Becoming truly agile requires a significant change in the leadership practices and in behavior of the managers. One aspect of this change is the transformation from command and control to servant leadership and supporting self-organization, which is not an easy one for many managers and teams. Over the years I have worked with many organizations helping teams and managers on the road to become more self-organizing and agile. Very often I have heard from teams that "we would like to self-organize, but management will not let us”. And from managers of the same organization: "we would like the teams to self-organize, but they just don't want to take the power and responsibility". Teams and managers seem to be trapped in the same mental model of hierarchical relationships and command & control leadership without being able to get out of this. In order to get out of this trap people need to start to think differently, feel differently and behave differently. In this session I will share my experience of coaching teams, managers and leadership teams so that the needed changes happen. We will cover the key concepts we have found helpful in changing the mental models. I will also talk about the coaching and training programs we have in place and tell examples of how the process of creating new leadership culture has progressed.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/where do agile leaders come from.pdf
