Lead Without Blame - a must have book in your learning bucket list

Diana Larsen and Tricia Broderick have shared their beautiful experience of creating Learning Team that are Resilient via this book. As an agile enabler the topic that has always been close to my heart is TEAM BUILDING. If anyone asks me what the key factors for success of any Program/Transformation or organization are - My Answer always has been: An Agile Leadership and a TEAM with collective intelligence. Slowly this concept expanded to high performance and now resilient.

This Book consists of 9 chapters around Break free from Blame, Shift towards Leading Resilient Learning teams and Strategy of continuous learning being my favorite.

This is first time I am discussing that what are the key things I loved in any book. I am a book lover and as I have moved to Canada - culture of books and Libraries is amazing. So, I am sharing my personal notes.. Please accept this as learning network and not to pick what I did not intend.

My Aha Moments

There were many as I started reading this book, but few are worth mentioning

• Leaders are not responsible for the results; leaders are responsible for the people who are responsible for results. So how as a leader essential motivators and resilience factors are taken care where a team thrives and becomes resilient.
• Resilient Learning team evolution starts from the individuals & then they contribute to a group that evolves into the Resilient Learning teams so while creating a team most effort should be on individuals we bring together. Every individual creates a culture or adopt a culture.
• Leadership through Learning, the resilience factors and essential motivators- this is one responsibility that a leader is accountable and can't delegate.
• I picked up this book and read " Why aren't those teams accountable? - A VP asked with frustration. This was the most relatable challenge. Leaders when make a blaming statement - learning, problem solving, and agile culture is ceased.
• Creating an improvement plan for me that how my mindset, vocab, actions and activities might be unconsciously blaming others.
• Blame & Shame - First chapter helped me to actually understand more that blaming & shaming on our actions in Complex world has to be reflective and adaptive.

• Blame Dynamics - I was aware and was using few aspects but making this as part of my toolkit is the key observations. Listening to the language of every Leader and how this becomes culture at each level
• Team Communication Model for high performance - Creativity, Conflict, Commitment and trust. Escalating Conflict model on constructive and unhealthy conflicts handling Winning or loosing, Dispute, We disagree situations etc. as conflict levels are quite relatable and situations explained are useful

Why should you read this book?

Any book lover who enjoys reading about building a great culture as a leader. Resilient teams have agility, and they reflect as teams. I loved when they said it's for Courageous Leaders. Plus, as per me it's for coaches who work with leaders that are building a great workplace in this chaotic world. Leaders that desires to shift from efficiency to effectiveness for better collaboration will benefit a lot.

*** All these are my personal correlation and notes - Author has not expressed their thoughts in this manner****

How much time I spent?

I am reading this book from Oct 12, 2022, and its more than a month. It generally takes me sometime to chew a book. I start reading a book, every book is worth reading once. It takes time for me to bring a book in my experience and How I can benefit from it.

How can I benefit?

• Using techniques/models/concepts for my Executive Leadership Coaching. Helping to build a strong culture towards learning leaders
• Using these to train/mentor my Scrum Masters, RTE and Product Owners on leading teams in the right way
• Self-improvement and then in my learning Dojos - though in Dojos we are short term teams but bringing the terminology and being very conscious on how as a COACH we create a culture of Learning Leaders.
• Being Observative the way I communicate to my team OR don't communicate at all. Not saying anything or communicating with your team members is also a bad culture.
• Sharing the Feedback using the feedback framework
• Making Leadership Reflect on the learning patterns and Lead by example

How I am able to relate it with my Experience

• We hire resources and not individual skilled professionals to whom we make part of our resilient learning culture. Agile transformation should focus on team culture and then teams become accountable.
• Team Communication Model - this was kind of giving structure to my approach that I have used to build high performance team culture - Creativity, Conflict, Commitment and trust. using the
• I have used the framework of Giving feedback with my RTEs, Architects and Leads: 1) Create an inviting Opening & intent behind feedback- that how in the current Sprint they have performed and what aspects I would like to share as feedback 2) Specific behaviors or results and impact on the continued effects: I highlighted the specific scenario in various scenarios like Architecture review sessions, refinement sessions or review sessions what were key areas where they could improve and not generic feedback 3) Acknowledge your part : Also gave what are the clear actions from my side 4) Making a request for feedback session and Listening to response: I called them 1-1 after sending invite and explained, for the new team when I do it first time, I explain them the framework but later I use the format to draft an invite and other aspects we discuss in the meeting. Key learning for me has been after reading in depth is more focused on the words I use, Avoiding mixed messaged during feedback.
• When I coach Scrum Masters to be effective Facilitators be it any ceremony or workshop with leaders they should prepare well. There were few things that aligned really well. While preparing focus on Co-located or Virtual, Complexity of work, Degree of conflict, duration, degree of controversy, number of participants, power dynamics, length of the relevant work, psychological safety, length of time working together, team fluency zone (for agile teams), observed demands impact, scale of topic, context in org (circle of control), Org culture.

Purpose, Co-Intelligence and autonomy all three motivators are essential. I feel this is most mis-understood concept in creating resilient teams. Explaining teams about true purpose - many leaders lack in setting up that. They never set or create a true growth vision, challenging, stretched and engaging. Most of the times Product owners are PROXY, Scrum Masters are seen as just service managers and not Leaders, team members are executors.

There is no engaging collaboration, inclusiveness is neglected, and power dynamics is prevalent. To build high performance team as Coach make sure there is a clear purpose in front of team, with collaboration every team member is connected to that and they include everyone with same respect & trust to have healthy creative conflicts.

Did you struggle with the terminology, I used to be the same don't worry

• Resilience means - a team that is able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions, they help you achieve everything - Be it KPIs or OKRs or Products. Resilience is the human ability to meet and recover from adversity and setbacks. "Resilient learning teams have the ability to sustain under pressure and chaos". " Resilience is not about overcoming, but becoming - Sherry Mandell.
• Autonomy means person's or team's ability to act on his or her own values, interests and approach towards the work
• Purpose means the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists
• Co-Intelligence means the collective ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. Amplify the skills through continuous learning togther
• Cynefin as pronounced "ku-nev-in," is a Welsh word that translates as "place" or "habitat" but as a framework that is the most useful decision-making framework that helps us understand the problem, Decide what makes sense to do, Do it and Evaluate the results.

• Trust at work is based on three aspects credibility, support and consistency. Trust flows in two ways. Our value and belief system contributes on how we trust someone and then establish connection
• Conflict is disagreement or difference in opinions, it could be handled as constructive approach to embrace possible options and approaches/ideas
• Commitment is the promise you value for the established priorities and sticking to those priorities

Believe me one article cannot express the depth of this book. it's just a starting I will keep on adding as I learn more

Believe me I am still pondering on final reflection:

1. How will you embrace compassion for your own learning as well as your teams?
2. How will you grow and demonstrate confidence in your team's ability to learn
3. How will you accept and dance with complexity as your team grows?
4. How Will you courageously lead without Blame?

*** All these are my personal correlation and notes - Author has not expressed their thoughts in this manner. I can't match the depth of knowledge of these authors ***