5 Ways to Compromise Your Team's Success

Gil Broza specializes in increasing organizational agility and team performance with minimal risk and thrashing. Dozens of companies seeking transformations, makeovers or improvements have relied on his pragmatic, modern and respectful support for customizing agile in their contexts. His book "The Agile Mind-Set" helps practitioners go beyond process and adopt a true agile approach to work. His book "The Human Side of Agile" is a practical book on leading agile teams to greatness. These days, several of the world's largest organizations are having him train hundreds of their managers in technology and business (up to VP level) on practical agile leadership. Get Gil's popular 20-session mini-program "Something Happened on the Way to Agile" free at OnTheWayToAgile.com.

  Agile  

The popularity of agile methods among knowledge workers continues to rise. Unfortunately, most organizations that use such methods are actually not agile friendly. In particular, they have grafted the flat, empowered, collaborative agile team construct onto their existing functional power hierarchy. Even in those companies that have made it work, it meant extra conflicts and struggles all the way from the top to the ranks.

You can’t really expect to succeed with agile if you don’t have a solid team. To grow such a team, you need leadership. Whether centralized or shared, whether through formal authority or not, leadership draws protective boundaries inside which a team can succeed. Servant leaders--the kind favored in agile--promote helpful behaviors through communication, coaching, feedback and facilitation. Just the same, leaders should avoid doing certain things that compromise a team’s success. If you are a servant leader, or aspire to become one, here are five agile killers to avoid…

1. Allow anti-patterns to emerge early in an agile team’s life. When people join a team, they bring their habits along. Is your star developer used to wearing headphones while working? A few days of that and the other team members will become less inclined to start conversations with him. Do members still ask you about upcoming deliverables rather than…

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