Collaboration

Collaboration is to work jointly with others on a common goal that is beyond what any one person or group can accomplish alone. It also includes joint planning, pooling resources, and together evaluation of outcomes. Constant customer collaboration provides great opportunities to measure project success by gauging the level of customer satisfaction throughout each life cycle of the project. It creates the framework for faster time-to-market and a more nimble process to deliver successful project outcomes. When it comes to successful agile project delivery, collaboration is key for the integrated project team. It includes:

• Teach them cooperation skills

• Expect them to come prepared

• Encourage their ego

• Establish the collaboration zone.

Adaptive Leadership

Adaptive Leadership main aim is to adapt organisations to the external and internal pressures for change. It is the style with which this is achieved that makes the evolution of this approach relevant. Adaptive leadership has a profound impact on the well being and performance of the workforce. It is a style that helps to embed a Positive Workplace Culture into organisations. Adaptive leadership is two dimensional: Being Agile and Doing Agile. It is about exploring those activities that an agile leader or executive must "do," starting with four key levers for change:

• Do Less

• Speed-to-Value

• Quality

• Engage/Inspire

Adaptive Leaders have the characteristics associated with clear direction with committed ambition - a strongly seductive characteristic in individuals. It also involves Negotiation, Negotiation is a process in which two or more entities in conflict may embark on a process to discover a mutually acceptable resolution to the conflict. Adaptive Leadership can apply 4 principles that encourage the engagement of followers in helping an organisation to adapt its environment:

• The understanding of the underlying purpose of the organisation

• The utility of people skills/mix/experience in assisting with adaptation

• A tolerance of ambiguity

• A freedom to act

Agile Negotiation

Negotiation is a process in which two or more entities in conflict may embark on a process to discover a mutually acceptable resolution to the conflict. Key elements for successful negotiation are:

• Separate People from the Problem

• Focus on Interests, not Positions

• Invent Options for Mutual Gain

• Use Objective Criteria.

• Five Level of Conflicts

An agile team moving with steady momentum will display conflict the rolling eyeballs, heavy sighs, emotional voices. These behavior signal normally for any group of people who spend considerable time together and who create a shared history.

The only way to resolve conflict is to, first recognize conflict by understanding the stages of conflict.

There are five stages of conflict and they can only be resolved by learning and understanding how to solve the issue.

Level 1: Problem to Solve - Everyday frustrations make up this level, and we experience conflicts as they rise and fall and come and go. At this level, people have different opinions, misunderstanding may occur, conflicting goals or values may exist, and team members likely feel anxious about the conflict in the air. When in level 1, the team remains focused. Information flows freely, and collaboration is alive. Team members use words that are clear, specific, and factual. Team members check in with one another if they think a miscommunication has just happened. Think of level 1 as the level of constructive disagreement that characterizes high-performing teams

Level 2: Disagreement - At level 2, self-protection becomes as important as solving the problem.

Team members distance themselves from one another to ensure they come out well at the end, or to establish a position for compromise they assume will come. They may talk offline with other team members to test strategies or seek advice and support. Nastiness gets a sugar-coating but still comes across as bitter. Facts play second fiddle to interpretations and create confusion about what’s really happening.

Level 3: Contest - At level 3, the aim is to win. A compounding effect occurs as prior conflicts and problems remain unresolved. Often, multiple issues cluster into larger issues or create a “cause.” Factions emerge in this fertile ground from which misunderstandings and power politics arise. In an agile team, this may happen subtly, because a hallmark of working agile is the feeling that we are all in this together. But it does happen. People begin to align themselves with one side or the other. As team members pay attention to building their cases, their language becomes distorted.

They talk about the other side in presumptions:

“I know what they think, but they are ignoring the real issue”. In this combative environment, talk of peace may meet resistance. People may not be ready to move beyond blaming.

Level 4: Crusade - At level 4, resolving the situation isn’t good enough. Team members believe the people on the ”other side” of the issues will not change. They may believe the only option is to remove others from the team or get removed from the team. People and positions are seen as one, opening up people to attack for their affiliations rather than their ideas. These attacks come in the form of language rife with ideology and principles, which becomes the focus of conversation, rather than specific issues and facts.

Level 5: World War – At level 5. It’s not enough that one should win and others must lose. Only one option at level 5 exists: to separate the team members so that they don’t hurt one another. No constructive outcome can be had.

Based on the Level of Conflict, this can be implemented:

Level 1 : Problem to solve collaboration.

Seeking a win-win situation, consensus, learning where every team members head is with regard to the issue, and in time, arriving at a decision everyone can back.

Level 2 : Disagreement Support. Empowering others to resolve the problem.

Level 3 : Contest Accommodate.

Yielding to others view when the relationship is more important than the issue. Only short term strategy Negotiate. Negotiation will not work when the issue revolves around peoples values, get factual, gather data to establish facts.

Level 4 : Crusade

Use “shuttle” diplomacy, carrying thoughts from one group to the other until they are able to deescalate.

Level 5 : World War.

Do whatever is necessary to prevent people from hurting one another.

Agile Servant Leadership

Servant leadership is both a leadership philosophy and a set of leadership practices. Traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the “top of the pyramid.” By comparison, the servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform well.

Greenleaf said:

“The servant-leader is servant first…It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions… The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.

Principles of Servant Leadership - By Robert Greenleaf

• Listening - Traditionally, leaders have been valued for their communication and decision making skills.

• Servant-leaders must reinforce these important skills by making a deep commitment to listening intently to others.

• Servant-leaders seek to identify and clarify the will of a group.

• They seek to listen receptively to what is being said (and not said).Listening also encompasses getting in touch with one's inner voice, and seeking to understand what one's body, spirit, and mind are communicating.

• Empathy - Servant-leaders strive to understand and empathize with others.

• People need to be accepted and recognized for their special and unique spirit.

• One must assume the good intentions of co-workers and not reject them as people, even when forced to reject their behavior or performance.

• Healing - Learning to heal is a powerful force for transformation and integration. One of the great strengths of servant-leadership is the potential for healing one's self and others.

• Servant-leaders seek to convince others, rather than coerce compliance.

In "The Servant as Leader", Greenleaf writes, "There is something subtle communicated to one who is being served and led if, implicit in the compact between the servant-leader and led is the understanding that the search for wholeness is something that they have."

Awareness - General awareness, and especially self-awareness, strengthens the servant-leader. Making a commitment to foster awareness can be scary-one never knows that one may discover! As Greenleaf observed, "Awareness is not a giver of solace - it's just the opposite. It disturbed. They are not seekers of solace. They have their own inner security."

Persuasion - Servant-leaders rely on persuasion, rather than positional authority in making decisions. This particular element offers one of the clearest distinctions between the traditional authoritarian model and that of servant-leadership. The servant-leader is effective at building consensus within groups.

Conceptualization - Servant-leaders seek to nurture their abilities to "dream great dreams." The ability to look at a problem (or an organization) from a conceptualizing perspective means that one must think beyond day-to-day realities. Servant-leaders must seek a delicate balance between conceptualization and day-to-day focus.

Foresight - Foresight is a characteristic that enables servant-leaders to understand lessons from the past, the realities of the present, and the likely consequence of a decision in the future. It is deeply rooted in the intuitive mind.

Stewardship - Robert Greenleaf's view of all institutions was one in which CEO's, staff, directors, and trustees play a significancant role in holding their institutions in trust for the great good of society.

Commitment to the Growth of People - Servant-leaders believe that people have an intrinsic value beyond their tangible contributions as workers. As such, servant-leaders are deeply committed to a personal, professional, and spiritual growth of each and every individual within the organization.

Building Community - Servant-leaders are aware that the shift from local communities to large institutions as the primary shaper of human lives has changed our perceptions and has caused a feeling of loss. Servant-leaders seek to identify a means for building community among those who work within a given institution.