Guest blog

The plan is to post content from other great people in the industry here :)
First woman out is my good friend and former collegue Therese Ingebrigtsen:

The Power of Stepping Back

As a leader, it is important to be present, to make decisions, to see your
team. I will argue that it is also important to know when to step back and
don’t speak your mind.

I started my career as a developer and thought that would be the life long path for
me. But my first manager saw a potential I was not aware of myself. He put me
through a test – without me knowing - and in the end he asked me to be his next
project manager. I was scared, but took the change and saw it as an opportunity for
growth. And after all – he would be there by my side to guide and help me. He was
our team’s superman. He knew the code, he knew the database, he knew the team
members, he knew the business and he knew what the customer needed. He
participated in every meeting and was known in the company as the man to ask
questions related to our product.

(Picture from theflickcast.com)

Then one day, he told me he would leave our team and our company. And he wanted
me to take over his team. I was terrified. And I knew I needed help. So in every
meeting I brought with me at least one developer from the team. If the team
members needed to discuss problems or new solutions, there were no help
discussing it only with me – we needed the whole team to be part of the discussions.
I hadn't read any books about lowering “buss count” or scrum methodology at that
time, but now, looking back, my incompetence about the codebase forced the team
to communicate.

To be truly successful as a leader, you need to know when to step back

As a parent, I see that this is true and important when it comes to raising a child.
Even though I know that the tree is a little high, and that managing to climb the tree
doesn’t necessary mean that you manage to climb down – when you suddenly have to turn the attention to the grown and can see how high you really are. But still –
sometimes – I need to force myself to be quiet, watching from a distance, and only
step in for help when I am asked to do so, or if I see that the outcome could be rather
painful. We all know why we do this – so the child can learn and grow and make
good decisions by itself. They need to learn themselves just how high they can climb
and what is comfortable for them.

(Picture from etsystatic.com)

In the same way a leader needs at team that can make decisions when the leader is not
present, or doesn’t see all the possible solutions.

A year ago, I had the responsibility for implementing the new way of working in a
large software group. I invited all teams to retrospectives after each sprint, and I
found that I needed one for the management team as well – so we could focus on
improvement at all levels. Without asking anyone, I invited to the meeting and
started preparing for continuous improvement. For a couple of sprints, we manage
to pinpoint some interesting and important improvement areas that we got our
attention on. But then, meeting-by-meeting the attendance decrease, people showed
up late, or not at all, and the discussions were less motivated. So we decided to stop
these meetings.

(Picture from http://1.bp.blogspot.com)

Now, a few months after we decided to stop the retrospectives, something
interesting have happened. In a status meeting together with the management team
I was asked why we didn’t go through what we could improve anymore. “It is
important to always improve” - I was told. “We should have a forum where we can
discuss these things and find solutions to our everyday problems”. We started the
retrospect meeting again, and this time the participation and involvement improved
dramatically.

(Picture from michaelkmoore.com)

To really empower the team you need to be aware of when stepping back, to not
“drive from the backseat”. If you constantly judge and give comments to the once that have been given the change to drive, you wont help anyone. You need to let the
team drive. And you might even end up learning something yourself.