Skip to main content

Tips for Leading Self-Organizing Teams

When it comes to having and leading an Agile team, finding the balance between taking on a traditional management role and letting a self-organizing team more forward on their own front is a tough thing to do.
You can’t be too overly aggressive in the leadership role but you also can’t fade into the background so much that you become unnecessary; instead you have to learn the art of guiding without a heavy hand. So how do you successfully lead a self-organizing team?

  1. Allow the team to respond to their environment
    The manager’s responsibility is not to determine how the team should respond but simply to help influence the environment the team is in and let them respond accordingly. It can be hard for some leaders to let go of the dictatorship personality, but in order to guarantee success this is necessary.
  2. Support communication within the team
    Any problems should not be harbored but should be openly discussed amongst team members. It is the leader’s job to facilitate discussion and encourage the team to find solutions, not to find the solutions and present them to the team. 
  3. Know Agile inside and out
    If you’re going to be in the management role you need to know absolutely anything and everything about Agile. The most effective way to lead others is to be able to live and breathe the values and principles of what it is you’re leading.
  4. Give room for growth
    Understanding that the team will make mistakes is all part of the process. It is crucial for the leader of the team to allow room for mistakes so that the team can problem solve and grow together.
  5. Do not give up all control
    It is easy to fade into the background to allow the team to function on their own but their purpose is not to function wholly without you. You must take the leadership position and choose the projects and influence the guidelines and then let them flourish.

It takes a strong person to be able to lead a self-organizing team without dominating the team. The art of subtlety is one that must be mastered to take on an effective leadership role, and the core principles and values of Agile must be fully embraced.

Author Byline:

Ken Myers as an Expert Adviser on multiple household help issues to many Organizations and groups, and is a mentor for other “Mom-preneurs” seeking guidance. He is a regular contributor of “www.gonannies.com/”. You can get in touch with him at kmyers.ceo@gmail.com.

This article is about tips to lead a self organizing team by Ken Myers. To write guest articles for us, follow the link below.

Write Guest Articles for us

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

iPhone sales help fuel worldwide smartphone numbers

There are nearly 150 million smartphones out there in the world, according to new figures. Thanks to record breaking sales figures by Apple for the iPhone 4S by the end of 2011 there was almost a 50% increase in the number of devices up on the previous year. The research by Gartner Inc. claims the figures rose during the final quarter of 2011 thanks to the 30 million plus iPhone 4S' sold by Apple. The results led to Apple becoming the third largest vendor of mobile phones in the world. They also became the top smartphone vendor, with nearly a quarter of global sales in the fourth quarter. Over the rest of 2011, Apple took a fifth of the share of the smartphone market. The UK and wider Western Europe along with North America were the driving forces for the figures, says Gartner. Up until the launch of the iPhone 4S sales were a little slow. Suddenly the spiked as we all ran out to buy the new device. Worldwide, mobile device sales figures reached 476.5 million in the fourth q...

3 Things to Avoid as a Motivational Speaker

Motivational speakers deliver at least hour-long speeches about positive thinking and how to better yourself and the people around you. These messages often apply to a wide variety of settings, whether at home, at work, or even at a personal level. If you're ever planning on becoming a motivational speaker, there are a lot of things that you should avoid. Here are the three of the most common ones.

Yahoo invisible detector – insights on a new online service

This is a guest article by Iulian about leading Yahoo Invisible detector service http://www.detectinvisible.com/ . There are several online businesses which are basically ruling the online industry, and one of them is Yahoo. Founded in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo in Santa Clara, California, Yahoo! started to grow significantly over the years, now having millions of users all over the world. One of the most widespread products of Yahoo is Yahoo Mail and Messenger. Over time yahoo messenger had become a habit for millions and soon they’ve introduced the possibility to become invisible for other users. It was obvious that a whole new kind of service appeared online, that of yahoo invisible detector. The yahoo invisible detector as an online service first appeared when yahoo was at protocol 13, now being at protocol 17, and at first there were several websites offering their services in order for you to find out which buddy of yours is hiding. Unfortunately, as soon as yahoo star...

The Concepts of Social Networking in Today's World

In today’s high tech world, networking occurs as much on computers as in “real life” social situations. Social media has opened up a vast new frontier for people to connect with others. Before the advent of social media, people generally networked at social gatherings like mixers, fundraising galas and similar events. Of course, such “face-to-face” networking is still important and common, but social media allows possibilities that did not exist before. One of the problems with older networking models is that often the same people showed up at all the events. The percentage of the population that is active in community events tends to be rather low. On the other hand, almost everyone these days uses social media. Vast reach of social networking According to the latest stats, Facebook alone has more than 900 million active users worldwide with the number continuing to grow. Twitter and Google+ also have large numbers of active users that cross all demographic categories. ...

Archive

Show more