Call out Trolls Before They Destroy Your Business

Spot trolls before they hurt your business

The biggest challenge in Servant leadership is working with the disinterested, dishonest, and disrespectful.  Each organization harbors these individuals like weeds in a field of grass.  People like this seem to revel in their bad faith efforts to undermine others, avoid work, and act as parasites to everyone around them.  Throughout my career, I have confronted these individuals, and it never gets easier.  We should be brave enough to call out poor behavior.  

I spend plenty of time on LinkedIn. It is an excellent service because I can catch up on colleagues, get the latest news from the business community, and many of my fellow travelers share information about what is new. I was surfing along and read the following post from a coach and scrum trainer. The emphasis is mine.  

“I am a project manager having 15 years of experience and 5 years exclusively in project management. I do hold a PMP certificate too. My company is adopting Scrum-based delivery and it seems there is no role for the project managers. There are 3 roles in Scrum but none of them is for me. 

I can’t be a Product Owner because it will get filled from the business/customer side. I am not hands-on so I can’t be a part of the Development Team.

Scrum Master seems to be a very junior role for me. Many Scrum Masters are just a part-timer or working previously as Team Lead/ Tech Lead etc. There was a point when these people were reporting to me on my projects.

I also have an issue with the Servant Leadership style. It is not that I am a command & control person and you can ask my colleagues. Everyone will say how good I am with empathy, situation leadership, and self-reflection. But servant leadership sounds to me either head of the Servant or becoming Gandhi and Mandela. 

What will you suggest? Should I look at some different roles if yes then which one? I have also heard a lot about Agile Coach though I don’t know much how is this different than Scrum Master.”

I had a lot to unpack in this message.  It is an excellent example of how NOT to do Servant leadership.  I have said in the past, that ego is the enemy of good leadership.  Additionally, Servant leadership is more about leading by example than attempting to behave like a saint.  Scrum mastery requires kindness, and it often requires going beyond the call of duty. 

Being a scrum master is not a junior role.  It is a managerial role with tremendous responsibility and little authority. You are the person in the Taupe blazer who must inspire others to get work done.  At times you are a therapist, and at others, you are doing code reviews.  Often you are a square peg in a round hole.  Scrum masters are not junior; instead, they are essential to the success of your organization. 

The arrogance associated with the post was very telling.  What made it shocking was that it came from an instructor from Scrum.org.  I could expose this individual, but that would make me no better a coach or scrum master.  I am sensitive to harassment and doxing concerns on the internet.  I want the satisfaction of calling out a troll and exposing them to shame and ridicule.  The reality is they do not care.  A troll does what they do for the attention and outrage.  Instead, I would rather point out the attitude of these people so that we can be on the lookout for this behavior.  People like this are going to hurt your organization, so it is best to make you aware of them and not give them a chance.  

I take a great deal of pride in what I do.  As I continue to advance my career, I do not want to forget where I came from and the lessons I gained along the way.  Being a scrum master and product owner is hard work.  Developers and people in the organization are under tremendous pressure to deliver value to their customers and organization.  In the global economy, we are all servants, whether we like it or not.  Insulting other professionals as junior or beneath you is not how you participate in the agile reformation.  It is a form of elitism that has sparked backlash around the developed world.  

Today, I wanted to call attention to an attitude that will hurt your organization.  It is elitist, and it comes from a position of arrogance.  Do yourself a favor, find these people, and make sure you never hire them.  

Until next time. 

Set the Ego Aside and Be a Leader

Set the Ego aside and lead.  

Writing about agile, scrum, software development, and leadership is like walking around with a giant target on your back.  The people who know you and work with you are on the watch for you practicing what you preach.  It makes you very aware of what you do and how you do it.  Making matters more complicated is you often tie up your ego in your work, so when others question your leadership, it feels like a personal attack.  We need to talk about ego and leadership.

Being in charge of others is a serious responsibility.  It is also a massive charge to your ego.  People count on you, and they listen to your orders.  Being a boss has plenty of perks.  In reality, the respect, obedience, and ego boost of leadership is an illusion because the responsibilities of leading others are often more significant than the perks.

Additionally, someone above you is expecting a result.  Thus, a leader is pulled in two different directions one by the people he is tasked to lead and the other by the people who lead them.  It is a delicate balance.  It is why I am a big believer in what is called servant leadership.  It is the notion that the best kind of leadership is the kind where you are serving others.  Instead of concentrating on authority and action, a servant leader is a coach and a mentor.  The military has a saying, “Officers eat last.”  The implication is that only when the troops have a healthy meal is it time for the leadership to dine.  It puts the needs of the people doing the fighting and dying over the needs of the people who lead them.  In the civilian world, it means the performance of the team is more important than the ego of the leader.  

In software development, a leader is often in charge of people who are smarter than they are.  It means that advice is coming from a place of knowledge, and it is up to a leader to consider it seriously.  It means setting aside your personal needs and looking out for the team and its mission.  I have only recently come to this discovery.  Set your ego aside and listen to others on how to be a better leader.  Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said it correctly when he said, “Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.”

Author Kim Scott, in her work, “Radical Candor,” further reinforces this mindset.  Ask for feedback and receive it gladly.  Take time out to put that feedback into actionable practice.  Finally, check back with the people giving you feedback because it shows that you care, and you are seeking to improve.  Leadership is not about you or your ego.  Leadership is about the team and getting things done.

As leaders, we need to get over ourselves and focus on improving ourselves and our teams.  It means letting go of our ego and accepting feedback.  When you reach this understanding is when you transition from being a boss to a servant leader.  

Until next time.

Avoid Heroism and Practice Radical Interdependence.

Anyone who tells you leadership is easy is either a liar or a fool.  Each day leadership is tested by interpersonal disputes, market demands, and gaps in knowledge.  People count on leaders to have emotional balance when everything is going wrong.  It is facing difficult questions when you do not know the answers.  You must be firm one moment and understanding the next.  When things go well, you give credit to others, and during failure, you take responsibility.  Leadership is one of the most challenging skills to cultivate.  It is a duty and calling rather than a heroic struggle.  I want to discuss it.  

Leadership is more than a stance.

We often train a leader at an early age.  Young people become captains of sports teams or members of the student government.  Junior ROTC programs do an excellent job of teaching the skills of leadership and followership.  The early training in leadership is beneficial, but over the last thirty years, I have discovered that it is incomplete.  For the last two hundred years, we have expected leaders to have answers to every challenge and be able to motivate others.  A leader formulated a plan, and the followers executed the project.  Today, in a global and creative economy, this is no longer true. 

A contemporary leader must depend on others with specialized knowledge.  A deep understanding of the law, finance, computer software, logistics, and marketing is impossible for one person to gather in a lifetime.  Today, a plan requires multiple people to formulate and execute.  The contemporary world is too complicated and chaotic to come up with natural solutions.  

It is why I discovered a TED talk from South African food executive Lorna Davis.  She talked about how she bought into the myth of heroic leadership.  She also found heroic leadership did not effect change within her organization.  People applauded her works and went about doing the same things they did before she joined the organization. Heroic leadership failed.  She goes on to mention that a new model of leadership needs to develop, and she called it “radical interdependence.”  A leader should have a goal, and it is up to the team on how to achieve that goal.  It requires listening, empathy, and giving others a chance to excel.  It is anything but heroic.  

I did not realize I was using this approach when I confessed during a meeting I was stumped.  I did not know how to address a quality problem, and I asked, “Anyone have any idea how we are going to fix this?”  Within a day, I had answers, and the leaders at the off-shore office were implementing them without checking for permission.  The off-shore team knew if I disapproved, I would let them know, so they decided to take the initiative.  I am confident our quality issues will clear up.  

Radical interdependence requires trust and allowing others to come up with solutions.  It involves a surrender of control, which many successful people find uncomfortable. It relies on asking questions instead of giving orders.  It is physically and mentally exhausting because you are stretching your emotional intelligence and practical knowledge.  You are learning and growing with the people you are leading.

Leadership is the most challenging skill a person can acquire, and it is impossible to master.  It is clear why the military calls command a burden.  Each day you are tested, and failure can mean the loss of millions of dollars or even lives.  I think Lorna Davis has some useful guidance about leadership.  I am going to ignore the liars and fools.  

Until next time. 

Agile Exposes the Bad Boss

A bad boss is just toxic.

I was getting on an elevator at the office and I decided to make small talk with someone as we were heading up to our respective floors.

“Ready to set the global economy on fire,“ I joked.

My fellow traveler got a gleam in their eye and said, “The flames are so colorful.”

I got off on my floor and breathed a sigh of relief.  The metaphorical pyromaniac was too eager to be pulling my leg.  The experience brought into stark contrast how tired many of us have become in the business world. The daily frustrations of working in a modern office force many professionals into the cynical behavior of inflicting harm on others as a means of satisfaction.  It is perverse, and it is wrong. The cynicism in the elevator is one of the reasons I have been such an enthusiastic proponent of agile.  I firmly believe there must be a better way to structure work so that it is sustainable, sane, and satisfying.

Inc. Magazine and Monster.com pointed out this week that 76% of bosses in business are “toxic.”  This toxic leadership is why so many people rely on jaded cynicism.  It is crucial as an agile coach and scrum master to break this cycle of toxicity.  According to the article in Inc. magazine, a toxic boss exhibits some or all of the following traits.

1. They are power-hungry
2. They micromanager
3. They are absent
4. They are incompetent

It is up to people like me to expose these bosses to the organization and coach them to be better.

The Power Hungry

Working for a power-hungry boss is a little like being a supporting cast member in Game of Thrones; you are going to wind up suffering a cruel ending to satisfy someone else’s ambition.  It surprises me how many business leaders think servant leadership is similar to the game “Masters and servants.”  The reality of servant leadership is much different.  In the end, what everyone needs to understand is a power-hungry boss is concerned about one thing; themselves.  A power-hungry boss will put personal interest over the needs of the company and employees.  Agile exposes the power-hungry because they often become impediments to shipping solutions.

The Micromanager

The hardest part of leadership is the lack of control we have over our fellow humans.  A leader can spend years training people to do the right thing and meet a certain performance level, and they can still disappoint at critical junctures.  To combat this helplessness, managers create processes and steps which they expect people to obey like robots.  It creates an illusion of control where employees do what they can to avoid hassle rather than what is necessary to succeed.  Thus, reports have perfect typography and proper tab spacing, but the data within that report shows lead conversion is falling.  The emphasis on working solutions instead of comprehensive documentation in agile should expose micromanagers.

The Absent

Over the years, we tell countless stories about military leaders who “lead from the front,” instead of from behind a desk.  I am currently reading one about William Slim who commanded the 14th Army of Burma during the Second World War.  It is easy to get caught up in the trappings of authority.  In an office of cubicles, having your office is a status symbol.  It gives you the power to shut people out and focus on administrative duties.  The autonomy and control over who has access is a powerful motivation for people to advance into leadership.  In reality, a leader has to be more visible to the people they are leading.  A leader should know about the people who make them successful.  If the leader is not around and they become distant figure the people who make them successful will ignore them in time of crisis.  Agile attempts to counter this kind of toxicity with its emphasis on face to face communication.

The Incompetent Leader

A leader should not be able to do your job, but at the very least they should understand what it takes to do your job.  What I have discovered over the years is people who have never managed a computer network or written a line of code often lead technology teams.  These people know how to manipulate budgets and control the project, but they do not know how to direct technology professionals because they think they are no different than shipping clerks or factory workers.  Agile with its emphasis on cross-functional teams and delivery exposes the incompetent.

I am a big believer in the idea that you should tell and expose the truth wherever you find it.  Sooner or later, someone in a position of authority is going to act on that truth.  I feel this way because it is how we defeated leaded gasoline and paint.  It is how we have reduced smoking in the United States by half since 1964.  It is an approach which led to the birth of agile.

If we are honest with ourselves, we should acknowledge the power-hungry, micromanagers, the absent, and incompetent and expose them so their toxic effect on the workplace can be mitigated.  It matters, and if we are not successful, all we can do is watch the pretty colors as the world burns.

Until next time.

Leading by example for the scrum master

Any good scrum master will tell you the hardest part of the job is servant leadership.  Each day you need to sublimate your wants and desires for the good of the team.  It is a difficult road to travel, and I want to discuss it this week on the blog.

I find plenty of inspiration from the United States Marine Corps.  They were into servant leadership before the concept had a name in the business world.  All Marine Corps officers learn the phrase “Ductus Exemplo,” which is Latin for the phrase “lead by example.”  That means Marine officers are expected to be an example to the troops they lead and each other.  They eat last.  They make sure their appearance and equipment are “squared away,” so that other troops will follow along.  They don’t rest until everyone come back from patrol.  Finally, they don’t ask anyone to do something they would not do themselves.

The scrum master has plenty of other responsibilities.  They are making sure the team is improving each sprint.  They train product owners and hold them responsible for their work.  They are learning new techniques to keep up with the latest technology trends.  It is late nights doing production pushes with the release team and early morning working with offshore developers.

The reason for many of these sacrifices is simple.  Someday you are going to need developers to work late or a product owner to go above and beyond the call of duty.  That is when they will follow your example and come through.

In short, servant leadership is leading by example and something you will have to do if you want your team to succeed.

Until next time.

All about forgiveness

Talking about forgiveness.

It is evident to me that 2017 is the year of messiness.  Software is a messy activity.  The clutter is caused by the human emotions of foibles which are part of the creative process.  As a scrum master, you are the servant leader of messy people who write software.  You are supposed to live the agile manifesto and principles.  You set the example.  As a scrum master, you set the tone and help the team succeed.  It is rewarding work, but I have my moments where I am not very proud of the example I am setting.  Continuous improvement means striving to get better.  It also means you need to be able to forgive others and yourself.

My professional career has was shaped by my training in journalism and engineering.  The world of mass communications is very judgmental.  We criticize television anchors for hair color choices and how good their dentition looks on camera.  Radio disc jockeys are slaves to ratings and program managers who can crush your career.  Ratings mean money and if you provide ratings, people will ignore some of your worse personal faults.

Engineers are also a judgmental bunch and are willing to back up that judgment with the scientific method.  The code could run a few nanoseconds faster.  The class could better use the Liskov Substitution principle.  Finally, you could always tighten up the code to make it less error prone.  There is additional machismo where team members compete to assert dominance using their intelligence or programming skill.  It is brutal, and these environments discourage vulnerability and innovation.

As a scrum master, you are encouraged to help remove these dysfunctional behaviors.  Sometimes a scrum master gets caught up in these bad practices.  When you do, you are going to hurt the team.  When you hurt the team, you are undermining your credibility in the organization, and with the people, you are supposed to serve.  The first thing you should do when you hurt your team or someone on it is making amends and apologize.  Asking for forgiveness is hard, but it reinforces the agile values of respect and openness.  A team which can forgive each other when they make mistakes is going to be higher performing than one which is not.

Forgiving yourself is a much harder skill.  We know ourselves better than anyone else.  We are also the least forgiving of our mistakes.  We can feel like frauds to ourselves, and this is imposter syndrome.  Our emotional intelligence may be below average, and we find ourselves in situations which would puzzle others.  Finally, emotional control can be undermined by people who just do not want to improve.  You become a tangled bundle of rubber bands, and you feel like you can snap at any minute.  You do snap you feel riddled with guilt and self-loathing.  Over my career, I have spent a few mornings thoroughly hating the person I see in the mirror.  These feelings are not rational or objective.  These feelings just are, and you cannot escape them.

I have been leaning on friends and family for the last few weeks to receive relief.  I am seeing a doctor in order understand if the stress of the role is contributing to my emotional recriminations.  Finally, I have been avoiding alcohol and caffeine.  My brain chemistry is bad enough, and I don’t need to make it worse with outside stimulants and depressants.  I am making a conscious effort to try and forgive myself for past mistakes.

From the outside, this process is not going to look beautiful, but I need to do it if I am going to improve as a scrum master.  Everyone deserves a dose of forgiveness now and then.

Until next time.

Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way!

Leadership is about change.

It has been a week of confusion and wildly changing situations at my day job.  I have been using this time reflect on my leadership style.  I have also been using this period to do some thinking of the changing role of a leader in the agile.  It is funny how scraps of wisdom bubble up during times of chaos and uncertainty.

When I was in high school, I belonged to the Marine Corp Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps.  I joined as a freshman because I wanted to improve my grades and develop some self-discipline.  In the four years since I made that decision, I rose from a lowly recruit to the executive officer of the company of cadets.  Thanks to the guidance of two Vietnam Veterans named David Ogle and Richard Weidner, I learned how to be a leader.

One of the inspirational signs which hung in the drill room said, “Lead, Follow, or Get the Hell out of the Way.”  That boring vinyl sign is stuck in my mind.  Marines are the definition of commitment, it is their job to go anywhere, at any time to act as the long arm of American Military policy.  This is why they are often rescuing American’s from embassies or showing up at short notice when shots begin to fly.  The sign alludes to this because you are either leading fellow marines, part of the unit doing the work, or staying out of their way because when you give marines a job they are going to do it even if they have to pulverize something into dust.

So what does this mean for a scrum master? Situations are going to change over the course of your career.  This means you are going to have to adapt to the different people.  I am learning to get out of the way of team with a strong technical lead.  It is clear they know what they are doing.  It is also clear they do not want my technical guidance on anything.  This means that I have had to learn to step back and let the team succeed and fail on its own because nothing I am going to say is going to change its mind.  In another situation, I see a scrum team which delivers code in a timely manner and appears to be running correctly, but it is hiding some dysfunction.  It is not delivering features wanted by the business. For that team, I wanted to get out of the way but it seems that I must take a more leadership role.

So a scrum master must change based on the situation he or she finds herself.  We are not empty heads in taupe blazer looking to extort billable hours out of our companies.  The manifesto of agile says that we have to respond to change rather than follow a plan.  This tenant means that we need to lead, follow or get out of the way.  Not learning that lesson means we are in for some uncomfortable failures.

Until next time.

Learning Servant Leadership from Marines

Marines can teach you a lot about
servant leadership.  You just have to listen.

The life of a software developer and entrepreneur is filled with adventure.  It is also filled with countless hours of meetings, moments of terror, and a few lighthearted memories.  This week I danced around my day jobs office like a portly fool to the popular summer hit “Happy” by Pharrell.  It did it because I had made a bet with one of the scrum teams that they could not get their work done at the end of a sprint.  They accepted my playful challenge and they came through for me.  I had no choice but to dance around the office.  This got me thinking about leadership and what software professionals have to do in order to be successful.

As a younger person, I remember being taught about leadership by two Marine Corps veterans from Vietnam.  Sergeant Major David Ogle and Lieutenant Colonel Richard Weidner were larger than life figures from my youth.  Like many teens in the classroom the lessons they gave me really did not sink in until later in life.  Both taught me a leader had two responsibilities to accomplish the mission goals and to look after the well being of the people under your command.  When forced to choose always accomplish the mission.  I didn’t understand this right away.  Marines made life and death decisions.  Getting a mission done often means getting someone killed.

It would only be later in life that I understood what this unusually lesson would mean.  First, a leader looked after his people because some day you will have to ask them to accomplish a mission.  The people you lead will have to sacrifice themselves and their family lives to get things done.  In a military context, they may risk injury and death.  The other part of this simple lesson was that the leader is not really there to lead others but to serve them.  This is why I noticed officers in the Marines eat last in the mess hall making sure their people ate first.  It is also why most senior enlisted men and officers did not rest until all of the people they led were safely back at base.

This left a lasting impression on me.  It also influenced me on how I lead software development team.  I refer to them as “ladies and gentlemen” since I have the rare privilege of working with co-ed software teams.  I stick up for my developers when there are struggling and give them a kick in a seat when they are loafing.  I purchase hard candy to keep them from smoking and dance around my office when I lose a bet with the team.  It just comes with the job of being a scrum master.  A scrum master is a servant leader who helps his people be the best they can be.

This is not an easy life but I find it very rewarding.  It is all part of the adventure.

Until next time.