The Intersection between Leadership, Individual and Community

By Shane Dowley and Kyle Brown

Abstract

"No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main"?- John Donne

As managers, our most important role is to build up an organization that can not just function, but thrive even if we are not present.?A large part of that lies in creating a?place where?people feel that they are?part of something great - bigger than and beyond each individual self. That requires recognizing that a workplace is a?collection of communities, with multiple overlapping relationships, in which the participants are growing, continually unlocking?their potential?and contributing their skills and energies?to others and the?wider?organization.?

In this article we will consider?four?interlocking?parts: Management, individuals, mentoring?and communities. We will begin with the question of?"why"?for your organization that appeals to?the?intrinsic motivators of autonomy, mastery and purpose?of the people you manage and lead.?In parallel to the organizational structure for business value delivery,?we will describe how you can support other ways of enhancing communication across the organization by?supporting?and encouraging?other less formal?structures such as mentoring and?communities of practice for the enrichment of learning, growth and professional fulfillment.?

In any large organization there will be parallel worlds and lines of communication:?

1. The formal, org-chart driven lines?that reflect a person's job role and position in the organization. We?are primarily aligned to?our?value stream's small, long lived teams. Our?tribal identity is to that business value stream.?
2. The informal, often technology or skill-driven communities that form to help practitioners expand their knowledge of and familiarity with their craft. We?are secondarily aligned to a?community, relevant to the vertical part of?our?T-shaped skill sets and?our?specialisms.?
3. The sometimes formal, sometimes informal cross-organization mentoring relationships that form either spontaneously or through planned mentorship programs.?

A?healthy organization?is one that?promotes, encourages?and builds?up all three lines of communication.

We will start with looking at the first, org-chart driven lines of communication - particularly with regard to what it means to be a leader and manager.??

I?- Leader and Manager

Let's begin with a look at what it means to be managers and leaders.

Figure 1 - Leader to team-member relationship

If?our role?as leaders is to?inspire purpose,?create alignment and set teams up for success by?unlocking?their potential,?what does?this?mean?in being a?manager??

Something I read?some?years ago hanging?on a?wall in the?IBM?London?office struck me as true and has stayed with me since:

"At the end of the day,?people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel."?— Maya Angelou

How?do you?want to be remembered after?you or your?team members have?moved on to other things?

The Two Halves of Leadership

As leaders and managers we have a job to do:?Turn work and effort into meaningful value and?deliver?it to our customers,?clients and stakeholders.?

But?this?is only half of it,?the "what you do" half. What of the other half,?the "how you?do it" half???Could this?be of equal importance?for the success of our business??

If?manager and leader success?were?a measure of the balance struck between these two halves?-?a balance that as leaders?we learn to maintain over time and especially during challenging and stressful?periods - what does it look like and how can it be created???What skills,?competencies, confidence and panache must we learn and master to be great?managers and?leaders? To?be the?sort of managers and leaders?who are remembered for making those?they lead?feel inspired, trusted,?valued and?fulfilled in realizing and expressing?their potential.

To start, let's look at what it's not. It is not the role of the leader and manager to do and be responsible for everything, and then issue instructions and commands for others to follow. A leader cannot do and know everything. Nor should they even try!

Be across the work, not in the work.?

What are the practical ways of letting go to empower others? Three simple principles point the way:?

1. Build trust
2. Set boundaries?
3. Get out of the way

Build trust:?This starts with relationships. And relationships are built through communication; particularly the kind of communication that is both sharing and listening. Can you invest the time to really listen to those you lead, resisting first the urge to 'tell', 'correct' or even 'teach'? Can you first listen in a way where the other feels genuinely listened to and understood? From here build the relationship of trust through setting expectations, giving genuine feedback and real responsibility. Start from here.

Set boundaries:?All workable relationships must be bounded insofar as the trust between people of any relationship is bounded by a set of implicit or explicit expectations. Begin to understand this and practice it explicitly through collaboratively creating ways of working that reinforce the values and principles of your teams. Build on these by providing details of the behaviors that are acceptable or not per context (for instance, through Team Agreements). Though retrospection, continually review and evolve the values, principles and behaviors as your teams and your relationships with your teams evolve.

Get out of the way:?Step back and let the teams work, experiment, learn and grow within the boundaries created. The wise leader and manager knows that a healthy space is one where humans are free to grow and learn within clear bounds of expectation. Give permission for communities to form, such as communities of practice where the natural inventiveness, creativity and novel discovery by members of the community can thrive. Create such conditions of clear sets of expectations (trust) and aligned boundaries and encourage the community, inspecting the outcomes where we amplify those value outcomes we are looking for. Rather than direct instruction, spend time looking into the conditions you can create for your team members to thrive on their own. Support and coach them over telling and dictating, thus encouraging the informal foundations of communities.??

II?- Team Member / Practitioner

Regardless of our position or role, we are all team members: Members of a functional team, a reporting team, a team of peers. Within our given jobs, we are all?subject matter practitioners of expertise?of some kind: As?Executive, Manager, Engineer,?Architect,?Designer,?Developer, Tester, Business Analyst, Researcher, Scrum Master, Product Owner?and so on.?

Is it enough?just?to deliver, deliver, deliver?in our given functional role? What else makes?us?feel inspired,?purposeful and?with a growing sense of fulfillment?

Along with the extrinsic motivators of material loss?or?gain, there's?- arguably just as significant - a set of intrinsic motivators that drive us forward with an inherent willingness to grow and persevere:?Autonomy, mastery and purpose?[1].?

Autonomy:?The independence and permission to self-govern within the scope of one's role and responsibility. To create and develop our careers and with confidence express our talents and grow them in collaboration with others.

Mastery:?The desire to get better over time: The improvement of our craft, talents and sets of skills as an expression of who we are and what we love to do toward the ongoing delivery of value outcomes for our stakeholders, customers and clients.

Purpose:?That alignment to a higher goal or aspiration that is currently beyond us, and at the same time, potentially achievable.?Feeling part of something bigger than?the self.?

If you lack autonomy, mastery or purpose in your work, look to create them. If you are not clear of the?why?behind what you do and for whom, seek to find out. Managers and leaders, check in with your people: Are these motivators present or absent? Can you provide the purpose, the?why?for those you lead that is inspiring, compelling and meaningful? Use your?management and leadership?skills, resources and capabilities to generate environments?where?autonomy, mastery and purpose?are present for each of?your teams and the people you lead.??

Individuals and team members:?Be coachable. Take the trusted feedback, insights and responses from your manager, peers, customers and clients as learning opportunities. If you don't already have one, seek out and find a mentor.?In these?ways,?we grow?in our confidence, experience and?eminence, contributing direct and incidental value to the business and communities?we are?part of. This way defines the development of?our?professional selves?and?our?careers.?

III -?Mentorship - Another form of Leadership?

Figure 2 -?Mentor to mentee relationship

Your?experience makes you wealthy. Give it away.

Another role that is just as important in building the kinds of deep relationships that help a person grow in an organization as the manager/leader role is that of a mentor.?Mentors provide a unique perspective to a team member or practitioner - it's a perspective that comes from outside their specific organization, and that helps them to understand the wider organizational context in which they work.?If a person wants to really feel a part of something bigger, they need to understand the ways in which other parts of the organization contribute to the whole - having a mentor in a different part of the organization is a great way to ensure that this perspective is shared.

There are many different forms of mentorship and many different ways in which the mentoring relationship can be carried out.?Perhaps the simplest form of mentoring is career mentoring, where someone at a higher level in an organization (one or two levels above) provides help and guidance for a person at a lower level on how to navigate the organization, indicate where opportunities can be found, and showcase opportunities for collaboration on cross-organizational projects that can build a person's internal eminence. But this is merely one form of a very wide set of different relationship types. You can mentor another person on a particular technical area (especially in an apprenticeship setting) or you can mentor another person to help them achieve a particular personal or professional goal they have set like obtaining a professional or industry certification you have already achieved.?However, the important thing is that a mentoring relationship is two-way - the mentor gains as much from the mentee as the other way around. In order to be a good mentee, you need to be able to provide good feedback on the process, on the opportunities you are given, and on your observations of what you see in the organization - that's how the relationship grows and develops as it becomes more useful for both people.

Who can become a mentor? Nearly anyone at any level! Simply ask yourself: Do you have experience of this company you work in? Are you connected to a wide network of colleague and subject matter experts? Do you enjoy seeing others grow and being a part of that growth through the wisdom and experience you can pass on??

If so then consider being a mentor to others in any of the ways we've described and build your organization's cross-connections.

IV?- Community

As humans, we are naturally social and tribal. A sense of history, folklore and belonging are important to us. In many respects this sense of belonging, being a part of something it essential for our ability to plan, organize and create outcomes.??

Communities are an expression of this, formed of intent, they are based on an aligned and shared purpose. For the benefit of our growth and the growth of the business we work in, how can we leverage communities??Can the?leader,?manager and team member intentions, visions and desires?discussed?be brought together in some way?meaningful way?that self-sustains and grows??

Figure 3 - Cross-practitioner (community) relationship

With these questions in mind, let me introduce the concept of?Community of Practice.?

One Informal community type: The Community of?Practice (CoP)

Sometimes known as guilds, communities of practice form?based on?a?shared interest and a common?desire for?autonomy, mastery and?purpose that belonging to?a?community?of practice can provide and ultimately?make?our professions more enriched and fulfilling. Membership is variable, with people taking on different roles as needed,?with?roles evolving over time.?What's more, people?can?leave and join (and perhaps rejoin) CoPs?as their jobs and work activities change. The CoP itself will only tend to last as long as people feel that they are receiving something positive from it, and?the CoP?will grow only so long as people feel that they have an opportunity to contribute to others.

An example of this are technology-based CoPs?which?are often formed organically whenever a new technology becomes available or is adopted.?If you think about some very early and influential communities in technology one that comes to mind is the?Homebrew Computer Club , that was essentially nothing more than an early Community of Practice around building home computers from the (then new) 8-bit microprocessors.?That particular community had an outsize effect on the development of the personal computer industry as a whole, as both Apple Computer and Osborne computers (which pioneered the portable computer) were formed by members.?

Within IBM we have been informally forming CoPs for years - for instance in the early years of WebSphere Automation there were several CoPs that formed in the Lab Services organizations around newly acquired products such as CrossWorlds, DataPower and Ilog in order to help new practitioners come up to speed on these new products.?A current example of an IBM CIO software engineering CoP is the?XP Farm, a community of practice dedicated to the craftsmanship and mastery of extreme programming and agile software development techniques.?

An?advantage of this?community?approach is that people tend to learn more quickly from solving real-world problems than in more abstract academic situations.?Having a team of practitioners that you could ask questions of when you ran into new and previously unencountered client issues was helpful not only in providing insight to the problems from different perspectives, but in building connections between?people?that would persist even as those team members moved on to other roles and products within IBM.

An evolution of the CoP - augmented through mentoring

That leads to another type of community of practice that has turned out to be enormously beneficial to some of those same practitioners that participated in the automation technology CoPs - that is a professional certification community of practice.?This form of CoP forms an interesting bridge between community and mentoring in that what is being built is a community of people that help each other to be recognized as leaders in their profession.??

For instance IBM has an internal program for certification for its architects that is based on (and provides certification for) the OPEN Group certified Architect program.?What we have found is that demonstrating and documenting the skills, education and experience an architect requires to meet this certification can be challenging for someone unfamiliar with the program.?That's why a certification community of practice is such an important?place?for architects who want to achieve this certification - learning from those who have already been through the process, and working together with others in the same position makes it a better experience for everyone.?

Starting a Community of Practice

In order to share lessons across value streams, voluntary, open invite?communities of practice?are useful and powerful.?CoPs?are Darwinian?by design?in that they are not artificially kept alive: Their survival depend on their fitness of purpose and ability to evolve over time.?They are run as a regular meet up to share learning, understanding, social proof and to innovate across teams.?

1. Organize by region; localize around a shared purpose
2. Seek out the Innovators and Early Adopters [2] and invite them to join?
3. See who turns up
4. The law of mobility applies:?Attendance is voluntary
5. Keep the change gradient low as experiments are proven in your unique context within?an agreed?risk appetite
6. Encourage organic growth, staying true to the founding principles??

Conclusion

In this article we looked at the individual team member, the leader/manager, communities of practice and a fourth area of mentorship. We outlined the purpose of each and distinguished the potential benefits for people and the wider organization when specific intersections of these groups take place in a conscious way designed around openness, trust, learning, alignment of expectations and psychological safety. These intersections, expressed through communities allow for the emergence of further individual talent and skill development, intrinsically motivated which collectively promote a health or wellness within the organization.

In this we see that we are all within a set of connections, and from our specific roles how we can as team members, leaders, managers, mentors and mentees all participate in this organizational wellness.

Notes & References:

[1]?Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates?Us

[2] Technology Adoption Life-cycle?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle ?

https://hbr.org/2011/09/embracing-complexity ?

https://www.opengroup.org/certifications/certified-architect-open-ca ?