I have a colleague, agile coach, change agent, and friend who recently shared a story with me. It got me thinking about his situation from multiple perspectives.
But before I get into that, let me share a little context first.
Paul, not his real name, was leading an agile transformation in a company. He didn’t have a lot of positional authority, but he felt he was integrated sufficiently with senior leadership in technology and product to make things work.
He was unexpectedly invited to a meeting with his boss last week and he was fired. It was a complete and utter surprise.
The party line was that his role was being made redundant because they were taking another approach to their agile transformation (another model, framework, philosophy). But the abruptness of the dismissal belied that claim.
Paul felt that, in hindsight, he hadn’t been meeting organizational expectations around the transformation, but at the same time, nobody had had the courage to give him any clear feedback to that effect. Nor any mentoring or coaching to help him better achieve the organization’s goals.
This post is inspired by one from John Cutler.
I want to take a diversion a bit on John. I was talking about his article at our Agile Moose Herd the other morning. I shared that he is one of the “Top 10” folks in our industry (agile, products, transformation, culture, etc.) that makes me think more deeply with everything he writes. John is a thought-provoker, a leading-edge thinker, and a courageous writer. He often says, what needs to be said, before anyone else is saying it. I truly appreciate his voice!
Now, back to the post. It was fairly short and entitled—Kryptonite and Curiosity.
John started out by exploring common organizational phrases that can be kryptonite in nature. That is, they can trigger a negative response in us. For example—Bring solutions, not problems, was one of them. You get the idea.
Not that long ago, I wrote a blog post that was inspired by Kim Scott, the author of Radical Candor. She had written a very brief note around a leader’s responsibility to receive feedback, as well or better than, they are at giving feedback.
And many leaders, to put it mildly, suck at receiving feedback.
And you want to know another surprise? Most of them are unaware of this blind spot. They think they’re great listeners. But they’re not.
They are simply not self-aware!
