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July 25 - November 15, 2020
No matter how it looks at first, it’s always a people problem. Gerald Weinberg
True leaders understand that leadership is not about them but about those they serve. It is not about exalting themselves but about lifting others up. Sheri L. Dew
A stakeholder is anybody with an interest in your product.
A development team is a group of people who jointly develop a product or product part, like a feature or component.
a development team may consist of user-experience designers, software architects, programmers, and testers.
it can be helpful when dev teams are stable, collocated, and autonomous.
Guiding the development team and stakeholders towards product success requires leadership at three levels: vision, strategy, and tactics.
As the person in charge of the product, you should shape the vision of your product; you should lead the effort to create, validate, and evolve an effective strategy; you should guide the development of a product roadmap; and you should work with the development team on the product backlog to determine, capture, refine, and prioritise its items.
The vision should guide the strategy, and the strategy should...
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insights gained on the tactical level—for example, by testing prototypes or product increment with users—should inform the strategy, ...
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you can’t push work on to the team or interfere with the work during a sprint.
Leading people comprises influencing and supporting the individuals to jointly work towards shared goals—
behavioural change stairway model (Voss 2016),
you have to be able to influence the individual.
People will only follow you for two reasons—because they trust and respect you or because they fear you.
If you want people to truly trust and respect you, then you have to show them that you genuinely care for them and that you are interested in their perspectives and would like to understand their needs.
Empathy is our capacity to understand other people’s feelings, needs, and interests and to take the perspective of the other person.
Empathy is possibly the most important leadership quality: It not only allows you to influence others and encourage change but also creates trust and psychological safety—an environment in which people feel safe to speak up and are comfortable to be themselves.
“Empathy…moves us beyond thinking of people as laboratory rats or standard deviations,” as Brown (2009, 49)
it means caring about the other person and wanting to help the individual as much as is possible.
There are two common barriers to empathy: First, we can be so caught up in our own thoughts and stories that our ability to be receptive to the needs of others is reduced. The same is true when we are tense, irritated, or worried: Experiencing negative mental states makes it harder to relate to and understand others.
we might confuse projection with empathy: The former means making assumptions about what the individual should feel according to preconceived ideas—
Empathy, however, implies developing an understanding of what is really going on for the other person.
Robert Greenleaf, who coined the term servant leadership, suggests that effective leadership starts with the desire to serve and help others, not to gain a personal benefit (Greenleaf 2002, 27).
being an effective leader requires you to cultivate a genuine caring attitude for the people you want to lead, whether you like them or not.
your ability to influence and lead others is affected by the management support you receive.
a visionary leader is someone who aligns people through a shared inspirational goal,
a democratic or participatory leader is inclusive and involves people in decisions,
an affiliative leader connects people and...
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a delegative leader empowers others to m...
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a coaching leader develops people by helping them r...
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pacesetting or directive leader sets standards and shows people ...
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an autocratic leader makes the decisions and tells p...
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there simply is no one right way to lead people.
The strength and endurance of a company does not come from products or services but from how well their people pull together. Simon Sinek
Trust is the magic ingredient that allows relationships to blossom.
when people don’t trust each other, their interactions tend to be superficial. They often avoid making tough decisions that involve disagreements and conflict, and they are unable to effectively collaborate (Lencioni 2002, 91).
when people don’t trust you, they won’t wholeheartedly follow your lead but will act out of obligation at best.
Come from a place of curiosity and care.
Listen with an open mind.
Speak and act with integrity.
Get to know people and allow people to get to know you.
It can be particularly helpful to share failure stories, as Lencioni (2002, 64) recommends.
individuals. Involve people in product decisions
Be supportive and offer help
Strengthen your product management expertise.
The Scrum Master should take care of process, collaboration, and organisational change issues.
Staffing: Help find people who have the right skills and are motivated to work on the product.
Roles: Ensure that the right roles are in place, their authority and responsibilities are clear, and everyone involved in the development effort understands them.
Process and collaboration: Teach agile values, principles, and practices to the product person, development team, stakeholders, and management.
