Our first conference of the season is the fantastic Lean Agile London 2024!
We continue our TalkInTen series by interviewing the insightful Katrin Wellmann. In this episode, Katrin delves into the essential role of agile leadership and why it’s more than just a buzzword.
Many managers struggle in their role within a newly beginning agile transformation. Agile Leadership is not a role; it is an activity and a stance, something everyone in an organisation can engage in. In this interactive peer workshop, you will experience a string of activities to let your own path as an Agile Leader emerge.
Many managers struggle in their role within a newly beginning agile transformation. Agile Leadership is not a role. It is an activity and a stance, something everyone in an organisation can engage in.
Are you a Senior Manager, a Product Owner, a Scrum Master, or a team member… – who is wondering how to solve leadership issues that arise in transforming organisations?
Which approaches to choose – how to act differently now than before? And, as a manager, a leader of any kind in such an org, how to handle the growing self-management of agile teams…?
In this interactive peer workshop, you will experience a string of activities to let your own path as an Agile Leader emerge.
Episode Highlights:
- Understanding Agile Leadership: Learn why agile leadership is an activity and stance, not just a role.
- Navigating Transformations: Discover approaches to tackle leadership issues that arise during organisational transformations.
- Interactive Peer Workshops: Katrin walks through activities designed to help you develop your path as an agile leader.
- Target, Trust, and Track: Explore Katrin's model for replacing command and control with a focus on targeting goals, trusting teams, and tracking progress.
🎙️ Don’t miss this episode filled with practical strategies and expert advice for enhancing agile leadership within your organization. Tune in now and transform your approach to leadership.
If you enjoy the show, please leave a review!
Use code PRODAGILITY24 for 50% off interactive slide
Host Bio
Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.
Our first conference of the season is the fantastic Lean Agile London 2024!
We continue our TalkInTen series by interviewing the insightful Katrin Wellmann. In this episode, Katrin delves into the essential role of agile leadership and why it’s more than just a buzzword.
Many managers struggle in their role within a newly beginning agile transformation. Agile Leadership is not a role; it is an activity and a stance, something everyone in an organisation can engage in. In this interactive peer workshop, you will experience a string of activities to let your own path as an Agile Leader emerge.
Many managers struggle in their role within a newly beginning agile transformation. Agile Leadership is not a role. It is an activity and a stance, something everyone in an organisation can engage in.
Are you a Senior Manager, a Product Owner, a Scrum Master, or a team member… – who is wondering how to solve leadership issues that arise in transforming organisations?
Which approaches to choose – how to act differently now than before? And, as a manager, a leader of any kind in such an org, how to handle the growing self-management of agile teams…?
In this interactive peer workshop, you will experience a string of activities to let your own path as an Agile Leader emerge.
Episode Highlights:
- Understanding Agile Leadership: Learn why agile leadership is an activity and stance, not just a role.
- Navigating Transformations: Discover approaches to tackle leadership issues that arise during organisational transformations.
- Interactive Peer Workshops: Katrin walks through activities designed to help you develop your path as an agile leader.
- Target, Trust, and Track: Explore Katrin's model for replacing command and control with a focus on targeting goals, trusting teams, and tracking progress.
🎙️ Don’t miss this episode filled with practical strategies and expert advice for enhancing agile leadership within your organization. Tune in now and transform your approach to leadership.
If you enjoy the show, please leave a review!
Use code PRODAGILITY24 for 50% off interactive slide
Host Bio
Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.
So now we are recording and if at any point You want to go back and redo just let me know it's fine We can always get back like an edit stuff out etc. Etc. Etc. Okay. Are you ready? Yes. Well, this is a turn up for the books. It's not very often that after a conference, I then get to still record talks in 10. But Lean Agile London 2024 was so full of amazing talks and workshops, I just couldn't get around and speak to everybody. And one of the people that I didn't get to speak to, although I must have passed in various corridors numerous times, was Catherine Wellman. And Catherine had a workshop. at Lean Agile London, which relates to the title of this episode, funnily enough, which was, and let me just make sure that I'm gonna get this right, Agile Leadership, why it's more than just a buzzword. And I think this is a lovely, very provocative title for a workshop and it's gonna be a great talk in 10. So Katrin, welcome to the podcast. Excuse me. Welcome to the podcast. Would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners? Thanks, Ben. Thanks for having me. And yes, of course. Hi, I'm Katrin, Katrin Wellman. I'm with Lead Forward in Berlin, Germany, which is a transformation consultancy. We mainly advise on leadership development and change management transformations and strategy activation. And I myself, I'm a, yeah, officially professional Scrum trainer with Scrum .org for agile leadership. with evidence -based management and product ownership, as well as other classes I teach. But let me say this, Ben, I'm agnostic when it comes to framework. Frameworks, whatever works for a client. And for me, an organization is like an individual and needs individual treatment. Yeah, whatever works for the client seems to be the current truth. So I have a... different toolbox. Also, I'm a systemic coach and change manager and also lean change manager. And I've had leading roles at big consultancies like Infosys and Accenture leading and supporting big scale transformations. And sometimes they fail. And yeah, I've learned a lot from that as have my colleagues and the Agile leaders I have met. So when I joined Lead in January as a new partner, I felt, okay, let's talk about leadership and Agile is part of it. The mindset is part of it, whether we're in an Agile transformation right now or not. Lovely. So your workshop had around 40 people attend, which is a phenomenal number of people to attend a workshop, particularly at a conference. So well done. It must have been good. And I think that's what I'd love to learn more about for me, but also for our listeners, for everyone listening to this, wherever you may be, whatever you may be doing, is your workshop had 40 people, a range of people you said, from agile coaches, to product managers, to project managers, maybe some scrum masters there as well. And it's about, yeah. Agile leadership is more than just a buzzword. So can you tell us the structure and what made your workshop so successful? Well, of course, I was happy so many people showed because then it can become really interactive. Well, my main point is that we all talk a lot about wanting to go away or having for agility, business agility to work, having to go away from the command and control leadership mindset. But we don't know where to and how to. So I wanted to really give some impulses on the where to command and control. What is the new? And from my point of view, I will tell you right now, I feel it's target, trust and track. That should be the new mindset kind of motto. That was the one thing. And the other thing was really looking at a model. that has been disregarded by agilists all over the world, although it's quite well being used in change management contexts. And that is the Ken Wilbers integral model, which is a synthetic meta theory developed by Ken Wilber. And we use that looking at the four different quadrants. It shows on the internal subjective individual view on the external objective individual and the collective of both of these. So landing at I, we, it and it's looking at transformation always with these four perspectives and identified where is maybe our own agile leadership, our own agile transformation in our org lacking. I'll explain more in a bit if you want. Yeah, please. I mean, I have heard of the integral model in the past, but not for a long time. I'll catch when I get a link from you so we can make sure that goes into the show notes. And you also mentioned target, trust and track. Now I can use my imagination as to what target, trust and track means. But is that related to the integral model or is that something that you've just covered within the workshop in addition to it? Yeah, well, it's kind of an outcome when we spend time thinking about our approaches and going away from command and control. And what does it take for the organization to be ready for agility? What does it take for me as a leader to show agile leadership? Then we come through this work. I came to the target trust and track. as a substitute for the command and control. And of course, whichever framework or whichever approach, if you're using Scrum or an agile cutter or any kind of scaled model to deliver your agile transformation, it will always be about, okay, let's target together. What is the next experiment we can do? what is the next step we can reach and then trust the person you have employed and are paying good money for the job to get there. But of course, check in regularly, early and often. That is the tracking part. Together with that person you've trusted and you've aligned the target on, check if... The target was hit, track what the experiments on the way there brought, pivot or persevere. Was your hypothesis proven or disproven? That is what you do. And... If I may now go back to the Ken Wilbers model, what we see here is like on the right side, it's it and it's. So it means on an individual level, we have skills, capabilities. We can enhance those by training and learning. Or on the collective level, we have tools and structures and processes and operating models. And oftentimes when I, as a leader, enter into an agile transformation, I focus mainly on that right side. I want to enable people by training to do Scrum or whatever. I want to set up new processes and structures. I want to build agile operating models. There's a lot of attention on the right side of this model. The left side gets neglected or forgotten, and this is where the real strength in change lies. My theory is we will be more successful in delivering agile transformations, walking that path, which never ends. If we pay more attention to the I and the we and I being what are my motivations? What is the true purpose? What are insights? What I need intellect, emotional values and beliefs as an individual leadership person. to deliver that. And on the we, there is culture, leadership, team building, there are leadership values. There's maybe a change story, a vision behind the change, the transformation itself. And if we start looking more on the left side, we can support the transformation to agility from all aspects and thus tackle it more successfully. Holistically, I suppose systemic systemically you might say that I Know we're running out of time I found it difficult getting my headspace into a talks in ten mode rather than a podcast interview mode And hence I've made lots of notes so we have to get you back on for a longer episode I'm wondering in a very short period of time Could you give everyone an overview of the arc of your workshop so that people can get a feel for it was like? so first, of course, I wanted people like a bit like training from the back of the room to remember what they already know about the topic. So I had them do some impromptu networking, answering the questions. What is already working for me? What do I already have in my pocket? What is helping me with agile leadership? And the second question, of course, being what stands in your way to successful agile leadership? After that, what? We had a look at the integral model at Ken Wilber's theory and identified, okay, where are we usually moving in our agile transformations or our attempts at agile leadership? And then third, I had them again group in threes for peer consulting and they told each other challenges they had in real life and gave each other advice, always having the Ken Wilber model in the back of their mind. So they could give an advice saying, like, I feel you've set up operating model, but have you looked at individual motivations for this change? So that worked well. The feedback of the participants was that they really drew some actual value out of it. And we ended with, of course, the awareness that each one of us needs to create their own leadership stance. be it a manifesto or whatever you want to call it, one of them could be target, trust and track. And others, of course, came up with things like empowering and enabling, over deciding and directing, or measuring impact over reporting melons and so on. Watermelons, we love watermelon reporting. I was just looking at our choice of clothing today and did kind of wonder like if I'm like, you know, so maybe some kind of blood. Yeah, I do know. yeah, maybe some kind of some kind of blood orange. I'm the outside and you're the inside. Not quite sure. For those of you that aren't looking at the video, maybe you haven't been on LinkedIn. Follow us on LinkedIn if you've not seen the video or snippets of the video. Catra's got a lovely red top on. I've gone for a very bright orange one. I'm not quite sure how well they go together if I wanted to review. But that is an aside. Captains, thank you so much for coming on and give me a sliver of your time outside of the conference. Is your workshop something that you run remotely or offer? Yes, remote and on -site offering of the workshop or a different kind of workshop what other organizations may need with regards to leadership and of course in England or Britain or Germany. We are very open to customize. Awesome. So I'm making it. So Katrin, thank you so much for coming on. I'll put your, well, make sure your LinkedIn link is in the show notes. And hopefully our paths will cross again at some point soon. Are you going to any more conferences this year? No, not this year, but I'm sure to attend the Lineage of London next year again. It was great pleasure and thanks for having me, Ben. it's been a pleasure and everyone. Thank you very much for listening But we'll have a few more talks in 10 kind of dripping out over the next few days Where we just catch up with some of the speakers and workshop facilitators that we didn't get to see during the conference so make sure you stay tuned and follow us on LinkedIn or Subscribe to us on hit the bell on your podcast platform of choice So thank you very much for listening and capturing. Thank you for coming on. This has been the product agility podcast
