The Agile Leadership – Advanced (ALA) training is a unique three-part education only offered by 21Leadership. The training combines the latest Agile Leadership theory with peer and practice-based learning to develop agile leadership competence and maturity. The goal of the training is to increase your leadership effectiveness and inspire you to become a better leader, no matter your role.

If you are new to Agile Leadership, you could consider attending a Scrum.org Professional Agile Leadership – Essentials training first, but it is not mandatory.

Becoming a great agile leader requires ongoing personal development and is not something that can be mastered in a single course. The ALA program starts with a 30 min conversation between the leader and the trainer to get an understanding of the leaders current context and challenges.

The three main focus areas during the training will be on:

• How to lead in an Agile context
• Leading the Agile organization
• Agile approaches to change

This will be done in three sessions with homework and coaching calls between the session to deeping the learning and relate it to the leaders own context and practice.

Session 1 (day one and two)

During the first session participants will explore:

• Why organizational agility cannot exceed the level of personal leadership agility
• The four areas of leadership that demands attention to create a truly agile organization
• How different organizational cultures can support or hinder agility
• How to lead teams at different levels of agile maturity

During the first session participants will also be divided into coaching groups that will support each other between the sessions.

Between session 1 and 2:

Participants will take the ValueMatch Values, Change and Culture assessment between the first and session session and do an individual debrief with the trainer. The assessments will help the participant and the trainer to better understanding personal leadership preferences and the participants organizational cultural context of leadership.

Session 2 (day three)

Session three will focus on personal leadership and why new thinking and approaches are required to deal with the increasing complexity leaders are facing today.

During session 3 participants will explore:

• Mindset shift required  to support Agile approaches
• Leadership interactions and culture
• Incorporating feedback into your leadership approach
• Leadership as  distributed competence
• How to engage without micromanaging

Between session 2 and 3:

The coaching groups will continue between session 2 and 3. Participants will also have access to 1:1 coaching with the instructor as part of the training.

Session 3 (day four)

Session 3 will wrap up the training by focusing on how organizational cultures can support or hinder agility. Participants will share observations from the culture assessments and work on concrete experiments to improve organizational agility.

During session 3 participants will explore:

• Characteristics of the agile organisation
• Typical tensions between the Agile and the ‘Traditional’ organization
• The dominant cultures in organizations today and how they relate to Agile
• The relationship between culture and leadership mindset and behaviors
• Designing organizations for agility
• How to master the white space

• Understand how agility can help you improve your organization’s performance
• Learn the challenges teams face during an Agile transformation and how to remove impediments
• Discover the shift in management style that a leader must make when going from traditional to agile ways of working
• Understand the leader’s role in “self-managing” teams
• Learn how to assess and foster the team’s agile maturity
• Discover how to connect values (personal, team and Scrum values) and clear goals to develop high performing teams
• Identify how to measure the benefits and impacts of agility in your organization

Note that this course is not an introduction to the Scrum Framework or to using Scrum. Attendees will get the most from this course if they have been previously introduced to Scrum.

The Agile Leadership Advanced training is designed for managers and those in leadership roles who are responsible for the introduction and establishment of Agile methods and techniques in an organization.

• Leaders sponsoring an Agile transformation or involved in the adoption of Agility in their organizations
• Managers or leaders responsible for developing people on Scrum teams
• Leaders of one or more Scrum Teams including Scrum Masters, Product Owners and other leaders on Scrum Teams