Interview
Leadership Training
What is Servant Leadership? And what are the benefits for leaders adopting its philosophy and practices within a development team?
What made you decide to put this course together and who is it for?
As anyone who has met me will know, my passion in the agile space is around developing great servant leaders of agile teams…great ScrumMasters. But there are so many more teams out there that aren't specific to agile development. This course is relevant to anyone who is leading a team and believes in their potential to be a great, autonomous, motivated and engaged team.
What is covered in Servant-Leadership Skills course that you can’t get from other Agile/Scrum related courses currently available?
If you are in the agile environment I have other courses that cover some aspects of servant-leadership, namely the Advanced ScrumMaster class which includes other parts of the role as well, such as how to improve the implementation and adoption of Scrum within your team and organisation along with additional techniques and tools you can use to be a better ScrumMaster. The Servant Leadership course doesn't deal with Scrum. It simply focusses on the people side of things. The course has two main aims - to help you develop yourself as a servant-leader and to help you develop your team as a great self-organising team.
Are the philosophy and practices of Servant Leadership compatible with all Agile related methodologies? (Scrum, Lean, Kanban etc.)
There are still a number of agile methodologies that promote a more managerial style but the majority of the well-adopted, and successful ones, recognise the multiplier effect of an engaged, self-organising team so if you are looking for the benefits that self-organisation gives you - regardless of your methodology - then developing your servant-leadership skills could be a big help.
Are there any pre-requisites for attendance? eg. (CSM qualified etc.)
No pre-requisites at all. While people looking to get full value from the Advanced ScrumMaster class would benefit from having a baseline knowledge of Scrum, because the Servant-Leadership Skills course is agnostic of methodology, there is no need for any pre-requisites.
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Can this course contribute towards SEU points?
Absolutely - this is a great form of continual professional development, something that all professional bodies encourage and/or mandate. The Scrum Alliance recognise all of my courses for SEU points towards the Certified Scrum Professional accreditation and it can also count towards your CPD requirements for other qualifications.
A servant-leader's primary purpose is to create the conditions for a team to be successful and then to support them rather than direct them. Servant-leadership is a style of leadership aimed at tapping people's spirit and innate intrinsic motivation by enabling them to be the best they can be. It is based a lot on trust and a belief that the ability to solve any problem lies within the team itself rather than in your own head. There are many benefits, some more quantifiable than others, but the most noticeable ones are around team engagement and motivation which in turn leads to greater productivity, creativity and quality.
Servant Leadership Skills with Geoff Watts course
1st April 2014, London, £600+VAT
www.learningconnexions.com