The distinction between managers vs. leaders often sparks lively debates and a flood of opinions. But at its core, this comparison can be misleading. Managers and leaders are not inherently opposing forces or mutually exclusive. Both managers and leaders work within structures, have responsibilities, and are interested in accomplishing goals and meeting the needs of their jobs. In a world that often pits these two against each other, it’s essential to step back and consider the nuances: a manager can be a leader, and a leader doesn’t always need to be a manager. This article explores both, debunks common misconceptions, and explains how these skill sets complement rather than contradict each other.
Teams
Self-Organizing Teams vs. Self-Managing Teams
Are self-organizing teams better or the same as self-managing teams? What about self-directing teams? Working with teams can be challenging due to change and complexity. So, the idea that we could have self-organizing teams or self-managing teams can sound valuable, scary, or both!
What do these terms mean, and where can they be confusing? Let’s dig into each one.
The Tiger Team Trap: Why Special Teams Aren’t the Answer (and What to Do Instead)
Have you ever been in a situation where your organization suddenly faces an urgent, high-priority task? If so, you’ve probably heard someone suggest forming a “Tiger Team” to tackle it. It sounds great in theory, right? “A special team of top performers laser-focused on solving the big problem.” But here’s the thing – Tiger Teams often create more problems than they solve. Let’s dive into why this approach can be problematic and explore better alternatives.
Empowering Teams to Stay Out the Soup
Teams rarely have a shortage of complaints. Most teams have plenty of ideas of what’s going wrong and numerous suggestions for addressing them. Noticing what’s getting in the way of great work is a sign of a healthy team. However, they often focus too much on what others can do to remove these obstacles. When teams ignore what they can do themselves, things rarely get better. One of my favorite tools for empowering teams is Circles & Soup.
Navigating Team Conflict with the Waterline Model
Conflict is a challenging topic for many people to navigate. It’s a natural part of working together in groups, yet in the midst of it, it can feel terribly dysfunctional. There’s no shortage of ideas about how to work through it, and there are lots of tools available. The choice of what tool to use when can feel overwhelming. How do you know where to get started? One of my to-go methods for engaging with conflict is the Waterline Model.
Retrospectives Are Real Work, Too
“We don’t have time for a retrospective. We have ‘real work’ to do.”
How many times have you heard this? It comes up frequently in the classes I teach, I’ve heard it more times than I care to count. It frustrates me, and yet, I understand where it comes from. This issue isn’t limited to retrospectives. One of the challenges that managers, coaches, and consultants face is helping groups and teams to effectively balance productive work with work that builds and sustains their productivity. The key to that is understanding that working on the group’s functioning is also real work.
How Deep Do You Ask People To Go?
Some of my most spectacular failures working with teams have come from going deeper than I needed to. One particularly memorable retrospective ended with a product manager declaring, “I’m done talking about my feelings.” (It was not my finest moment.) Yes, organizations are made of people. And yes, work happens inside a container of relationships. But that doesn’t mean every attempt to address a team or organizational problem must be super deep. Choosing the depth at which to intervene is critical for every manager, consultant, and coach.
The Secret to Backlog Refinement (and Five Bonus Tips)
“What’s the secret to backlog refinement?”
Eighteen pairs of eyes turned to look at me, waiting for my answer to this product manager’s question. I’d spent the last two days with the group working through the challenges they faced using Scrum in their company. We discovered that most of their delivery problems stemmed from the teams not understanding what was needed. They’d identified with the story I’d told about the team that hated Sprint Planning and hit the reset button on their process. They knew they weren’t doing refinement and could see the effect. They wanted to know how to make it work for them.
How One Team Hit “Reset” on Its Planning Meeting
The team was angry. Every two weeks, they would find themselves five hours into their sprint planning meeting with no end in sight. Every two weeks, it was the same: Their product manager showed up with a pile of requests the team hadn’t seen before – estimated by someone elsewhere in the organization – and wanted to know precisely how many the team could finish in the next iteration. Everyone hated sprint planning. It was stressful, wasteful, and unproductive. Something had to change.
How to Improve Transparency and Flow in Your Team’s Work
The team was struggling. They were working on an industrial motion control product, porting a legacy code base to a new hardware platform. Parts of the code were decades old, and many of the original developers no longer worked at the company. They kept getting stuck trying to figure out how the code worked and what they needed to do to make it work in the new system. Neither the engineers nor the product manager had visibility into what was taking so long or how to help.