Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Agile Leadership Coaching Quotes

I was at a leadership coaching event and had these quotes as good takeaways. Although the training wasn't specific to agile environments, I think they all apply quite well.
  • It's a leader's job to make the goals clear, and the team's to make it work. 
  • In a dynamic environment, it's more important to have strategic positioning than strategic planning. 
  • The fix for bad leadership isn't teams or teamwork, it's good leadership. 
  • You don't know what you're capable of. 
  • There's often a gap between information and application. 
  • What are your growth hashmarks? Because speed acclimates and it will be hard to tell if you are growing as a leader or not.
  • The ideal situation is the right job [or role] + the right mindset.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

All good principles.

There are 2 short idea's about leadership that I can't take personal credit for (both come from previous managers) but they each stick with me and I believe go a long way to ensuring effective leadership...

The first is that the leaders role is to create the space and environment for the team to do what they do to the best of their ability.

The second was the 'definition' that Leadership is 'Influence with Integrity'

Scott Dunn said...

Thanks for the comment, Derek. I like both those ideas a lot. I had recently heard about the role of influence in leadership. I'll have to read up on that some more. And as far as integrity, I can't agree more but it doesn't seem to be common knowledge or practice. Jim Collins boils Level 5 leadership down to integrity (see my notes from the Code Camp presentation for more on that).