Elastic leadership : growing self-organizing teams / Roy Osherove.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Summary

Elastic leadership is a framework and philosophy that can help you as you manage day-to-day and long-term challenges and strive to create the elusive self-organizing team. It is about understanding that your leadership needs to change based on which phase you discover that your team is in. This book provides you with a set of values, techniques, and practices to use in your leadership role.

Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.

About the Technology

Your team looks to you for guidance. You have to mediate heated debates. The team is constantly putting out fires instead of doing the right things, the right way. Everyone seems to want to do things correctly, but nobody seems to be doing so. This is where leaders get stuck. It''s time to get unstuck! Elastic leadership is a novel approach that helps you adapt your leadership style to the phase your team is in, so you can stay in step as things change.

About the Book

Elastic Leadership is a practical, experience-driven guide to team leadership. In it, you''ll discover a set of values, techniques, and practices to lead your team to success. First, you''ll learn what elastic leadership is and explore the phases of this results-oriented framework. Then, you''ll see it in practice through stories, anecdotes, and advice provided by successful leaders in a variety of disciplines, all annotated by author and experienced team leader, Roy Osherove.

What''s Inside

Understanding why people do what they do Effective coaching Influencing team members and managers Advice from industry leaders
About the Reader

This book is for anyone with a year or more of experience working on a team as a lead or team member.

About the Author

Roy Osherove is the DevOps process lead for the West Coast at EMC, based in California. He is also the author of The Art of Unit Testing (Manning, 2013) and Enterprise DevOps . He consults and trains teams worldwide on the gentle art of leadership, unit testing, test-driven development, and continuous-delivery automation. He frequently speaks at international conferences on these topics and others.

Table of Contents

PART 1 - UNDERSTANDING ELASTIC LEADERSHIP Striving toward a Team Leader Manifesto Matching leadership styles to team phases Dealing with bus factors PART 2 - SURVIVAL MODE Dealing with survival mode PART 3 - LEARNING MODE Learning to learn Commitment language Growing people PART 4 - SELF-ORGANIZATION MODE Using clearing meetings to advance self-organization Influence patterns The Line Manager Manifesto PART 5 - NOTES TO A SOFTWARE TEAM LEADER Feeding back Channel conflict into learning It''s probably not a technical problem Review the code Document your air, food, and water Appraisals and agile don''t play nicely Leading through learning: the responsibilities of a team leader Introduction to the Core Protocols Change your mind: your product is your team Leadership and the mature team Spread your workload Making your team manage their own work Go see, ask why, show respect Keep developers happy, reap high-quality work Stop doing their work Write code, but not too much Evolving from manager to leader Affecting the pace of change Proximity management Babel Fish You''re the lead, not the know-it-all Actions speak louder than words

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface (p. xv)
• Acknowledgments (p. xviii)
• About this book (p. xix)
• Part 1 Understanding Elastic Leadership (p. 1)
• 1 Striving toward a Team Leader Manifesto (p. 3)
• Why should you care? (p. 5)
• Don't be afraid to become management (p. 6)
• You can make time for the things you care about (p. 7)
• Take the opportunity to learn new, exciting things every day (p. 7)
• Experiment with human beings (p. 7)
• Be more than one thing (p. 7)
• Challenge yourself and your team (p. 8)
• The Team Leader Manifesto (p. 8)
• Next up (p. 10)
• Summary (p. 10)
• 2 Matching leadership styles to team phases (p. 12)
• The role of the team leader (p. 13)
• Growth through challenge (p. 13)
• Challenge (p. 14)
• You're the bottleneck (p. 14)
• Crunch time and leadership styles (p. 14)
• Which leadership style should you choose? (p. 15)
• Command and control (p. 16)
• Coach (p. 17)
• Facilitator (p. 17)
• Leadership styles and team phases (p. 17)
• The three team phases (p. 18)
• Survival phase (no time to learn) (p. 19)
• Learning phase (learning to solve your own problems) (p. 19)
• Self-organizing phase (facilitate, experiment) (p. 20)
• When does a team move between phases? (p. 20)
• Next up (p. 22)
• Summary (p. 22)
• 3 Dealing with bus factors (p. 23)
• Bus factors (p. 23)
• A single point of failure (p. 24)
• A bottleneck that slows things to a crawl (p. 25)
• Reducing morale and inducing job insecurity (p. 25)
• Discouraging team growth (p. 26)
• Removing bus factors (p. 27)
• Pairing and coaching (p. 27)
• Bus factor as teacher (p. 28)
• Avoid creating bus factors (p. 28)
• Pairing (p. 28)
• 1-1 code reviews (p. 28)
• Rotation (support, scrum master, build) (p. 29)
• Pushing people out of their comfort zone instead of asking the veterans to do it (p. 29)
• Next up (p. 29)
• Summary (p. 29)
• Part 2 Survival Mode (p. 31)
• 4 Dealing with survival mode (p. 33)
• Are you in survival mode? (p. 33)
• The survival comfort zone (p. 34)
• The survival mode addiction (p. 34)
• Getting out of survival mode (p. 35)
• How much slack time do you need? (p. 36)
• Making slack time-required actions (p. 36)
• Find out your current commitments (p. 36)
• Find out your current risks (p. 37)
• Plan a red line (p. 38)
• How do you remove commitments? (p. 39)
• Why slack? (p. 39)
• Remember why you're doing this (p. 39)
• The risk of losing face with upper management (p. 40)
• The risk of failing (p. 40)
• This is what you're being paid to do (p. 40)
• Realize that you're going to break your own patterns (p. 41)
• Don't fear confrontation (p. 43)
• Don't despair in the face of nitpickers (p. 44)
• Command-and-control leadership (p. 44)
• Correct bad decisions (p. 45)
• Play to the team's strengths (p. 45)
• Get rid of disturbances (p. 45)
• During transformation you'll likely need to... (p. 46)
• Start spending more time with the team (p. 47)
• Take ownership of your team (p. 48)
• Learn how to say to by saying yes (p. 49)
• Start doing daily stand-up meetings (p. 49)
• Understand the notion of broken windows (p. 50)
• Start doing serious code reviews (p. 51)
• What if your team is large? (p. 51)
• What if you're part of a "wide team"-a team that's distributed? (p. 52)
• Next up (p. 53)
• Summary (p. 53)
• Part 3 Learning Mode (p. 55)
• 5 Learning to learn (p. 57)
• What is a ravine? (p. 57)
• The baby ravine (p. 60)
• Embrace ravines (p. 62)
• How can you tell it's a ravine'? (p. 62)
• The intern (p. 64)
• Challenge your team into ravines (p. 65)
• Next up (p. 66)
• Summary (p. 66)
• 6 Commitment language (p. 68)
• What does noncommittal sound like? (p. 69)
• A way out (p. 69)
• Wishful speaking (p. 69)
• What does commitment sound like? (p. 70)
• Is it under your control? (p. 71)
• Commit to things under your control (p. 71)
• Turn an impossible commitment into a possible one (p. 72)
• How do you get them on board? (p. 73)
• Launch a commitment language initiative at a team meeting (p. 74)
• Measure by feeling (p. 74)
• Fix just-in-time errors (p. 75)
• What if they fail to meet their commitments? (p. 75)
• Finishing the commitment conversation (p. 76)
• Can commitments drag on forever? (p. 76)
• Look for "by," not "at" (p. 76)
• Where to use this language (p. 77)
• Next up (p. 78)
• Summary (p. 78)
• 7 Growing people (p. 79)
• Problem challenging (p. 80)
• How did I react the first time I was challenged? (p. 81)
• When to use problem challenging (p. 82)
• Day-to-day growth opportunities (p. 82)
• Daily stand-up meetings (p. 82)
• One-on-one meetings (p. 82)
• Don't punish for lack of trying or lack of success (p. 83)
• Homework (p. 83)
• Homework is a personal commitment, not a task (p. 84)
• Homework has follow-up (p. 85)
• Homework examples (p. 85)
• Pace yourself and your team (p. 86)
• Do you have enough learning time to make this mistake? (p. 86)
• Are there situations where you shouldn't grow people? (p. 87)
• Next up (p. 87)
• Summary (p. 88)
• Part 4 Self-Organization Mode (p. 89)
• 8 Using clearing meetings to advance self-organization (p. 91)
• The meeting (p. 92)
• What just, happened? (p. 98)
• What is integrity again? (p. 98)
• The structure of the meeting (p. 99)
• The meeting (p. 99)
• Your dosing words (p. 102)
• The overall point of this meeting (p. 103)
• Keeping the meeting on track (p. 103)
• Next up (p. 104)
• Summary (p. 104)
• 9 Influence patterns (p. 105)
• What about using my authority? (p. 105)
• An imaginary example, using an influence force checklist (p. 108)
• Next up (p. 109)
• Summary (p. 109)
• 10 The Line Manager Manifesto (p. 110)
• The Line Manager Manifesto (p. 111)
• Survival mode (p. 112)
• Projects in survival mode (p. 113)
• Teams in survival mode (p. 113)
• Individuals in survival mode (p. 114)
• Sharing responsibilities is raring: team leads and managers (p. 115)
• Learning mode (p. 116)
• Projects in learning mode (p. 116)
• Teams in learning mode (p. 116)
• Individuals in learning mode (p. 116)
• Self-organization mode (p. 117)
• Self-organizing projects and teams (p. 117)
• Self-organizing individuals (p. 117)
• Other burning questions (p. 117)
• Next up (p. 119)
• Summary (p. 11*)
• Part 5 Notes to a Software Team Leader (p. 121)
• 11 Feeding back (p. 123)
• 12 Channel conflict into learning (p. 128)
• 13 It's probably not a technical problem (p. 133)
• 14 Review the code (p. 135)
• 15 Document your air, food, and water (p. 140)
• 16 Appraisals and agile don't play nicely (p. 145)
• 17 Leading through learning: the responsibilities of a team leader (p. 149)
• 18 Introduction to the Core Protocols (p. 154)
• 19 Change your mind: your product is your team (p. 159)
• 20 Leadership and the mature team (p. 162)
• 21 Spread your workload (p. 165)
• 22 Making your team manage their own work (p. 168)
• 23 Go see, ask why, show respect (p. 170)
• 24 Keep developers happy, reap high-quality work (p. 174)
• 25 Stop doing their work (p. 179)
• 26 Write code, but not too much (p. 182)
• 27 Evolving from manager to leader (p. 185)
• 28 Affecting the pace of change (p. 191)
• 29 Proximity management (p. 196)
• 30 Babel Fish (p. 199)
• 31 You're the lead, not the know-it-all (p. 202)
• 32 Actions speak louder than words (p. 205)
• Index (p. 209)

Author notes provided by Syndetics