A year ago, some people were fitting the "Leader" title for me in the context of the testing community, and I felt strongly about rejecting it. We have enough of self-appointed leaders, calling for followers and I felt - still feel - that we need to stop following and start finding our own paths, and just share enthusiastically.
Today, someone was fitting the "Leader" title on me in the context of work and our No Product Owner experiment. I was just as quick rejecting it, but this time realizing even more strongly that I believe that for good self-organizing teams, everyone needs to become a leader instead of one self-appointed or group-selected leader.
I believe our No Product Owner experiment will show its best sides if I manage to avoid being appointed the "leader". There will be things where people choose to follow me, like the idea of experimenting with something we thought is out of our reach, meeting people who "never have time" yet find time in three days when we ask, imagining the possible. But each one in my team will lead us on different things, I follow with joy. Today I followed one of my developers on them leading the way on solving customer problems and they could use my contribution. I followed another one of my developers in supporting him when he imagined a feature that we thought wasn't wanted that turned out to be the "dream we did not dare to hope for". I followed my two tester colleagues in solving puzzles around automation where recognizing an element (no Selenium involved) wasn't straightforward, and working together was beneficial.
Everyone has room to be a leader. We don't have to choose one. We can let one emerge for different themes.
And what makes a leader, anyway? It's the followers. I choose to follow leaders in training, enthusiastically. It does wonders to how my group works. Maybe it would do wonders on communities too?
Today, someone was fitting the "Leader" title on me in the context of work and our No Product Owner experiment. I was just as quick rejecting it, but this time realizing even more strongly that I believe that for good self-organizing teams, everyone needs to become a leader instead of one self-appointed or group-selected leader.
I believe our No Product Owner experiment will show its best sides if I manage to avoid being appointed the "leader". There will be things where people choose to follow me, like the idea of experimenting with something we thought is out of our reach, meeting people who "never have time" yet find time in three days when we ask, imagining the possible. But each one in my team will lead us on different things, I follow with joy. Today I followed one of my developers on them leading the way on solving customer problems and they could use my contribution. I followed another one of my developers in supporting him when he imagined a feature that we thought wasn't wanted that turned out to be the "dream we did not dare to hope for". I followed my two tester colleagues in solving puzzles around automation where recognizing an element (no Selenium involved) wasn't straightforward, and working together was beneficial.
Everyone has room to be a leader. We don't have to choose one. We can let one emerge for different themes.
And what makes a leader, anyway? It's the followers. I choose to follow leaders in training, enthusiastically. It does wonders to how my group works. Maybe it would do wonders on communities too?
