
Why slack? 39
Remember why you're doing this 39
The risk of losing face with upper management 40
The risk of failing 40
This is what you're being paid to do 40
Realize that you're going to break your own patterns 41
Don't fear confrontation 43
Don't despair in the face of nitpickers 44
Command-and-control leadership 44
Correct bad decisions 45
Play to the team's strengths 45
Get rid of disturbances 45
During transformation you'll likely need to… 46
Start spending more time with the team 47
Take ownership of your team 48
Learn how to say to by saying yes 49
Start doing daily stand-up meetings 49
Understand the notion of broken windows 50
Start doing serious code reviews 51
What if your team is large? 51
What if you're part of a "wide team"-a team that's distributed? 52
Next up 53
Summary 53
Part 3 Learning Mode 55
5 Learning to learn 57
What is a ravine? 57
The baby ravine 60
Embrace ravines 62
How can you tell it's a ravine'? 62
The intern 64
Challenge your team into ravines 65
Next up 66
Summary 66
6 Commitment language 68
What does noncommittal sound like? 69
A way out 69
Wishful speaking 69
What does commitment sound like? 70
Is it under your control? 71
Commit to things under your control 71
Turn an impossible commitment into a possible one 72
How do you get them on board? 73
Launch a commitment language initiative at a team meeting 74
Measure by feeling 74
Fix just-in-time errors 75
What if they fail to meet their commitments? 75
Finishing the commitment conversation 76
Can commitments drag on forever? 76
Look for "by," not "at" 76
Where to use this language 77
Next up 78
Summary 78
7 Growing people 79
Problem challenging 80
How did I react the first time I was challenged? 81
When to use problem challenging 82
Day-to-day growth opportunities 82
Daily stand-up meetings 82
One-on-one meetings 82
Don't punish for lack of trying or lack of success 83
Homework 83
Homework is a personal commitment, not a task 84
Homework has follow-up 85
Homework examples 85
Pace yourself and your team 86
Do you have enough learning time to make this mistake? 86
Are there situations where you shouldn't grow people? 87
Next up 87
Summary 88
Part 4 Self-Organization Mode 89
8 Using clearing meetings to advance self-organization 91
The meeting 92
What just, happened? 98
What is integrity again? 98
The structure of the meeting 99
The meeting 99
Your dosing words 102
The overall point of this meeting 103
Keeping the meeting on track 103
Next up 104
Summary 104
9 Influence patterns 105
What about using my authority? 105
An imaginary example, using an influence force checklist 108
Next up 109
Summary 109
10 The Line Manager Manifesto 110
The Line Manager Manifesto 111
Survival mode 112
Projects in survival mode 113
Teams in survival mode 113
Individuals in survival mode 114
Sharing responsibilities is raring: team leads and managers 115
Learning mode 116
Projects in learning mode 116
Teams in learning mode 116
Individuals in learning mode 116
Self-organization mode 117
Self-organizing projects and teams 117
Self-organizing individuals 117
Other burning questions 117
Next up 119
Summary 11*
Part 5 Notes to a Software Team Leader 121
11 Feeding back Kevlin Henney 123
12 Channel conflict into learning Dan North 128
13 It's probably not a technical problem Bill Walters 133
14 Review the code Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob) 135
15 Document your air, food, and water Travis Illig 140
16 Appraisals and agile don't play nicely Gary Reynolds 145
17 Leading through learning: the responsibilities of a team leader Cory Fov 149
18 Introduction to the Core Protocols Yves Hanoulle 154
19 Change your mind: your product is your team Jose Ramón Díaz 159
20 Leadership and the mature team Mike Burrows 162
21 Spread your workload John Hill 165
22 Making your team manage their own work Lior Friedman 168
23 Go see, ask why, show respect Horia Slusanschi 170
24 Keep developers happy, reap high-quality work Derek Slawson 174
25 Stop doing their work Brian Dishaw 179
26 Write code, but not too much Patrick Kua 182
27 Evolving from manager to leader Tricia Broderick 185
28 Affecting the pace of change Tom Howlett 191
29 Proximity management Jurgen Appelo 196
30 Babel Fish Gil Zilberfeld 199
31 You're the lead, not the know-it-all Johanna Rothman 202
32 Actions speak louder than words Dan North 205
Index 209