This session aims to raise awareness about what it takes to successfully lead a team that is trying to be Agile. Santosh will share his personal experiences about challenges he has faced, and why it’s important for an effective Scrum Master to understand what their team needs in terms of leadership before they can successfully lead a team. According to Paul Hersey, leaders need to adapt their behavior to fit a team’s readiness. Based this readiness level, which is determined by the team’s ability and willingness, a Scrum Master can opt for Telling, Selling, Participating, and Delegating their style of leadership. In this talk, we will dive into specific things a Scrum Master should do when leading a team that has a different level of readiness. Ultimately, we will learn how a Scrum Master can help teams with limited confidence and abilities to become an agile team, leading them to maximise their agile-ness throughout. If you are just starting a career as a Scrum Master are a seasoned veteran, or even an agile team member, and want to increase your understanding about leading teams that are trying to become agile, then this talk is for you.

1. Situational Scrum Mastering: What the
Scrum guide didn’t tell me about leading a
team trying to be agile
 Introduction
 Objective of the session
 Theme of the lightening talks

2. Personal Journey

3. Traditional Teams vs Agile Teams

4. How to lead a team that is trying to be
Agile?
 First we need to understand what the team needs in terms of leadership.
 Look at four different ways to provide that leadership
 Recognize tribes within company and upgrade their tribal stages

5. Four different level of readiness

6. Approach for different level of readiness
 Hersey suggests that good leaders adjust their leadership behaviors along two
dimensions: task behavior and relationship behavior.

7. Task behavior vs relationship behavior
 A leader’s task behavior is the degree to which the leader directs the work of
a team.
 A leader’s relationship behavior is the degree to which they leads by using
their relationship with the team.

8. Leadership Style

9. The Telling Scrum Master
 Members first need to gain confidence.
 Focus more on telling team members what to do
 Not yet ready to self-organize in an ideal way.
 Team is not ready for a large project or aggressive goals
 Team needs to start with simple, small victories that will boost confidence.

10. The Selling Scrum Master
 The Scrum Master is working with a low ability team but one that is willing
 The goal is to boost team members’ abilities.
 R2 teams require a selling style of leadership.
 Involve team members more in the decision-making process
 Focus on improving their skills and invest in training

11. The Participating Scrum Master
 As the team improves its abilities, it begins to move out of the R2 quadrant
 Scrum Master shifts to a participating style of leadership
 Encourage the team to make its own decisions.
 R3 teams are capable of working in a truly agile manner.

12. The Delegating Scrum Master
 Once the team reaches the R4 level of readiness, you should shift from a
participating leadership style to a delegating style.
 The team needs minimal task guidance.
 Help when asked, but do not specify how work should be accomplished.
 Teams work in a truly agile manner.

13. Conclusion

14. Missing Something ??
 People showed different attitudes and behaviors
 Concept of Tribal Leadership

15. Tribal Leadership: “Birds flock, fish school and
people tribe”
Stage People'sRelationship Theme Mood
5 Team Lifeisgreat InnocentWonderment
4 Partnership We'regreat TribalPride
3 Personal I'mgreat LoneWarrior
2 Separate Mylifesucks ApatheticVictim
1 Alienated Lifesucks DespairingHostility

16. How to Identify Tribal Stage?
 Language used by the tribe
 Structure of relationships within the tribe

17. Stage 1: On the verge of a Meltdown
 language
 Life sucks
 May be acts of violence or extreme verbal abuse
 Structure
 Socially alienated
 2% of workplace tribes

18. Stage 2: Disconnected & Disengaged
 Language
 My Life sucks
 Apathetic victims
 Endless list of complaints
 Structure
 Clustered together in groups
 25% of workplace tribes

19. Stage 3: The wild west
 Language
 “I’m great (and you’re not)”
 People talk mostly about themselves
 Structure
 Lone warriors forming dyadic relationships
 49% of workplace tribes

20. Stage 4: The zone of Tribal Leadership
 Language
 “We’re great and they’re not”
 Focuses on “we” and “not me”
 Information moves freely through network
 Structure
 Dyads become “triads”
 Built on common values
 22% of workplace tribes

21. Stage 5: Making a Global Impact
 Language
 Life is great
 Limitless potential
 Minimum reference to competition
 Structure
 People can find a way to work with almost anyone
 2% of workplace tribes

22. Goal of Tribal Leadership
 Upgrading as many people as possible to next stage of tribal culture
 Reaching stability at stage 4
 Doing work for the good of the group

23. But how do you upgrade the tribe into next
stage?
 Use different leverage points
 Verify success indicators

24. Situational & Tribal Leadership in creating
Agile Teams
 Similarity in Situational leadership theory and Tribal leadership

25. How to Navigate
 Leadership qualities in order to navigate
 Empathy
 Patience
 Respect

26. References
 Paul Hersey, Kenneth H. Blanchard, and Dewey E. Johnson. Management of
Organizational Behavior, 8th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2001).
 Mike Cohn, Situational Scrum Mastering
 Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright
 The Great Scrum Master by Zuzana Sochova