--- title: "Video: Ten Mistakes Software Team Leaders Make" url: "https://www.5whys.com/articles/video-ten-mistakes-software-team-leaders-make.md" canonical: "https://www.5whys.com/articles/video-ten-mistakes-software-team-leaders-make.html" published: "2011-07-20T07:33:46+00:00" updated: "2014-05-22T21:59:17.013000+00:00" tags: ["Anti Patterns", "First Steps during chaos", "Learning Phase", "Self-Leading Phase", "Video"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "Video and slides of a SkillsMatter talk on ten mistakes software team leaders make, from ignoring team maturity to fear of delegation and placating." usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Video: Ten Mistakes Software Team Leaders Make I've just finished a [two day Elastic Leadership course - Essential Skills for software team leaders,](http://osherove.com/leadership-course/) in London. I'll be doing [another one in November.](http://londonleader.eventbrite.com/) During that time, I've also spoken at an "in the brain" session at SkillsMatter, > [and you can find the video here](http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/agile-scrum/ten-mistakes). The talk is about ten common mistakes team leaders make, and it also includes 45 minutes of Q & A. ## Here are the slides: **[10 mistakes software team leaders make](http://www.slideshare.net/royosherove/10-mistakes-software-team-leaders-make)** [View the slides on SlideShare](https://www.slideshare.net/royosherove) View more [presentations](http://www.slideshare.net/) from [royosherove](http://www.slideshare.net/royosherove) ## Those mistakes are: 1. Do not [recognize team maturity](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-3-maturity-stages-of-a-software-team-and-how-scrum-fails.html) 2. Fear of [delegation](https://www.5whys.com/articles/what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it.html) 3. Fear of [engagement](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-five-dysfunctions-of-a-team.html) 4. Placating 5. Being Irrelevant 6. Being super-reasonable 7. Blaming 8. Ignoring [6 forces that influence behavior](https://www.5whys.com/articles/how-to-plan-and-influence-change-at-your-company.html) 9. Fear of assertiveness 10. Help spread non-commitment (by not using [language of commitment](https://www.5whys.com/articles/my-team-keeps-breaking-their-promises-what-can-i-do.html)) ## Read next - [Video: How to manage a person who is always late to a standup meeting](https://www.5whys.com/articles/video-how-to-manage-a-person-who-is-always-late-to-a-standup.html): A YouTube video answering how to handle a team member who is always late to the daily standup, with a different approach for each team maturity stage. - [The 3 maturity stages of a software team and how scrum fails to identify them](https://www.5whys.com/articles/the-3-maturity-stages-of-a-software-team-and-how-scrum-fails.html): The chaotic, mid-life and mature stages of a software team, the leadership each one needs, from dictator to coach, and why Scrum Masters miss them. - [What to do if some people in the team just don't want to take a task?](https://www.5whys.com/articles/what-to-do-if-some-people-in-the-team-just-dont-want-to-take.html): How a Scrum team leader should respond when team members won't pick tasks in sprint planning, with different tactics for each team maturity stage. --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/