I had a leadership nightmare. It was as if most of the directors I have heard and met so far gathered and accompanied me….
“Instead of providing me with the answers to “what? and why?” questions, my top-level director constantly occupied with “how?” I am doing the job, and it makes me feel trapped…. We are in a constant battle with other units and we keep trying to answer what front did we lose today, where did we win? That is what we are occupied with all the time…”
“Demands of the general manager comes with his own reference and it is the only criteria of prioritization…. What job would the general manager like most? And who is going to do it?”
“We keep talking about the same problems for 3-4 levels and the accountability fights never come to an end, I wish we had some time left to work…”
“We work for days to figure out the most perfect solution, then we are faced with new issues and demands, and sometimes we get confused about the subject we discuss. Disliked, questioned presentations make me lose my sleep….”
“Whenever I talk about the issues we are facing, my director either evades it by saying we will have a look at it or says you expect me to do everything, why can you not handle it? Did we not turn you into autonomous teams?”
“I regularly meet with my director under the name personal development dialogues but I realize that he does not know me well, and this is really heart-breaking. And the training I ask for improvement keeps being returned due to budget issues…. I keep finding myself explaining what I know to my director so that he can express himself better during presentations…. Who was supposed to be improving?”
“Team seems to be something where those who are actually working are carrying those who are not working. And no one cares about performance assessment as it is done individually. And I see that relations are highly effective, but unfortunately, not everyone keeps the same distance. I feel like an invisible man as I am a quiet and hardworking person…..”
“Who has priority, customers or indicators? Indicators on the timely answering of customers are great, they are being told as success stories in every meeting, but my mates outside think otherwise… I really cannot understand. Perhaps I should just keep quiet and pretend as if everything is fine, there is no reason to become the bad guy now ….”
“We have a new tool to discover new ideas, I guess no one ever reads these ideas. Because I still did not receive any feedback on my letters written 2 months ago. Recently my mate had an idea but even before he wrote it his director told him “come on, that is not happening…” and some of the workmates laughed at him…. I was trying to explain how a technology giant turned into a "game-changer", and I was told what it has to do with us. Arrogance is everywhere, there are so many people who think they know best. I fell worthless in here…..”
I do hope that these or any other similar events do not take place in your organization. Especially if we are talking about an organization that has started its transformation process to Agile….
Gathering people in effective teams and supporting them is in the hands of your leaders….. Come and let‘s talk about the opportunities of your leaders turning into an Agile Leader….. Let’s turn the Agile leadership wheel one by one to see your opportunities and find out what kind of an effect do the leaders have in your organization?
Thanks Deniz Uludağ, co-author of this post and the model