Читать книгу Agile 2 - Adrian Lander - Страница 36

We mentioned Deepak Chopra as a thought leader, which is a kind of “soft” leadership—that is, leadership that does not work through making commands. It is not directive. Deepak is not telling anyone what to do; rather, people read his advice and incorporate it into their thinking. In that way, they reflect and learn and ideally grow in their understanding of things. There are some specific modes of soft leadership: coaching, mentoring, teaching, coordinating, facilitating, and inspiring or otherwise motivating.

A coach is someone who helps someone to improve in their work, operating both in an achievement-oriented and participatory style. A mentor is someone who helps another to improve their situation, which might include improving their work. That is supportive leadership. A teacher is someone who trains someone in a specific domain of knowledge. Good teachers not only train but operate as a coach as well, and sometimes a mentor, and so effective training often requires all four of the Path-Goal styles of leadership.

Of course, there is significant overlap in the roles of coach, mentor, and teacher. These are all forms of leadership, because the person being helped looks to the coach, mentor, or teacher for guidance, advice, knowledge, and insight.

Coordinating is a form of leadership in which one takes charge of the dependencies between what many others are doing and tries to optimally reorder them and inject steps to synthesize the various parts. A coordinator needs at least a little authority—either formal or informal—to get others to rearrange their work according to the coordinator's decisions.

A facilitator is someone who leads a group by coordinating the interactions among the group. Facilitators often lead discussions, during which they make sure that everyone gets a chance to be heard and that the discussion stays on point.

The use of facilitation is common in the Agile community. However, it is often assumed that the facilitator does not need to understand the topic being discussed. Yet, it is not clear how someone who does not understand a topic can determine whether the discussion is going off point.

Many in the Agile community also feel that if a facilitator makes a suggestion about the subject matter, they compromise their role as facilitator. But Socratic discussion uses hard questions, and posing such questions requires understanding of the subject.

One of us with expertise in a particular domain once worked for an organization facing serious challenges in that domain. Due to that organization's Agile practice's rigid definition of a neutral facilitator's stance, our expertise was ignored and minimized, to the detriment of the product under development.

If someone has expertise or good ideas, they should be free to share those!

Effective leaders often do manage to facilitate discussions well, even when they inject ideas of their own. What matters is how it is done, whether those in the room feel that the leader is open to challenge, and that the best idea will win, no matter who it comes from.

The need to inspire people is important to be able to truly tap people's full ability. Leaders who threaten people get only the minimum effort required to avoid punishment. If people's motivation derives from a belief in the inherent value of the work, because either it benefits them or it benefits others who they feel are worthy, then people will try their best. Motivation can also come from other needs, such as feeling of fulfillment or an opportunity to be creative. These are all positive sources, while fear of discipline is a negative one.