Like any professional should I spend a great deal of my time attending user’s groups, reading professional articles, speaking with leaders in my field, etc in an attempt to find ways to do my job better. This morning I stumbled upon a couple of interesting articles, The Unintended Consequences Of A Leader’s Lack Of Trust (whose link has gone inactive) and Employees leave managers, not companies. While not exactly writing about the love, these got me to thinking about love and its place fostering Agility.

It is the nature of my job to bond tightly with the teams that I work with and also to have to leave these teams frequently, as they achieve a high level of self organization, to pursue opportunities to help other teams. I am currently faced with one of these moments and the feeling, as always, is bittersweet. I am excited about my new opportunity but will genuinely miss the teams I have worked with over the past few months.

I often equate an Agile team with a family and the best Agile teams are very much like a family. Sometimes I feel like the parent who must gently guide to self organization, putting the foot down at times and indulging at others. Other times I am like the sibling, providing an example and sometimes I am led like the child into new avenues and adventures, learning as I go. In the end, I am a member of not just a team, but a family and the love that I feel for my teammates is real.

While love is not something you can fake, I encourage all Agilists to open their hearts to their teams, to find the love. The team feels the love, warmth and trust and with this as a background, will work together much more effectively. As I reflected on the two articles above, what I noticed was an alarming lack of not only trust, but respect, and dare I say, love.

To this day I keep in touch with many of the dozens of team members who I grew to trust, respect and love. I consider myself very fortunate to have had some time in these people’s lives and am glad that even when we are no longer working together we remain close. To the team I will shortly leave, I leave you with a great deal of respect for your professionalism, a hope for your continued success and all the love I feel for you.