fbpx

How to Define Roles and Responsibilities

Why do people talk about roles and responsibilities, and why should we care? Everyone wants to know what to do and who to go to for help. People want to be successful, but in order to achieve success they need to feel confident in their roles and responsibilities.

When talking of roles and responsibilities in the workplace, a traditional boss might tell their employees they are responsible for a, b, and c, and to leave x, y, and z to someone else. But a leader in a great working environment would ask: “What do you think you’re best at? How do you think you can contribute the most to this organization? What do you think you can do to help our team be rock stars?”

By doing so, they are involving the person in the decision of how they will contribute every day: How can they contribute to the team’s success? What are they good at?  What’s going to add value to the company? Approaching roles and responsibilities in the right way is the core of unlocking high performance. 

Knowing what other people’s roles and responsibilities in the workplace are is important, too. If a team member knows who to turn to for help with a specific problem, they will benefit from the psychological safety of feeling supported.

When people feel supported by their team they are more productive, and when they’re more productive they’re happier. This creates a virtuous cycle that fosters an environment where people can rely on those around them for support. Knowing other people’s roles and responsibilities is central to creating an amazing team. 

Roles vs Responsibilities – What’s the Difference?

Although the terms differ slightly depending on the organization, a role tends to be the broadest area of defining the scope, and includes many areas of responsibility. 

But roles and responsibilities are not static: the way they are seen goes through an evolutionary shift at different organizational levels of maturity. 

Understanding Roles and Responsibilities

Start where you are. What does that mean? It’s really about paying attention to your team. What level of roles and responsibilities are needed to help them be successful with where they are on their journey? The first step is simply: ask them. 

Are roles and responsibilities clear? Is the team doing well? Which areas could be improved? This creates an opportunity to listen to people, to guide them in creating the clarity that they need to be successful. And this process applies at every level of an organization’s journey, whether in a younger, less mature team, or in a really evolved organization. 

It’s important not to mandate having ambiguous roles and responsibilities if your team isn’t ready for that. Rather, make sure that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined initially, and model the way of working you would like to see your team emulate. 

How to Define Roles and Responsibilities

The best way of defining someone’s roles and responsibilities is to co-create with them. Sit down, open a shared document, and brainstorm. What should the role be? What should the responsibilities be? What things are included in those responsibility areas? 

Alternatively, if you do not have time to do this, ask the person to write up their own role and responsibilities, and then look over them together.  This creates a sense of ownership, and shows you believe in them. 

If you’re dealing with people at a very low level of growth, it may be better to define their role and then get their input.  

Regardless of the approach you go for, get feedback from other people on the team who interact with that role to  improve the quality of those roles and those responsibilities, and foster a team spirit. 

Common Mistakes When Defining Roles and Responsibilities

Giving Too Much Authority

Giving too much authority or responsibility to someone who’s not ready for it is a common mistake. If the person turns out to not have the capabilities or maturity, it’s difficult to then take that authority away without damaging someone’s confidence. It’s far easier to give people more authority if they show they’re ready for it than it is to take authority away.

Having  people in positions they are not fully competent creates a situation fraught with challenge: work is not getting done as it should, but constantly telling people what to do can leave them feeling threatened and micromanaged. 

This is where the Decision Cards technology is helpful: rather than giving away roles and responsibilities, the focus is on how to talk about decisions: who’s the best person to make that decision? How involved should you be in this decision? How much ownership do you have of this decision?

Breaking it down to the level of decisions rather than roles or responsibilities creates a much finer grain way to get people fully involved based on their level of expertise. Rather than giving people full authority all together, it’s all about giving them authority incrementally based on how that person is showing up, how much responsibility they’re taking, how they’re growing, and how successful they are at making decisions.

Sharing Too Little Authority

Another common mistake is the exact opposite: giving away too little responsibility.

Not giving people enough responsibility creates boredom, disinvestment, and deflated egos. Giving people responsibility, and therefore ownership of their work, activates their ego in a positive way, and helps them care more about the success of their work and the project. Having a sense of ownership and pride over one’s job cannot be underestimated, and the benefits of this override the small errors the person might make. 

Oftentimes, our default solution is often to give responsibilities to the most senior person, but when we start giving responsibility to junior people, they’re going to start learning, growing, and being much more excited about coming to work. Similarly, senior members of the team will have more time to do other important work, including mentoring people or working on long-term strategy. Giving up on the need for perfection leads to a much better outcome long term. 

Developing People to Take on Responsibility

When people start out and have a low level of psychological safety and personal growth, crisp, clearly defined roles and responsibilities are necessary and will support them in their personal and professional growth. 

However, in organizations with higher levels of psychological safety, people’s consciousness grows and they become more evolved. People think less in terms of rigid roles and responsibilities and more about how they can best serve the team and the organization. In a secure, high performance team, people will dynamically trade off roles and responsibilities, decisions, and ownership on a regular basis. People just notice what needs to be done and get it done. 

Being territorial about roles and responsibilities is a sign of a low level of maturity and a low performance team and  organization. Mature people in a mature organization will just do what has to be done to serve a purpose. Ultimately, the meaning of roles and responsibilities is dynamic and will shift based on the level of consciousness and maturity of the organizational system.

The first most important part of the journey towards an evolved, mature team is focusing on your own evolutionary journey as a leader. By working through your own issues and fears, and being comfortable with ambiguous roles and responsibilities, you’re leading by example and transmitting a sense of psychological safety to your team. 

Finding The Right Amount of Authority to Share

Like everything else, through learning. Learning about yourself, learning about the people you’re working with, learning about their skills and capabilities, and experimenting to see what works. Everyone is unique, so what works with one person might not work with another.

The first step is to go on a learning journey.  We’re inviting people here on a learning journey, to understand this complex art of roles and responsibilities, decisions, and to truly understand what it means to evolve people. That’s a shift away from demanding the right answer, or giving all the answers: it’s about creating a path that will lead to much  greater success for the individual and everyone around them.

Agile Transformation: How You Can Succeed Where Most Leaders Fail

Why Leaders Fail Their Agile Transformations

Leaders in organizations are exceptional in their industry’s domain of expertise and have proven themselves applying leadership styles that have defined their success to date. It is this momentum and reassurance that propels leaders into failure with their Agile Transformations. 

When asking employees to change to a completely different way of working, most leaders fail to recognize that it also requires a more substantial change in how they lead. Industry leaders are always experts, but never experts in everything, especially with Agile Transformations. A false sense of confidence closes leaders down from seeking and having faith in the advice of others. 

The Seven Keys

If leaders must change their ways of thinking and leading, how do they do so and be successful? We offer seven “Agile Transformation Keys” to provide leaders the guidance they need. They are a distillation of the wisdom from decades of leaders that have made similar attempts in the past. Some have succeeded, and most have failed, and we have extracted the essence of what leaders do when they succeed.

The Seven Keys give executives specific, tangible ways that leaders can apply starting tomorrow. These business patterns are essentially keys to unlock the transformation that they’re responsible for. 

Each Key is a Successful Business Pattern

At SHIFT314, we’ve been leading with Agile for decades. What we’ve realized from looking back at what does and doesn’t work is that much of what happens in the Agile industry is not a reflection of the Agile manifesto. 

We also have enough experience to know that your transformation is probably not performing as expected. There is even a chance your transformation is more of a facade than a real change. We want you to succeed and are handing you the keys to your transformation’s success.

The mainstream thinking on Agile hasn’t always worked. There’s a lot of guidance out there about Agile that is based on theory or hearsay. What we have found is that the organizations that are successful with Agile transformations are not following the herd. 

While they may not follow the mainstream narrative, The Seven Keys contain the successful business patterns leaders need, and put them into a format that’s easy to understand, communicate, and apply. 

How Are the Seven Keys Connected to Agile?

Over the last couple of decades, our industry has been distracted by a lot of the initiatives that sound like they’re Agile, but aren’t actually mentioned at all in the Agile manifesto.

I’ll pick on Scrum or Kanban just for fun. Scrum and Kanban were around before the Agile Manifesto and there’s not even a mention of them in the Agile manifesto. However, when we work with our clients who ask for our help with their transformations, they usually begin describing their deployment of Scrum with detail. Additionally, when asked, they can’t recall most of the four values of the Agile Manifesto. 

Early in my career, I had a pivotal experience which led to an epiphany. As a leader, I was implementing Agile as best as I could within my organization, but we weren’t achieving substantial improvements in outcomes. My epiphany was that the Agile manifesto was telling me how to be a leader and that it was really a framework for making decisions. Once I implemented this, we saw the improvements we’d been seeking. These Seven Keys give you the simple and practical steps to implementing that framework in your day-to-day organizational environment.

How Are the Seven Keys Different from What We’ve Already Heard?

Most organizations we work with initially approach their transformation overly focused on what the employees and teams do. What’s their process? What are the job descriptions? What are the hiring practices? While these are useful structures, the reason why the transformations are not working is that organizational leaders are not embracing the values that are defined in the Agile manifesto.

They’re missing the point that the Agile manifesto is really a description of how to lead a team and make effective decisions as a leader. When you’re rolling out Scrum or Kanban, the focus is on teams. However, the Agile manifesto speaks more to the leaders because the leaders are the ones who have the power and authority to create the space for these frameworks to be successful. Asking employees, scrum masters, or coaches to do this makes no sense.

While there’s no doubt that everybody on the team needs to embrace the four values, it’s the leaders who shape the culture and model what’s acceptable and unacceptable in an organization. 

The Seven Keys help executives and leaders to figure out specifically how to embrace these four values as business patterns in their organization. As leaders work to bring those values into their decision framework, they can use these Seven Keys as a simple way to actually embrace the Agile manifesto through specific and practical steps that will help them create a successful transformation.

Leading the New Way of Working with Results

As an executive or a leader of an Agile transformation, you may find the Seven Keys rather counter-intuitive. They’re not a parrot of the common industry narratives. Why is this? 

You simply have to do the math. At least 90% of the Agile transformations in flight today are not working. So listening to what the whole industry is parroting is just going to have you go down the same path as everybody else. 

What these Seven Keys help an executive understand is that listening to the industry is a design for disaster. Instead of the unsuccessful narratives that are dominant in the industry, these Seven Keys represent the business patterns that have actually been proven to be successful. These are the approaches that organizations have used to achieve success with Agile. 

The Seven Keys have been called “The second wave of Agile.” It’s the new way in which organizations have cracked the code on Agile after we’ve spent the last two decades not getting it right.

Your Leadership is the Key

The Seven Keys also point to an important message: Agile has a lot more to do with the leaders than it does to do with the teams. The business patterns in the Seven Keys are really trajectories that leaders can take and help their teams progress towards. 

There is so much Agile certification and training for the teams, but very little support for leaders. The Seven Keys fill this gap. With them, leaders have good insight into specifically how to lead their teams towards success in an Agile transformation. This also supports the teams, because they actually have the right context and the right environment to thrive and to succeed.

What we are sharing here is a small part of the SHIFT314 Evolutionary Leadership Framework™ (SELF) that provides leaders an integrated framework for developing the evolutionary capabilities needed to support new ways of working and being.

Culture – It’s not just for Breakfast Anymore

The success of any transformation program such as Agile or Digital is wholly dependent on the culture of the organization. And 80% of organizations have a challenged or low-performance culture that is incompatible and block the introduction of innovative new ways of working. 

Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

Most people are familiar with Drucker’s now-famous business maxim: “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast.” Our extension is to add that: “Strategy eats Tactics for afternoon tea.” Most change programs fall into the trap of focusing on tactics and strategy instead of culture. So creating a lasting shift in organizations requires a focus on culture all day long – not just for breakfast. Read more about tactics, strategy, and culture.

What’s even more interesting is that people can influence culture at all levels of the organization – without power, budget or authority. In fact culture usually evolves in Culture Bubbles – a powerful pattern for unlocking change. Culture change is open to anyone wanting to have impact – not just top leadership.

High-Performance Culture Is Necessary for Survival

Many organizations are now facing what we call the VUCA world: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Organizational leaders find that the world is changing so rapidly that it’s hard for their products and services to keep up with change. It’s challenging to keep up with competitors and meet the needs of an evolving marketplace. 

Organizational Survival Is Optional

Organizations are going out of business at a faster and faster rate. Just because an organization has been around for a hundred years does not guarantee that it will continue to exist. Organizations are faced with a choice: either innovate and evolve or go extinct.

Even in a stable industry, once an innovator has entered your marketplace, your organization will not have the time to respond. That’s the importance of a high-performance culture. If your organization doesn’t have it, it may not survive.

What Does High-Performance Culture Look Like?

What does it really mean to have a high-performance culture? Fundamentally, it’s about creating success and achieving the purpose of the organization. Of course, organizations define that differently, yet whatever an organization’s definition of success, there’s one thing that ties them all together. The culture is one where people come together and are motivated to deliver for the organization, because they want to. Or to be more blunt the workers have a strong desire for the success of the organization.

There are many models that attempt to define high performance culture such as Frederic Laloux’s model of Teal. When we extract the essence of all the various models, what we find is that it all comes down to the people.

It’s About People

When you have a group of people who are excited, motivated, and ambitious, you’re going to see better results. People who are passionate and motivated can overcome any kind of obstacle. They’ll figure out a way to work around it and create organizational success. Thus, the core of high-performance culture is engaged, motivated people.

Some common characteristics of organizations with high-performance cultures include:

  • People are learning and growing every day
  • Employees are passionate, motivated, and engaged
  • There’s a strong sense of purpose; a clear vision
  • There’s a shared agreement about how people work together
  • People feel psychologically safe
  • People have equal voice; everyone can speak up to help make the best decision possible 

A high-performance culture is not an end state, it’s a journey. A transformation program alone won’t get you there. Rather, it’s a daily process to make continual progress on the journey. 

Daily Activities to Create a High-Performance Culture

If a high-performance culture is so important, how do you create one? Here are some practical steps leaders can take to develop a high-performance culture in their organization.

Act as a Role Model

The most valuable thing a leader can do is to act as a role model. To model the future ways of working and ways of being that you hope to see in the organization. The rate of an organization’s evolution is determined by the rate of its people’s evolution, and the best way to impact that is to act as a role model.

Let’s imagine that you’re not seeing people take on as much responsibility as you’d like them to. The recommended action is to consider, where are you in taking on more responsibility as a leader? Where could you be more responsible? Where are you lacking in desire to engage in the organization? 

If we want people to be more responsible, then they need some sort of ownership. So another question to ask is, where are you giving space for people to have ownership? Do people have the space to take responsibility for things? Do you trust others to be responsible?

In both cases, you’re taking responsibility and modeling the change that you wish to see. How are you showing up as a leader who create leaders? 

Share Decision-Making

In many organizations, there is a hierarchy where decisions are moved up and up and up the ladder. A very simple practice for a leader to create learning capabilities in their organization is to move those decisions down.

 What often happens when you move decisions down to more junior employees is they come up with radical ideas and innovations. And when they’re taking charge, they also learn how to lead that project better. They may not be the most expert, but if they have passion and ownership, they’re going to be motivated to make it successful.

When those people are in a place where they can get advice from other people who can help them be successful, you’re off to the races because now you’re developing an organization that’s learning. So the organization is able to accomplish more, not just this month, but the next month too. 

Talk Less, Listen More.

The simple practice of listening first and talking last creates space for innovation to happen. When the most senior person always speaks first, the space for innovation drops because nobody else gets to contribute ideas. Nobody wants to contradict the leader and people think, “What they said is good enough.” 

When we create a space for others to contribute new ideas, not just through brainstorming sessions but in regular daily meetings, that leads to a shift in innovation capabilities.

Look After the People

The other thing leaders can do to create high-performance culture is to really look after the people. Oftentimes leaders are focused on results and getting things done. But everything that gets done is actually accomplished by people. Thus, the secret to a high-performance culture is to look after people. Understand what motivates them and what inspires them and connect with them to make sure that they’re looked after. 

For example, when you check on a project’s status, instead of asking about the date and the timeline, ask, “How are the people doing? What’s going on with people? What are people frustrated about, and how can I help?”

Create Spaces to Explore the Future

The other thing that leaders can do is to create spaces to allow people to explore the future. Create opportunities to ask, “What kind of organization do we want to be?” This helps to create a clear sense of purpose.

Do people have a sense of shared inspiration? Do they have a shared desire for what they want to create for the organization? Without this, it’s difficult to create a truly high-performance culture.

Unblock the Organizational System 

It’s important to look at the infrastructure, processes, and rules of an organization to see whether they are helping people or getting in their way.

One approach is to convene a group of people who are interested in making the organization better. Ask questions like, “What are the biggest challenges that span across groups or divisions that we can work on to move us more towards our star on the horizon?”

Look at Areas of Tension

The next thing a leader can do is to look at tensions in the organizational system. It’s a concept from S3 or sociocracy, which is to look at the places where things aren’t working that well. Noticing problem areas where there’s a recurring pattern, or there’s some sort of interpersonal challenge or there’s tension between groups. And when we look for these tensions, then we can help steward the system and help it move towards resolution of these tensions.

And it’s not very complex. You can simply say, “Hey, I notice a bit of challenge around this. What do you guys think?” And just listen to see if people agree. And if they agree then say, “Well, how big a problem is this for us? How valuable is it to resolve this tension?” 

Then actually work as a steward of the system to look after it. 

How To Evolve Your Culture

Evolving to a high-performance culture means moving to a people-centric model of interaction. While it sounds simple, it is not an easy shift. In order to support leaders in achieving both the level of inner growth and as well as the skills and tactics needed to create a high-performance culture, we offer a variety of courses that will support you on your journey.

In this post we have outlined how you can immediately start to make a culture shift locally simply by making different choices for how and where to engage. To learn further we refer you to a related post How To Change Your Organizational Culture or get immediate access to in-depth information via our Agile Leadership and Transformation Training.

Leader vs Boss: Who Are You Inspiring?

Anyone can be a boss. For most of us, the choice to be a Leader takes us on a journey of self-discovery and growth. The choice can make a difference between effective, influential leadership that will impact high performance or the choice to remain in the business as usual approach of management. Which path will you take?

What Is the Difference Between a Leader vs a Boss? 

So what’s the difference between a leader vs a boss? Being a boss is easy. Being a boss just means you have power and authority–you can tell people what to do. The boss has authority that’s given to them or granted them by whoever gave them that position–it could even be themselves if they’re the founder. 

The difference between a leader vs a boss is that a leader is one who inspires others and creates those who follow by their own free will. People follow a leader not because of their authority or rank, but because they believe in them, have admiration, and are inspired by what they are doing.

Anyone can be a leader, regardless of their position or level of authority, because anyone in an organization can lead their team forward and inspire their colleagues. What does that really mean?

What Does it Mean to Be a Leader?

At the Sasquatch music festival in 2009, the attendees were all sitting on the hill listening to music. Then one crazy guy stood up and started dancing. For a long time, he was just this one crazy guy on the hill dancing by himself, then other people joined him. Then more and more people joined him until it became a mass dance on the hillside. People were excited and connected, it became an entirely new experience than before.

That’s the essence of being a leader. A leader is someone who takes an action that might be scary and vulnerable, yet creates a place where other people choose to follow. That’s the big test.

Leaders Evolve First 

One primary difference between leaders vs bosses is that leaders take personal responsibility for their evolution and that of the organization. When considering the gap between where an organization or a department is and where it might be, a boss thinks, “How do I fix my people? How do I get them to change?” A leader thinks, “How can I change? How can I grow and evolve? How can I inspire?”

The sign of a true leader is that they focus on their own growth first. In doing so, they become a role model for learning and evolution. Creating a high-performance organization requires that leaders evolve first.

The secret we tell people in leadership positions is, “If you spot a behavior you don’t like in other people, look at how you’re exhibiting that behavior yourself. Where can you grow around that dimension of leadership?” 

Qualities of Effective Leaders

Ultimately there’s only one quality or only one observable phenomenon that defines if someone is a leader vs a boss: whether there are people willingly choosing to follow you. The proof is in the pudding. With that said, here are some characteristics that good leaders tend to exhibit. 

1. Leaders Care About the People Around Them

Oftentimes, bosses get promoted because they’re focused on achieving goals. While that’s great for short-term success, in order to create long-term success, it’s vital to actually care about the people. Leaders understand that results come from people, and when they take care of the people, they’ll take care of the results.

2. Leaders Listen

Richard Branson once said, “No one learned anything by talking.” Listening is a superpower. If you want to learn and understand what’s happening with the people around you, the only possible way to do that is to truly listen. 

Listening is not an easy skill. To truly listen without an agenda is a crucial element needed for success. When we genuinely listen, we can actually understand what’s happening around us and can take effective action. One of the best ways to tell the difference between a leader vs a boss is by observing how much they listen and how much they talk.

3. Leaders Are Emotionally Clear

One of the most important aspects of a leader is that they’re emotionally clear. We all experience a range of emotions throughout the day. Positive emotions uplift everyone around us. When we experience negative emotions like fear, anxiety, or frustration, our bodies tighten up and everyone around us can feel that. Let’s look at an example of how a leader vs a boss’s emotional state can affect their employees.

Say you have a project team in crisis, and the boss walks in. Everyone tightens up and experiences fear. They stop talking. The boss issues questions and gets short replies back. But when a leader walks in, they say, “Hey everyone, it’s okay. Don’t panic. We’ll figure this out somehow. Let’s just work together to figure out how to solve it. What ideas do people have?” People come to life and start brainstorming. Not only does this help solve the problem, but people’s level of psychological safety also goes up.

This ties in with our book Emotional Science, which we created to help people get a much deeper understanding of their emotional systems. It contains a technology that goes beyond the usual understanding of emotions and can support leaders in developing the ability to be emotionally clear most of the time.

4. Leaders Have Compassion for Others

A typical boss’ view is, “Why aren’t they getting this done on time? This thing was due already, why are they only asking for help right now?” These judgments can be devastating because everyone can feel the energy coming at them even if the boss doesn’t say anything.

For a leader, patience and compassion are essential. When a leader is patient, they’re able to really listen and ask, “Where are they coming from? What’s getting in the way of them being successful? How can I help them grow and develop to continue on their growth journey so that they can be more successful going forward?” 

5. Leaders Speak the Truth

Leaders lead with truth. The truth, when said with compassion and understanding, will increase trust. The dimensions of truth-telling are being authentic and having candor. 

Being authentic means that people get what they see. You don’t have a hidden agenda. You say what’s going on. When you feel an emotion, you express it. This builds a sense of connection, trust, and safety.

The other dimension that’s very important is about having candor. A lot of bosses build lists in their heads of things employees are doing wrong but never communicate these until it’s too late. A leader immediately has a conversation with an employee, from a place of both candor and compassion. 

6. Leaders Celebrate Others’ Success and Build Leaders

A great leader builds other leaders around them. Celebrating others is an essential part of that. What that means is, instead of thinking, “How can I make myself look good?” a leader considers, “How can I make everyone else look good? How can I celebrate the things that other people are doing?” 

It could be a high five or a thank you. It could be sending an email to the whole team saying, “Hey, so and so did this. I just want to recognize their accomplishment. Thank you so much for what you were able to do, it really made a difference.”

Leadership: It’s a Choice

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em” – Shakespeare. 

Leadership is for those who are interested in achieving greatness and living your fullest potential. It’s a daily choice that leads to a never-ending journey of discovery and growth. We call this Evolutionary Leadership – the choice to evolve both one’s inner state of being and one’s ability to interact in more effective ways. The moment you stop looking at how to lead more effectively is the moment where your leadership starts to fail. 

At SHIFT314, we are committed to our continual growth in service of our mission to evolve the world of work. We hope that you also chose this path and that together we can create a better world. Are you ready to be an Evolutionary Leader?

Culture and Leadership: Navigating the Journey

Many organizations seek to improve their performance. Some even try moving to novel organizational structures with the promise of unlocking success. However, well-intentioned leaders often miss one vital point: all ambitions to change an organization rest on its culture. To quote Druckers’s now-famous maxim: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” And culture and leadership are more connected than many of us care to admit.

Culture Follows Leadership

The culture of an organization is the sum of all the people. Everyone impacts the culture around them – for better or worse. And leaders – those who hold power – have the greatest impact. The more senior the person, the greater their impact on the overall culture. Without a shift in leadership, culture change is simply not possible. The notion of assigning culture shift to Human Resources or a transformation team simply does not work in practice. Thus, culture and leadership are inextricably linked. But how can a leader create a cultural shift?

What Is Culture?

Before we dive into culture and leadership, let’s clarify what we mean when we’re talking about organizational culture.

Culture is the integrated set of behaviors of all the people in an organization. It’s the mindset, energy, and consciousness of an organization, together with all the tangible structures, practices, and policies. Together, these form the organization’s culture. 

Organizational culture is actually about the people. The collective behavior of all the people in the organization creates its culture. If you want to change the culture of the organization, that requires a change in the behaviors of all the people involved. 

Culture and Leadership Co-Evolve

Culture and leadership are so interconnected because leaders create culture with every interaction they have within an organization. There are two primary ways that leaders impact culture. 

Number one is through how they are. Leaders impact culture through their way of being, how they hold themselves, and even how they’re feeling internally. Every human being has a built in sensor to check how other people are feeling around them. When a leader is relaxed, open, and curious, that gives the people around them the psychological safety that they need to function at a higher level. We call this aspect of influence “Being.”

Number two is through what they do. What does the leader actually do? Are they taking actions that demonstrate that they care about people? Are they listening to what’s happening around them? Are they making decisions that are in the best interest of the people in the organizational system? 

Put together, these two aspects of leadership have a profound impact on an organization’s culture.

Culture, Leadership, and Personal Growth

Why is it important for leaders to focus on personal growth? The answer is simple: culture follows leadership. When a leader has an evolved consciousness and interacts with the people in the organizational system, they create a high-performance organizational system around them. 

The way to create a very high-performance organization (called a “Teal organization” in the Laloux Culture Model) is very simple: just show up as an evolutionary leader.

The Leadership Gap

The truth of the matter is that most people don’t show up as evolved leaders most of the time. They actually show up as very traditional leaders, because a lot of dysfunctional behavior patterns are coded into how we’ve been taught to behave since we were very young. For example, trying to convince people, trying to sell our ideas, and being overly attached to our ideas. 

There are many conditioned behavior patterns that leaders have, and it’s important to grow out of them in order to show up as more evolved leaders. Leaders who accomplish this can inspire a shift in all the people to create a high-performance culture.

How to Grow as a Leader

Since culture and leadership are inseparable, the question for leaders becomes, “How can I grow so that the culture I create is high performance?” Let’s explore some of the most important qualities of high performance leaders.

Emotional Regulation

Evolutionary leaders are able to understand how their emotional system works and navigate their emotional disturbances. It’s not about becoming a robot, it’s actually about becoming a real human being who is honest about what’s actually happening. The leader who feigns calm comes across as inauthentic. But a leader who demonstrates healthy emotional regulation fosters a psychologically safe environment. 

Psychological Safety

High-performance leaders hold a very high degree of psychological safety. They’re able to stay calm and unflappable no matter what’s going on around them. When a leader has psychological safety and walks into a room where everyone’s in a panic, they can say, “Hey everyone, everything’s going to be fine. We’ll work it out somehow.” When a leader has psychological safety, they can propagate that state to other people so that they feel psychologically safe.

Leaders Go First

Another thing that we see with evolutionary leaders is that they focus on their own growth and evolution. When leaders go first, they show everyone that they’re on their leadership journey too, that it’s okay to be imperfect, and that learning is part of everyone’s job. When leaders model that for everyone, that’s the foundation of creating a learning culture. And a learning culture is essential to creating an adaptable organization, because without learning, there’s no growth or innovation–and no hope of adapting to the complex business world that organizations exist in.

Authenticity

Authentic leaders focus on relationships and building trust. They understand that an organization is not a machine, it’s a collection of people, and that helping people evolve and grow is one of the most important things they can do. In addition, they’re also vulnerable. They’re ready to share exactly what’s going on with them. And when leaders are vulnerable, it creates connection. It’s the foundation of creating the trust and the psychological safety that employees need to function at their best.

Being vulnerable is being able to surrender in a complex situation. One example is leaders dropping the facade that they’ve got it all together. Powerful leaders say things like, “I don’t know the solution to this, but I believe we can all work this out together.” And when leaders are that authentic and vulnerable, it opens up the door for the extraordinary to emerge from organizations.

Listening First, Talking Last

High-performance leaders listen first and talk last. By listening first, they show that they respect other people’s input and voices. Leaders who listen first are able to very practically influence organizational culture in a positive direction. 

Of course, this kind of change requires an inner shift in the leader’s consciousness or mindset. Most of us are afflicted with the challenge of the ego running the show. The ego wants to talk and express itself, and so it doesn’t create places for others to contribute. Even a simple activity like listening first requires a lot of inner growth for most leaders.

Sharing Power

Leaders who understand the paradox of power know how to share power effectively with workers and peers. They know when to share power, how much power to share, and when to give away power completely or stay involved in decisions. Through this effective sharing of power, leaders develop other leaders around them. They help build systems that can operate while they’re away on holiday.

To feel comfortable sharing power and to actually want others to be successful requires an inner shift in mindset. The built in mechanism of the ego is that we want to take all the credit for ourselves; we want to look like the star. However, high performance leaders help their people become stars and they move themselves to the background. 

How to Lead Better Meetings

Here’s an example of positive culture and leadership in action. It’s also a technique you can use to lead much better meetings. As the leader, let’s say you’re looking to solve a problem. Oftentimes, leaders go in and propose what they think the solution is and then say, “Does anyone have any input or advice?” They often hear very little feedback. 

If you’re interested in creating better outcomes for your organization and developing other people to be leaders, there’s a very simple practice you can do: at the beginning of the meeting, just set up the problem but don’t offer a solution. Here’s how it can work:

  1. At the beginning of the meeting, say something to the effect of, “Hey, we’re here to solve challenge X. I’ve got some ideas, but I’d like to hear what you think first.”
  2. Everyone else shares their input first, before having any discussion. Just have everyone share their thoughts on the topic. 
  3. Once everyone’s had a chance to speak and share their ideas, you can guide the group through an open discussion of what will be most effective.

What happens is that you’re able to help people contribute to the solution and recognize their contribution. Ultimately, this helps develop people as leaders. What’s even more important is you’re using the collective wisdom and intelligence of all the people to make the best decision possible. 

Oftentimes as the leader, you don’t even need to make the decision anymore. You can just say, “Hey, it all sounds like we’re in agreement that solution X is the best option. Great. Let’s go do that.” This is a very practical way that leaders can model positive culture and leadership while developing the people in their organizational system.

Taking the Leap: Becoming an Evolutionary Leader

There are many ways that people can grow as leaders. Here at Shift 314, we have created a technology of consciousness that helps leaders experience a rapid inner shift and gives them the practical external tools to interact in new ways that unlock performance. 

Practical tools include strategies for:

  • Deep listening 
  • Enhanced learning
  • Interacting with people
  • Understanding alignment within the organizational system
  • Observation skills for a deeper level of understanding 
  • Navigating complexity
  • Effective facilitation

We also offer vital practices that leaders need to show up as high-performance leaders that are able to manifest a change in culture. This includes understanding decision-making, understanding how to share power effectively, and understanding how to use technologies such as the advice process to help people become leaders.

On the “doing” side of the equation, we provide detailed training in everything from how to listen and how to facilitate meetings to how to send emails and share information. It’s repatterning and relearning all of these normal practices in ways that are more engaging, that help people model a more evolved way of working that leads to greater employee interaction and helps build other leaders within the organization. 

The “being” side of the equation is an inner shift in consciousness. What we see for leaders who create high performance organizations is they have a different view of themselves, the world, the organization, and other people. The inner shift that’s needed is a shift in mindset to a more evolved worldview. We have created technologies of consciousness to help leaders go through this essential shift of consciousness and have a sustained impact on their organization.

Mind the Gap: Leading With an Agile Mindset

In order to create Business Agility through Agile, organizations must not only embrace Agile Processes but also integrate the Agile Mindset. To create an Agile organization, everyone needs to shift to the Agile Mindset. Many teams can make this move with the right environment. Yet, what about the leaders who are creating the environment?

Agile Leadership Gap

It is important that leaders in an Agile organization live the Agile Mindset to unlock the full benefits of Agile. The truth is: most don’t have the Agile Mindset. That’s what we call the Agile Leadership Gap. Leaders don’t have the shift in mindset and the “being” and “doing” needed to model an Agile way of work. 

Agile training alone doesn’t give people this mindset shift. Giving managers, product owners, Scrum masters and executives Scrum training isn’t going to help them achieve the Agile Mindset. 

There is a huge gap in giving leaders the mindset shift that they need to model the Agile Mindset. And it’s virtually impossible for organizational leaders to make their organization more Agile without a shift in mindset. 

This is the leadership gap.

What Is the Agile Mindset?

The Agile Mindset. It’s a mysterious, elusive concept. People have heard about it, people want it, people understand it’s essential for success. But what on earth is it? 

In order to understand the Agile Mindset, we have to look back at the Agile Manifesto. The Agile Manifesto contains three essential items–what I call the essence of Agile:

  1. Culture of Learning 
  2. Valuing People 
  3. Responding to Change 

Let’s look at each of these in-depth.

Culture of Learning 

Many people have heard about this shift from a fixed mindset to a learning mindset (or a “growth mindset” as it’s called in the work of Carol Dweck). In order to have a learning mindset, people must be open to learning, considering new ideas, and discovering new information.

However, we discovered that in order to truly be successful with Agile, leaders need something beyond even the traditional learning mindset. We have discovered a deeper, new type of mindset that unlocks the Agile Mindset, which we call the Evolutionary Mindset.

In an evolutionary mindset, we’re not just open to learning, we are open to learning about ourselves. We’re ready to examine things like:

  • Our behaviors
  • Our ego
  • Our consciousness
  • How we’re showing up
  • The damage our leadership behaviors could be causing to others
  • How to take ownership of our mistakes

Having the courage to take an honest look at ourselves and use it as a catalyst for growth, using the evolutionary mindset, is what we call Evolutionary Leadership. This is what the manifesto is pointing to. And this is how to be successful with Agile.

Developing the mindset of an evolutionary leader is actually a very practical step. If you have a team of seven people and you want them to collaborate, guess what? People’s egos and conditioned behavior patterns are going to get in the way. To truly have collaboration–to truly have people working together, to get results, and to successfully build the extraordinary–is for people to be committed to evolving themselves.

This inner shift is an essential part of the Agile Mindset.

Valuing People

The first line of the Agile Manifesto states: “Values individuals and interactions over process and tools.” What that’s really about when we simplify it is, people over process. 

If we think about a high performance culture, it’s about highly engaged, motivated people. Agile, through the manifesto, is pointing us to what the mindset is about. It’s about people who are focused on showing up as their best selves, collaborating with others to create amazing products and very successful organizations. Agile is a guide to create amazing workplaces, to transform the world of work.  

However, the transformation to a “people first” mindset doesn’t just happen because we see value in it.

Many of us unconsciously react in ways that aren’t people first–and we may not even be aware of it. We might have an emotional outburst or get irritated with people. A lot of us get attached to the way things are done. Oftentimes, we use processes and rules to create stability and safety for ourselves. Those are all ways that we’re not acting people first, and thus not realizing the potential of agile.

Putting people first means an actual inner shift in our being. 

Since we’re highly conditioned to have typically reactionary behaviors that do not put people first, there’s a lot of reshaping needed internally for how we show up. That is the mindset shift, which will manifest as a shift in our behaviors that allow us to put people over process.

Responding to Change

The third part that’s essential is the phrase, “Responding to change over following a plan.” What does it really mean to respond to change? Responding to change requires an inner shift in our being. If done effectively, we may create plans, yet we are able to adapt when the situation calls for it.  

We understand that most organizations are highly complex systems and that the best outcomes often arise when we let go of our plans. We let go of our need for certainty and we embrace what’s happening around us.

This third point is saying, “Hey, do you notice you’re more successful when you respond to what’s happening around you instead of following your plan?” Are you getting stuck pushing your agenda, or pushing what you think an organization needs? Are you getting frustrated, angry and resistant when plans change?

That responding to change over following a plan creates better results is a simple observation–it could even be called common sense. And yet it requires a shift to an evolved mindset for us as human beings to feel comfortable letting go of our plans. 

How Do You Know if You’re Living the Agile Mindset?

How do you know if you’re living the Agile Mindset? That is, how do you know you are showing up as an evolutionary leader? 

The very simple test is to look behind you. Are there people following you? Are there people reaching out to you to ask for your help and your guidance? That’s how you know.

The Agile Mindset is a Shift in Consciousness (Not a Skill or Technique)

What we’re speaking about is a transmission. It’s an essential attribute of our being. There’s no technique that will give you the Agile Mindset. The skills and techniques are there to help you create self-awareness so you can see where you’re living the Agile Mindset and where you’re not. But, ultimately, this is an inner shift in your being, a transmission. 

We’ve all had these experiences where we’re around people who feel inspiring and motivating–there’s something different about them we can’t quite put our finger on.

That’s what it will feel like as you evolve the Agile Mindset in yourself. People won’t quite know what it is, but you’ll be showing up in a very different way that will lead to completely different outcomes that may astonish you.

The Agile Mindset is Possible

While this all may seem intimidating, we know it’s fully achievable. We’ve had many of our graduates from around the world report that they’ve seen the shift. They suddenly see people reaching out to them and seeking their advice because they’ve learned how to show up in a new way. They’ve learned how to live the Agile Mindset, so it’s integrated as a living transmission through their actions.

How Can an Organization Develop the Agile Mindset?

Once we put all of this together, the question becomes “How can people get there? How can teams get there? How can our whole organizational system get there?” Let’s dive in.

First, let’s look at how we create Agile teams. Creating Agile teams is not new. If you have an effective Agile coach, they can create teams that work in an Agile way. But in order to create true business agility, we don’t need Agile teams – we need an Agile organization.

In order to create an Agile organization, the organization’s leaders must have an Agile Mindset–which brings us to the great importance of the Agile leadership gap.

How Do We Overcome the Agile Leadership Gap?

How do we overcome the Agile leadership gap? Let’s start by looking at how we help teams achieve an Agile way of working. We know that if we give teams effective training followed by embedded on-the-job mentoring, that over time they can make progress on the journey. The same exact thing is needed for leadership. 

Leadership would be more effective with specialized training to understand Agile leadership–how to live and model the mindset to lead a successful Agile transformation. It is important to to understand very practically and tangibly how to maintain an Agile culture. They need to understand what specific behaviors and practices will allow them to operate in the way that’s aligned with the Agile Mindset.

Transformation Is Not Delegable 

It’s important to note that managers and executives cannot delegate transformation to a transformation team–it simply doesn’t work. As the holders of the power in organization, they are the ones that lead the transformation. They can take a very passive role leading it and not much will happen, or they can take a very active role and see real transformation.

From a Traditional Mindset to an Agile Mindset

Most people in organizations are put into an environment where the system is telling them how to function, essentially programming their mindset. In order to live the Agile Mindset and to show up as evolutionary leaders, we have to overcome the constraints around us. 

To be an influential leader of change, one must be able to show up in an evolved way no matter what’s happening around us, no matter the structures and conditioning. Through this shift in our being, we can lead a shift in what’s happening around us.

Practically speaking, this works at a local level by creating a culture bubble in our part of the organization, or by showing up in a way that will inspire and influence others around us at our level and upwards. 

That’s really the challenge and the possibility: focusing on our own evolution, whether you’re a team member, executive, manager, product owner, or coach. How are we actually interacting with people? When we see a shift in our interactions, that’s when we’ll be able to say, “I’m living the Agile Mindset.”

Agile Alone Is Insufficient 

Real transformation in an organizational system is only possible to the extent that leaders learn and embody the Agile Mindset. So what we’ve discovered is that Agile is insufficient. It’s great at pointing to these three essential items: a culture of learning, valuing people, and responding to change. However, Agile training doesn’t help leaders develop these essential elements, and the mindset shift that goes along with them.

Changing Structures Doesn’t Work Without Changing Mindset 

Here’s one of the biggest traps in Agile: people often say, “What structures do I need to change in my organization to create a different outcome?” But changing structures doesn’t work without changing mindset.

There’s no structure that works for everyone. There’s no copy-paste system that you can use. Each organization has its own unique DNA. It is important for leadership to have the skills to create new structures and new ways of working. 

This requires leaders who have fully developed inner psychological safety to run experiments. It also requires leaders who have the knowledge and skill to create new structures that are unique and customized to their organization. 

This is the type of leadership that forms the foundation of high performance through leading through influence and is based on a dissolved ego. Rethinking Agile requires supporting each leader’s growth so they show up as a more evolved leader. This is what allows a more evolved outcome to happen and creates the shift in organizational performance. 

“Being Agile” – Based on responses from hundreds of people during a keynote lecture.

Understanding the Laws of Organizational Dynamics

What we’ve discovered is that Agile is great at pointing to what’s needed, but it’s incomplete. So we created what we call the “laws of organizational dynamics.” It’s an integrated understanding of what’s needed to create success through Agile (and even beyond Agile!). What’s needed to create business agility is what we call Evolutionary Leadership.

What have we learned after decades of studying leadership? It turns out it’s not actually about Agile. It’s something we call Evolutionary Leadership, which is an integrated way of doing and being that reflects a shift in consciousness. It’s a shift in behaviors and inner worldview that creates high performance. That’s why, when we look at the Agile Mindset, it starts with this kernel of Agile, but becomes something much bigger.

Evolutionary Leadership

Put simply, the Agile leadership gap is this: to create a successful leader and Agile environment requires more than just the Agile Mindset. It’s the mindset of an Evolutionary Leader–a broader understanding of what it takes to create business agility and how high-performance organizations truly function. 

All of this is achievable. With the right instruction, training, and mentoring, it’s possible for leaders to get there.

This is how we look at creating an Agile Mindset in the organization: ultimately when we look at the root of it, it’s a leadership problem. Without the leaders modeling it, the Agile Mindset can never really be fully embedded in the organization and the full benefits of Agile can never be realized.

Creating Mindset Shift With Technology of Consciousness 

The Shift 314 Technology of Consciousness is a technology co-created by myself and Audree Tara Sahota. We took Audree’s 20 years of experience in working with personal growth and transformation, plus my experience of working with organizations creating business success. We put the two together, along with information we’ve learned and evolved by working together. 

What we’re sharing with you is the best of the technologies that we have co-created by putting our superpowers together. These technologies allow people to rapidly create a shift in consciousness. 

Some people may feel overwhelmed with the idea of shifting mindset and behavior and assume that it’s a lengthy process. In the old modalities, it might have involved 20 years of counseling. Yet now it doesn’t have to be that arduous. We’re talking about very rapid shifts by accessing people’s consciousness directly. By helping people connect in a very deep way to the inner state of their being, we facilitate an experience that creates a lasting change in mindset while shaping new behaviors.

We at Shift 314 hold a transmission of an evolved consciousness. Because we hold that transmission, we can share it and help others on the journey. Because we’ve done our work of personal growth and self-evolution, we can help others on their journey of self-evolution.

The Evolution of Michael K Sahota

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.
Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” ― Rumi

Michael K Sahota is Evolving ….

Over 20 years ago, I started a search for how I can function more effectively as a person to create better results. Like many people, I had normal parents and did not enter adulthood with all that I needed to create the success that I desired. My quest for creating greatness around me, led me to realize that I needed greatness in me. I came to be aware that it wasn’t just about skills and techniques, it was about my inner state of being. Creating deep and lasting change requires the calm, presence, and stillness to look beyond the surface to what is really going on.

The photos capture over time how my inner transformation was reflected in my outer transformation.

My journey of evolution has been filled with ups and downs. It has taken me to places that as an engineer and scientist, that were alien and unfamiliar to me. I have taken up meditation, traveled to India to study consciousness and more importantly looked inward to discover the nature of the human experience. I have come to realize that almost all challenges we face are internal and that we can through inner work create and achieve much more than we may even dream.

Our Organization – Agilitrix – is Evolving ….

For the last 15 years, we have been operating as Agilitrix to serve organizations in their efforts to improve how they are functioning through Agile. As a result, our work has shifted iteratively and incrementally by our deeper understanding of Agile. Consequently, our primary focus is now on leadership, culture, organizational change and personal growth. While we continue to support organizations that want to shift to an Agile way of working, the focus is now on the leadership and organizational shifts needed to create a context where Agile can thrive.

And on humorous note, it seems like we could never spell Agiltrix correctly…

Who Are We Now?


We upgrade the evolutionary capabilities of people and organizations to realize the extraordinary.
Through a shift in mindset & practices we enable new ways of working.

Shift314 is a next generation conscious training and consulting organization. We work on Organizational Evolution and Leadership Evolution. What wakes us up every day, and has us excited about what we do? Our purpose to help others to be successful.  Our vision to create a create a global impact on our world by creating local shifts with people and organizations.

Why SHIFT314?

When we stopped to look at what we were doing, we realized that we were helping make the shift to high performance – to realize evolutionary capabilities.

Pi = “π” = 3.14 represents the universal principles of mathematics that govern reality. Our work is about unlocking the Universal Principles of Organizational Dynamics and Human Evolution. This combined understanding enables the SHIFT towards high-performance (Teal) organizations. Our unique IP is an integrated system that fuses together culture, leadership and organizational change to create effective tactics and strategies.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – African Proverb

Evolving Together

As evolutionary leaders, we are all on our own unique journeys. My journey is one that I could not have made alone. I would like to thank my wife, co-trainer, coach and personal chef Audree Tara Sahota for helping me discover my truest authentic self with (mostly) unwavering support 😉 I would also like to thank my mighty companions who form the SHIFT314 core team, Ron Laudadio and Abbey Bishop, who helped me again discover and work through my leadership edges as well their passion and desire for living SHIFT314 teachings and bringing our work to the world.

Agile Success Pattern: Start with Managers, not Teams

The usual approach to Agile – train & coach teams to move to an Agile process – is backwards. When we approach Agile from a Team Perspective, the role of the manager usually becomes an afterthought. But wait, don’t managers need to learn how to operate with an Agile Mindset along with teams?

Start with Leaders

The usual approach with Agile is to set up autonomous self-organizing teams. The official role for a manager in Scrum – the most popular version of Agile – is nothing. There is no role for a manager. What? No role for managers? Hard to believe, but true.

 “Scrum is designed to disrupt the hierarchy.” – Ken Schwaber, founder of Scrum

Well, it’s doing a very good job disrupting the hierarchy: Version One’s research shows that 45% of organizations report “Lack of Management Support” as a challenge experienced adopting and scaling Agile. Often, their roles become conflicted as they do their best to bridge between the existing power structures and the new Agile ones. It is actually quite mind-boggling what is happening: Managers – who are “in charge” of the organization – are being disenfranchised and then labeled as resistors. 

The process level training such as Scrum or SAFe is meant for teams and products – not for the role of the manager. Teams get specific training and coaching. Managers will be lucky if they have a session that explains the Agile Mindset but, are unlikely to have any significant help making the shift to a new way of working and being.

Start with Managers!

Managers are the leaders of the organizations. They are put in charge of what happens because of their intelligence and experience. What if they were involved and guided the introduction of Agile in ways that actually fit their organizational context? What if they were responsible for modeling the Agile Mindset of learning by running experiments to iteratively and incrementally change the organization? Wow! That would be incredible. An approach like this would put the Agile Mindset at the forefront, as so it would not be skipped. 

What if managers were provided with intensive training and coaching to support their jump to the Agile Mindset? Of course, they would need to learn how to create a healthy environment for Agile, how to evolve the organization and how to lead in a new way. Ultimately, there will be team level training and intensive coaching, but this will happen as managers are able to support the success team transitions.

When consulting with organizations, we have found this to be a very practical and powerful approach we call the “Evolution of High Performance”. We have received extraordinary feedback on our public and private training from managers around the world on how this helps them finally understand their role. They are able to see, not only how they play a key role in the future of the organization, but how to begin operating in alignment with the Agile Mindset.

It’s never too late to start

We have discovered that it is never too late to start with managers. For both in-progress transformations and established Agile organizations, a strong focus on managers is what is often the missing piece for unlocking success and taking growth to the next level. Of course, starting with managers will be the most effective approach, but it’s better late than never.

Managers: How to Get Started

For sure there is a lot to learn for managers discovering how to operate in a new way of working. Here are some practical articles to understand how to operate in the new world of Agile:

Agile Mindset = Journey to High Performance

Do you know Agile Requires a Permanent Shift in Behaviours? That’s what the Agile Mindset is all about.

On the surface, Agile may seem straightforward- we change from one structure/process to another one. Just train and coach people on teams and we are good.

When we look deeper at successful Agile Transformations, we see people learning a new mindset or new ways of being that enable collaboration, engagement, and feeling safe enough to run experiments. Without the behaviour shifts there is no change – only talk or a shallow veneer. This is what we call Wave2Agile – living the Agile Mindset.

How well equipped are we to support others on their journey? 

And where are we on our own journey? Are we modeling the behaviours needed to invite people to join us on such a profound journey of personal and organizational evolution?

It’s easy to blame others for not changing. I often hear frustration, targeted at managers, workers or at teams.

An alternative is for each of us to look at how we can support others.

How we can improve the overall environment or organizational climate? 

Yet the most important, the highest impact change is to shift our own behaviour. Most people have heard: “You can’t change anyone else; you can only change yourself.” And that we do have control over. Are you ready to make the change? Change starts with us.

Agile Mindset – Where do I begin?

Here are some practical tips:

  • The most important starting place is self-awareness. Often we are not even aware of some of our challenges. If you are ready to grow, ask the people you work closely with for your top 3 challenges.
  • Check if you are in any of the common team and organizational change traps that are creating resistance: Selling, telling, convincing, mandating, etc. Learn more here!
  • Check to see how well you are modeling the Agile mindset. Some key behaviours are: Flexible, Open, Respectful, Responsive. Learn more here! 

Shift your behaviour. Hahaha.. Like that is easy. No, you don’t need 10 years of psychotherapy. You are normal, we just end up with unproductive behaviours. We have an accelerated personal growth technique.

Agile Leadership? Model the Agile Mindset

What is Agile Leadership? An Agile Leader is one that 1) Models the Agile Mindset and 2) is able to foster the development of an environment that aligns with Agile. Anyone can be an Agile Leader. It is about how we show up and what we value – not about a formal role such as a manager, Scrum Master, or Agile Coach.

Agile Mindset Definition

What does it mean to model the Agile Mindset?

I have asked this question around the world at Agile Meetups (see image) and the key behaviours that people identify with the Agile Mindset are:

  • Flexible
  • Open
  • Respectful
  • Responsive

When we look back at the Agile Manifesto we can see the key words that point to these behaviours: “learning”, “individuals & interactions, and “responding to change”.

Agile Leadership = Living the Agile Mindset

The work for each of who wishes to be an Agile Leader is to be 100% honest and see where we do and do not live the above behaviours. Our challenge is to overcome our cognitive bias and see exactly when and where during the day we are not living the Agile mindset (behaviour). With this information, we can conduct our own “individual retrospectives” and self-improvement plan.

The unfortunate truth of the Agile Community is that the vast majority of people who self-identify with Agile, do not actually live the Agile Mindset. This “Wave 1 of Agile” – where we do the practices of Agile and talk about the Agile Mindset, yet fail to fully model the behaviours associated with it. The evidence of this is the vast failure rate of “Agile Transformations” where people are mandated to use the Agile framework without being respectful, open, flexible or responsive.

Wave2 of Agile

“Wave 2 of Agile” is about living the Agile Mindset in everything we do. Not just some of the time. Not just when convenient, all of the time, at work and at home. During deadlines, challenging meetings, conversations and relating to people or situations. When we live and model the values of Agile we inspire others to do the same. This is, as I understand it, the true meaning of Agile.

Agile Leadership Defined

An Agile Leader is, by necessity, someone who lives and models the Agile Mindset: Flexible, Open, Respectful and Responsive. This is the bare minimum. Here are some easy checks you can do on your own behaviour to see how you live the Agile Mindset:

  • How do you react when someone doesn’t show up for a meeting? Are you flexible?
  • When someone gives your feedback, how do you react? Are you open?
  • When someone disagrees with your idea or plan, how do you feel? Do you respect other people’s ideas? Do you push for your own ideas?

For many of us, we can easily see there is more we can do to support our own behaviour shift to the Agile Mindset. Starting with ourselves is a key way to become an “Agile Leader”. As we embrace the behaviour and shift our mindset to a more Agile way of being we will create leaders around us. Leaders who lead, inspire others to a new way of being that enables a new way of working.

Want to Learn More?

How To Change Your Organizational Culture

You will learn How to Change Your Organizational Culture. Yes. How to Change Your Culture. It requires effort and focus. And it is possible. I have done it and leaders around the globe have applied this same information to change their culture. What follows below is an outline of the proven steps. I also include pointers to supporting resources.

1. Desire for Growth

The starting place for culture change is desire – a powerful urge to create change. Nothing less than this will result in success. So that is the starting place. Anyone interested in shifting culture needs to look inside to see what is driving them and make sure they have motivation to do the work needed. I used to subscribe to Kotter’s “Sense of Urgency” and even advocate this. I no longer do. It turns out that Urgency linked to fear and a lower level of psychological safety. This inhibits personal and organizational growth. For this key reason, “Desire” is a better choice.

Strong Desire for Growth is Essential

Organizations that have sustained organizational growth over decades see improving as part of everyday work. They invest in growth because it is important. It’s the right thing to do. Not because of urgency.

2. Understand Existing Culture

The next step is to understand your existing culture. But what is Culture? We can define it as “How we do things around here”. I have experimented with a lot of culture models and recommend the two that are proven in terms of simplicity and power. You can use them together to diagnose and your culture and orient for growth. The Sahota Culture Model provides a clear understanding of culture through identification of the interconnected elements that shape culture. It also highlights the need to focus not just on Structures but also on the Consciousness (or Mindset) of a system. We often fall into the trap of focusing on structures (especially process) rather than focus on the people and how they are working together. This model reminds us that it’s really about the consciousness (or mindset), the people, not about the structures or process. The other model that is very powerful is a modified version of the Laloux Culture Model. It may be used to assess where the organization is right now. It also has the tendency to help spark a desire for shifting to a higher performance way of working such as Green or Teal. One key reason to use this model is that it has heaps of case studies and research to support the claims of high performance. It also lines up with many other models and theories of culture and behaviour such as McGregor’s Theory X – Theory Y.

3. Create a Star on the Horizon

The next step is to look at case studies and examples of the kind of company that you want to become. There are lots of great resources such as the book “Reinventing Organizations” or Diverse Paths to High-Performance Organizational Culture. It is a good idea to use these for inspiration. The goal is to create a “Star on the Horizon” that is aligned with the desire for change. Don’t try and copy structures. Copying simply gives you the structures without the shift in culture.

Find Your Own Path.

The secret here is to find your own path. Selecting a path is primarily a function of two things: 1. The existing situation in your organization. We can only grow and evolve from the place we are at. 2. The shared desire of people to create a new future. The desire could just be top leadership, or they may co-create this with people throughout the organization.

4. Culture Grows Locally

A common misconception is that culture change is for the whole organization. It is important to understand that in most organizations culture varies by team, department, and location. It is as unique as each individual manager. So, keep in mind this key point:

Culture is a local phenomenon.

Since it is a local phenomenon, it means that it is possible to make changes locally within your part of the organization. The most common way for culture to grow is Culture Bubbles. Of course, when we do this, there will be culture gaps that create tension and challenges. The key idea for reducing the tension is to Build Culture Adapters. There will be different ways of working and different values inside the bubble and outside the bubble. The adapter idea is to reduce conflict with the rest of the organization by building adapters between the ways of working. It’s a key pattern for creating sustainable culture bubbles.

5. Leaders Go First

Culture is primarily a reflection of Leadership. What happens at the bottom of the organization is a fractal of what happens at the top of the organization. (Thanks to Glenda Eoyang for this wisdom). It is well known that the performance of a team is a direct reflection of their manager – this was proven through validated real-world research almost 20 years ago through the Gallup 12 “Engagement” Questions.

Culture Change is Not Delegable

The way to change culture is for leaders to change how they interact with people and the organizational system. A key concept here is that Organizational Behaviour Follows Leadership Behaviour. A new kind of organizational behaviour way of working requires that leaders behave in a new way of working. So successful transformation requires that Leaders Go First!

6. Leadership Growth is Required

A key lesson in my career is that the Leader is the Limit for Growth. I notice that to create high performance organizational systems, leaders needed to develop themselves as human beings. They needed to grow into the kind of leaders we see in high performance environments. This means inner work cultivating trust, safety, and connection. As leaders we need to get our egos under control so we can develop leaders around us. This is not for the faint of heart. We are talking about developing ourselves not just as leaders but as human beings. Like you, I am on this journey too. I created the 4A’s Conscious Leadership Model to capture the step-by-step approach I have been using to grow myself. It’s a powerful tool to help rewire our unconscious behaviours that are preventing us from showing up as the leader we desire to be. We are so deeply conditioned by society to have behaviours that are contradictory to high performance. Dedicated focus and effort is required to shift our habits and unconscious behaviours.

A learning organization is a place where everyone grows.

Remember the desire for organizational growth in step 1? This is where you need it. Personal growth requires a strong drive to keep up the effort. This is the secret of changing culture: All we need to do is change our behaviour and culture will follow.

It’s a Journey

The above steps are sufficient and necessary for culture change in an organization. What is shared here is the key starting elements for culture change. Or course there are a lot more details on how to do the steps outlined here and even more on supporting the journey.

You Can Do This Regardless of Your Role

Execs, managers and coaches that I have trained have successfully applied what I am sharing here. We are all leaders. We may be a leader because people report to us or we have more seniority or expertise. And we can also be a leader because of how we choose to show up.

You Can Implement This Immediately

Regardless of your role you can chose to show up NOW the way a leader of the future organization would. You have full control over your behaviour.

You don’t need permission, budget or authority.

You don’t need permission, budget or authority to start acting in ways that model high performance behaviour. All of us can shift our local culture immediately. The only limit here is your desire and your investment in developing yourself. It’s a big shift for us as leaders. Sure, we still need to support the development of people around us so that we have leaders at all levels. But this is secondary to growing ourselves to fully model the kind of organizational leader needed for the future organizational culture/organization we wish to create.

Summary

So, here are the six key steps to change your culture:

  1. Desire for Growth
  2. Understand Existing Culture
  3. Create a Star on the Horizon
  4. Grow Culture Locally
  5. Leaders Go First
  6. Leadership Growth is Required

And here are the important tips to keep in mind:

  • It’s a Journey
  • You Can Do This Regardless of Your Role
  • You Can Implement this Immediately
  • You do not need permission, budget or authority

2020 Update: It’s A Journey

It’s been two years now since I wrote the original post. I have come to realize that although the “laws of organizational dynamics” seem obvious to me, it takes time for leaders to adapt to seeing reality as it actually is. One key reason is that it can be difficult for any of us to accept the full responsibility for our role and how we are contributing to the problems we face. Another is that the existing structures and reinforcement mechanism keep people bound in the existing world view. As such a broad or at the very least localized and intense desire to change is needed to overcome the challenges faced.

We have heard from organizations that culture is hard to define and harder to change. It requires changing behaviour. How a leader shows up, how they react during a crisis and what goes on behind closed doors is what creates culture. Culture is defined by behaviour and leaders shape the collective behaviours of an organization.

One of the reasons we moved from Agilitrix to SHIFT314 is to put our work with shifting mindset or consciousness on equal footing with our organizational change work. It’s simply not possible to shift culture without developing people in deep and profound ways.

 

JOIN OUR SHIFT COMMUNITY

Join our free, exclusive, private community powered by Mighty Networks.

Privacy Policy

NEWSLETTER

Stay connected with the latest insights.

Privacy Policy

JOIN OUR SHIFT COMMUNITY

Join our free, exclusive, private community powered by Mighty Networks.

NEWSLETTER

Stay connected with the latest insights.

Website By: Inner Vision Studio

Privacy Settings
We use cookies to enhance your experience while using our website. If you are using our Services via a browser you can restrict, block or remove cookies through your web browser settings. We also use content and scripts from third parties that may use tracking technologies. You can selectively provide your consent below to allow such third party embeds. For complete information about the cookies we use, data we collect and how we process them, please check our Privacy Policy
Youtube
Consent to display content from Youtube
Vimeo
Consent to display content from Vimeo
Google Maps
Consent to display content from Google
Save
We use cookies to enhance your experience while using our website. To learn more about the cookies we use and the data we collect, please check our Privacy Settings.
I Accept