Whatcha been doing lately?

Oh what a loaded question, right?  So much going on in the last month or so.  So many ways to answer that question!

We can think of a leader’s time and energy being split into 4 quadrants: 

While leaders have to spend time and energy in all four of these quadrants, “agile leaders” (leaders who truly embrace our shared agile values and principles, and challenge their teams to be Effective, Efficient and Engaged) spend the bulk of their time in “People Developer” and “Process Improver.”

Where do you spend your time?

So my question to you Managers and Leaders...  where have YOU been spending most of your time lately?   What part of the quadrant have YOU been spending the most of your time over the last few weeks?  Even with all of the craziness, challenges and uncertainty of the last month – are you actively looking to grow your team?  One way to reflect is to ask the following questions to yourself...

• Did I create an environment where my team members feel empowered?  
• Did I challenge my team to make the decision and pressure test with me?  
• Did I ask them how they want to solve a problem and then pressure test with them?
• Did I encourage them to turn failures into learning opportunities that drive real improvement? 
• Did I find ways to remove complexity, extra steps and wasted effort in the end-to-end process (and not just in the space I own)?

So stop reading right now and take a minute and think about where you spent most of your time last week...  Go ahead, I'll wait!

Welcome back!  Are you satisfied with the quadrant you spent the bulk of your time in last week?  Were there times when you could have done things differently to shift your time from the right to the left side?  I know if I'm being honest with myself, there were several times I could have shifted farther left myself!

Change can be very rewarding- and looking for opportunities to try one small thing differently, to shift more of your time to the left quadrants – well, that’s a great way to continue that change.  A while back - I shared a blog post called "Do you control your commanding?" where I talked about some things that managers could do right now to start challenging themselves to create a better sense of empowerment with their team members.  In there, I explored 

• coaching your team members to solve their own problems, 
• avoiding pointed questions, and 
• making it safe to fail and learn.  

Those are great ways to shift away from "Subject Matter Expert" or "Work Manager & Fire Fighter" and into "People Developer!"  Small changes really can go a long way in helping to shift to the left side of the quadrant AND create an environment where your team members are encouraged to have an agile mindset themselves!

Last question for you today... can you try one small thing this week to spend even more time on the left side?  What's getting in your way?

We ALL win together.