In the agile world, we tend to complain a great deal about leadership. Get a group of agile coaches together and you’ll likely hear things like, “If only our leaders weren’t so focused on output and metrics,” or “If only leadership understood about self-empowered teams,” or even “If only leadership would let us do things the right way.”

We seem to be saying that leadership is the problem. Yet the stark reality is that they are not the source of all problems in an organization. Everyone in an organization needs to find better ways of working. However, leadership does play a crucial part in our ability to bring positive change and increased agility to an organization. Complaining about what leadership does will not help us bring about that change. Conversely, finding the best way to work with organizational leadership will give us the highest chance for success in creating enduring and positive organizational change. In other words, if you can’t communicate effectively with organizational leadership, you will drastically limit the scope of your impact as an agile coach.

In this session, we’ll dive into the best ways to partner with leadership to bring about organizational change. Learn what leadership is concerned about and how to speak in a manner that captures the attention of leadership. We will discuss both positive patterns working with leadership to effect change and anti-patterns to avoid. We’ll also give you some prompts you can use to practice with ChatGPT or your favorite generative AI platform back home. Then we’ll conclude with pointers on how to leverage your new found credibility with leadership to cultivate a higher level of collaboration, adaptability, and transparency across the organization.