Agile Leadership JourneyCertified Agile Leadership Awareness Workshop This Workshop meets the awareness & discovery credential certified by the Scrum Alliance for Agile Leadership. Why Agile Leadership? The rise in complexity, uncertainty and rapid change have triggered a change in the landscape of work. Leaders expecting to leverage their past patterns of success will fall short both in terms of fully capitalizing on their people and in terms of underperforming in the marketplace. Agile Scaling Models are prevalent, but none of them adequately address the crucial role of the leader in modeling agile values and aligning the organization to engage and empower teams to delivery value and delight customers. Leadership Agility is the the ability to recognize your leadership patterns and biases, step out of your routing ways of thinking and responding, role model agile values and grow others and the organization. Focus of Learning Participants will be taken through a comprehensive view of Agile Leadership – first from the leader’s personal perspective in how agility impacts their thinking and behavior, then from an organizational perspective in how they can effectively align, guide and scale their organization’s agility. The Agile Leadership Compass will provide guidance for participants both during the workshop and as an aid in their practice following the workshop. See the full list of Learning Objectives of the Agile Leadership Workshop. DAY 1: PERSONAL AGILE LEADERSHIP (8:30 AM – 5:00 PM) Explore the historical context of human development and leadership as well as the current economics driving the need for agility. Introduce the Leadership Agility Maturity Model to increase self-awareness and discover more agile thinking, decisions and behaviors. Discover the mindset and behaviors of expert, achiever and catalyst leaders and how those impact organizational effectiveness. Practice a 5-step catalyst approach to positively impact every aspect of our work (and personal) life. AGILE CONTEXT-FOCUSED LEARNING Economic and market factors that have led to the rise of Agile approaches. Complexity and uncertainty of work and how that drives the need for an agile approach. Historical management trends and their fit with the business environments of their time. Increasing employee engagement and focus on customers to improve satisfaction and outcomes. LEADERSHIP-FOCUSED LEARNING Leadership self-awareness & mindset required to effectively lead in an agile context. Neuroscience-based leadership aligned with agile thinking and improving leadership effectiveness. Seeking and incorporating feedback that improves the leader’s ability to adapt their own behavior. Catalyst coaching to integrate alternative perspectives, engage others, and improve outcomes. DAY 2: LEADING AN AGILE ORGANIZATION (8:30 AM – 5:00 PM) Re-focus the leader towards the organization and its effectiveness of delivery customer value. Explore organizational culture, structures and processes to foster value delivery and agility. Understand a leaders’ focus and influence on the health and culture of an organization and its impact on their long-term performance. Evaluate case studies of real organizations of different organizational cultures applying agile structures and patterns to drive effective and sustaining change with positive results. Reflect and share leader’s organizational cultures and structures in comparison to these case studies. Practice a 5-step organizational change model to guide healthy, engaged and sustained change needed in our organizations. ORGANIZATIONAL-FOCUSED LEARNING Organizational challenges faced when undertaking Agile more broadly beyond a single team. Increasing safety, trust and collaboration between and across teams to improve outcomes. Organizational cultures, structures and governance and how they impede or enhance agility. Case studies of organizations that effectively use Agile to be agile and improve their outcomes. CHANGE-FOCUSED LEARNING Organizations as complex adaptive systems where uncertainty reigns and change is always present. Organizational metrics aligned to, and impeding, agile thinking and how they impact outcomes. Identifying & reducing bottlenecks, impediments, and friction in an organization to improve results. Leading change in an adaptive, engaged, and healthy way to foster a growth mindset culture.
Workshop Participation The workshop is designed for mixing experienced leaders and experienced coaches in a way that draws upon each strength and caters to each of their needs for growth. By combining both in a single workshop, participants engage with each other to learn the strengths of the others – growing both leaders and coaches. As described by participants of this workshop… «This wasn’t training, it was an experience. We were never taught at, we were engaged in a learning experience in which we both participated and contributed. I have never been so engaged for two and a half days.» Participant Profile Agile leadership is required across a diversity of business contexts including new product design and development, service development and delivery, business development, IT operations and security, team-oriented service and support, multi-faceted marketing and communications, and more. Agile leadership is needed at all levels within the organization from the executive suite to the front-line managers. Whether leading projects, programs, initiatives, people, teams, departments, divisions or businesses, agile leadership can improve the leader’s ability and more effectively draw upon every employee. Agile Leaders… Communicate a clear vision, align employees to that vision, and allow for adaptation in execution toward that vision – recognizing that most discovery and learning occur during execution Employ a growth-mindset enabling them to value diversity, be open to other ideas, seek feedback, and improve their own capabilities – rather than relying on what has worked for them in the past. Are self-aware of their own biases and triggers to remain in a constructive and creative mindset fostering a healthy, collaborative, trust-oriented, and productive organizational culture. Improve decision making, team collaboration and business results when operating in highly complex, uncertain, inter-dependent and rapidly changing environments by integrating the value stream. Engage employees without over-influencing or micromanaging them through inquiring before advising, active listening to align their thinking, and exploring alternatives to foster creative possibilities. Increase employee satisfaction, engagement and creativity through empowerment and other catalyst behaviors – reducing employee turnover and developing employee ownership, collaboration and productivity. Diversify risk through identifying and testing assumptions, experimenting with new approaches, collaborating with customers, delivering incremental value, and seeking feedback earlier and more often. Foster organizational adaptivity enabling them to more effectively break down traditional silos, collaborate to solve difficult problems and better align toward corporate goals and customer needs. Improve outcomes through balancing short-term business results with long-term organizational health to enable early and frequent value delivery combined with sustained growth. Catalyze change, experiment with new ideas, and a foster a growth-mindset within their organizations to adapt to the changing economy, technology and the market.
