“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”
― John Lennon
Being an effective human being is all about effective collaboration with others and yourself. I went in my life with multiple challenges(privet life, sport, business and professional life), some successful some not. Each of them brought me a learning and each of them highlighted the importance of putting a human, or humanism in the centre. Without this we are putting ourself on a risky road of going alone — egocentric road without true friends, without true support.
Effective people know that the real success doesn’t go from a ruthless authority. You can achieve much more when you can work with passion, making sure that others will share your passion and will share your success.
Having this in mind, below we will start with a understanding own personality and importance of a trust and collaborative traits. In the next chapters we will go into more specific strategies of being and effective human / leader.
Agile traits in leadership
Empathy, Compassion and trustfulness.
“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
A leader is anyone who has a spirit of influence. With a good spirit to influence, trust and philia altitude(connect style), we can increase the business performance way more than with command/control or harshly judgement altitude(a disconnect style).
Only someone who will“love”(philia) you will be able to offer the most of himself to help you on your road. I put love in quotes to present the Aristotelian view of love – philia: self love and doing good for the other’s sake and for no other reason.
Empathy — the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference(to place oneself in another's position).
Compassion — to go out of your own way to help the physical, mental, or emotional situation(both successful and painful) of another and themselves. It can be very subtle: being very positive towards a person, being very kind, paying attention to the person. We are all in a situation in every interaction to be compassionate.
Trustfulness — the trait of believing in the honesty and reliability of others. I hope it is obvious that if people won’t trust you, they will not fully help you.
Daniel Goleman(author of Emotional Intelligence, 1995, Bantam Books) gave a great talk about this subject, which you should definitely watch: Empathy and Compassion in Society 2013.
"Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action."
— Daniel Goleman(Social Intelligence)
Agile principles
In every collaborative project we have an aspect of people and collaboration. Humans are emotional creatures, therefore we have to care about each other. Following the rules below will help us leading the ourselves and others:
Rule number 1: reduce stress.
Rule number 2: communicate well.
Rule number 3: be responsible.
Agile manifesto
Although, the famous agile manifesto has it’s roots in software development, it’s extremely useful in other aspects of work. It’s worth to note that it follows the human centric approach. Let’s list the main principles and please spend a minute on each of them to think how important they are:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working product over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
If you will like to learn how to implement the principles above in a product development, I have prepared a guide book, which was challenged heavily on multiple projects: http://bit.ly/agile-workflow.
What’s your personality?
It’s extremely important for self-development to know and understand your own personality. The The Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator(MBTI) is one of the most widely used psychological instruments in the world used to identify a person's personality type, strengths, and preferences. The questionnaire was developed by Isabel Myers and her mother Katherine Briggs based on their work with Carl Jung's theory of personality types.
Important Note: no one personality type is"best" or"better" than any other one. It isn't a tool designed to look for dysfunction or abnormality. Instead, its goal is simply to help you learn more about yourself. Use the following test to find your personality: https://my-personality-test.com/personality-type-indicator
Introduction
Agile traits in leadership
Empathy, Compassion and trustfulness.
Agile principles
Agile manifesto
What’s your personality?