Take initiative beyond what is expected of you

This post are notes of the video above – Alistair Cockburns From Heart of Agile to Guest Leadership. I’ve extracted the most relevant parts (for me) in the snippets below

Guest leadership

“Guest leadership” Is the term he uses to note situations where you take responsibility to help others out.

Example:

• Help someone stow their luggage.
• Fix pizza for a hungry bunch

In my team setting, that could be to take the initiative to:

• Taking on a task that has to be done, that no one really wants to.
• Set up automatic formatting or eslint or automatic builds or tests
• Ask if your colleagues are doing ok when they don’t look like their normal selves

Guest leadership is about taking responsibility to try to solve a problem or task that is not your own (alone), without needing an invitation to do so.

He asks a question to

…think of times when you decided to take on the leadership role, and times where you didn’t. What made you (not) do it?

For me, the “triggers” in a situation for me to take that role is

• Indecision: I can be inpatient. If there’s indecisiveness in a group, I’ll quickly say “Let’s do X”. Sidenote: I think this is something I should work on – I can be too abrupt sometimes.

• Wanting the outcome: If I want it enough, I’ll jump at assisting them with anything they’ll need to help make it happen.

• Expecting a quick win: I like to complete things. I am more likely to help out on concrete tasks that have a timeframe. Tasks without clear, concrete goals or are long running is something I’d like to avoid.

• Learning opportunity: If this is a problem that requires me to learn something I’m curious about, or it’s regarding something I want to (but don’t quite) understand.

The underlying for taking such a role is:

• Having time to spare: If I am pushed on some deadline, I will not help out on unrelated things.

• Trust: Being trusted to solve the problem in my way, rather than being steered. If you know exactly how you want a problem solved (which is perfectly fine), I suggest you do it or get someone else then me doing it.

• Expecting appreciation: If I expect that people will appreciate my effort, it becomes far more likely that I’ll do it. For me, this is highly connected to the previous point. It could potentially not be appreciated because someone feels that I’m down prioritizing their task. It could also be that someone thinks I’m “stepping onto their responsibility”.

Increase trust and ownership

I like this point he makes where you’ll have to provide ownership and trust to your team in order for them to thrive and innovate.

• Ownership: People doing mental, creative work do not need someone looking over their shoulder and telling them what to do. They do their best work when having the freedom to own the outcome.

• Trust: These smart colleagues of your, are smart colleagues. Give them the trust to solve thigns their way.

• Manager = shield: They need a manager that is an umbrella. A protection against a board of executives raining down with requirements, instructions and wishes.

• Being a manager is hard: This manager role is a hard one, because you’ll have to be a “heat shield”, taking fire from above while at the same time not displaying it to those below. It can be a lonely role, because your bosses will be tough, and (if you do it right) your team can not really relate to you / support you. Sidenote: Without having had such a role, I can understand if managers befriend managers.