Talk: Turn your leaders into servants!
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Speaker:
gez smith
Talk description
Title:
Turn your leaders into servants!
Short synopsis:
How can a servant be a leader? Open your mind, transcend your ego and discover your calling as a servant leader for the good of all in this interactive workshop.
Max size: 500 chars
Long synopsis (optional):
Agile often makes reference to the need for servant leadership, but surely it’s more than just a Scrum Master clearing impediments out of the way, or individuals in teams being multi-functional? This session will explore how agile needs leaders to become servants, by examining the roots of servant leadership from the likes of Robert Greenleaf and Larry Spears, and looking at how they relate to agile practice, through being a vocation more than a process, building intimacy between individuals and turning the traditional organisation hierarchy on its head. For me (and Craig Larman), to change cultures and mindsets, you need to change structures. Structures such as pyramid shaped organisational hierarchies and a widespread but outdated belief in ‘great man’ theories of leadership. These issues can be transformed through a rigorous, in-depth understanding of servant leadership, and I want to transmit this to the attendees of AOTB, so they can make it a reality in their workplaces. This session will provide a fascinating overview of the key elements of servant leadership thinking, alongside practical advice and exercises for attendees to take back to their organisations and start being servant leaders themselves. It will cover a brief history of leadership thinking, the 10 principles of servant leadership, why servant leadership is about the health, happiness and freedom of those you work with as well as society more generally, why servant leadership is essential to building trust, and why agile needs the traditional organisation hierarchy pyramid to be turned on its head. This talk is based on my two years spent studying leadership thinking through an MSc in Strategy, Change and Leadership at Bristol University, in which I specialised in the synergies between these three fields and agile, and for which I was awarded both a scholarship and a distinction. This session works for both complete beginners and those with more advanced agile experience alike. For beginners, there's a chance to start to understand some of the fundamental mindset shifts agile takes, whilst for those more advanced, there’s a chance to understand how there's something more vocational and transcendental about servant leadership done properly, involving the death of ego and becoming one with those around you. There’s a reason this session touches on Zen Buddhism in relation to agile. This is an interactive session, but participants won’t need more than a pen, some paper and a willingness to do a little thinking. However, if selected, I would ideally like the room to be laid out cabaret style, so participants can work together for some exercises in pairs. In terms of my experience, I've been speaking at conferences across the world for over 10 years now. A full list of my agile talks can be seen at www.bunnypicnic.co.uk/events, and a selection of testimonials and feedback from my talks can be seen at www.bunnypicnic.co.uk/speaking This session is well practised and polished, having been presented at conferences such as Global Scrum Gathering San Diego, Agile Cymru, Agile In The City London and a few meetups. However, it hasn't been given in the UK since April 2017, thus if selected for AOTB 2018, it will have been 15 months since it was last run in the UK.
Max size: 5000 chars
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