--- title: "Elastic Leadership: Growing self-organizing teams | Roy Osherove" url: "https://www.elasticleadership.com/index.md" canonical: "https://www.elasticleadership.com/" tags: [] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "Elastic leadership is a framework and philosophy of leadership that can help you as you manage day-to-day and long term challenges and strive to create the elusive self-organizing team." 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/" --- # Elastic Leadership > The home of Elastic Leadership: Growing Self-Organizing Teams, Roy Osherove's book (Manning) for software team leaders, and his Elastic Leadership workshop. HTML: https://www.elasticleadership.com/ · Guide for AI systems: [llms.txt](https://www.elasticleadership.com/llms.txt) · Full text: [llms-full.txt](https://www.elasticleadership.com/llms-full.txt) ## On the home page By Roy Osherove ### Great teams are grown, not hired. A practical framework for software team leaders: recognize which mode your team is in (survival, learning or self-organizing) and lead the way that mode needs. [Buy the Book (Manning) (opens in a new tab)](https://www.manning.com/books/elastic-leadership?a_aid=iserializable&a_bid=4b8caedc) [Try the Book (PDF)](https://www.elasticleadership.com/excerpt) Print & ebook from Manning · [Download the PDF excerpt](https://www.elasticleadership.com/s/Elastic-Leadership.pdf) · [Read the 5 Whys Blog (opens in a new tab)](https://5whys.com/) ![Cover of Elastic Leadership: Growing self-organizing teams by Roy Osherove, published by Manning. A 19th-century engraving of a gardener with a spade beside a basket of young plants.](https://www.elasticleadership.com/img/cover-400.jpg) Who it's for #### Your team looks to you for guidance. You’re a manager, technical team leader, architect, or scrum master and your team looks to you for guidance. You have to mediate heated debates. Personality clashes are yours to handle. The team is constantly putting out fires instead of doing the right things, the right way. Everyone seems to want to do things correctly, but nobody seems to be doing so. This is where leaders get stuck. Elastic leadership is a framework and philosophy of leadership that can help you as you manage day-to-day and long term challenges and strive to create the elusive self-organizing team. It is about understanding that your leadership needs to change based on which phase you discover your team is in. _Elastic Leadership_ provides you with a set of values, techniques, and practices to use in your leadership role. The first part of the book explains the elastic leadership philosophy, a way of navigating the leadership world that provides a moral compass as you make decisions, large and small. This includes the leader manifesto, and the elastic leadership framework phases (survival mode, learning, and self-organization). You’ll also learn a set of techniques and practices the author has acquired along his own journey that will complement and support your moral compass. In the second half of the book, you will find thoughts and notes from other leaders, with accompanying annotations from the author about how they fit into the overall framework and compass outlined in the first part of the book. The Team Leader Manifesto > We believe great teams are grown, not hired. > > The goal of a team leader is to continuously grow the skills of the people in their team to the point of self-organization. Happier teams make happier customers and employers. > > To achieve this goal, we must continuously pursue: > > - Challenging ourselves and our teams to become better, instead of keeping everyone in their comfort zone > - A just-in-time adaptive leadership style, instead of a one-style-fits-all leadership approach > - Participating in human interaction at least as much as we do with machines [Read the full manifesto (opens in a new tab) →](https://5whys.com/manifesto) The model #### The Elastic Leadership Model Your leadership needs to change based on which phase you discover your team is in. 1. ### Survival mode Leadership style **Command & control** (The protector) You'll notice - No time to learn or practice - Reacting to fires instead of doing new work - Over-committed Goal Move to learning mode What the leader does - Set a 30-day re-estimation deadline, and include management - Decide which work realistically fits before the line - Move everything else after it, and re-estimate to include learning 2. ### Learning mode Leadership style **Coach/Dictator** You'll notice - There is time to learn and slowly practice - Slack time is used for learning Goal Increase skills What the leader does - Challenge people out of their comfort zones - Grow one skill per person at a time - Monitor skill growth 3. ### Self-organizing mode Leadership style **Facilitation** (The facilitator) You'll notice - The team solves its own problems - The team knows how to handle unknown situations Goal Stay here What the leader does - Facilitate self-organization - Set goals, not actions - Watch for changes that push the team back into another mode ![The Elastic Leadership model diagram. Survival mode: no time to learn, reacting to fires, over-committed; goal: move to learning mode; things to do: 30-day re-estimation deadline, include management, decide which work realistically fits before the line, move other work after it, re-estimate to include learning; leadership style: dictator/protector. Learning mode: there is time to learn and slowly practice; goal: increase skills; things to do: challenge people out of their comfort zones, one skill per person at a time, monitor skill growth; leadership style: coach/dictator. Self-organizing mode: the team can solve its own problems and handle unknown situations; goal: stay; things to do: facilitate self-organization, set goals not actions, monitor for mode changes; leadership style: facilitator.](https://www.elasticleadership.com/img/elastic-leadership-model.png) The Elastic Leadership Model by Roy Osherove Inside the book #### Table Of Contents: 1. Part 1 Elastic leadership 1. Striving toward a team leader manifesto 2. Elastic leadership 3. Bus factors 4. Survival mode 2. Part 2 Survival mode 1. Learning mode: learning to learn 3. Part 3 The learning phase 1. Commitment language 2. Growing people 3. Using clearing meetings to advance self-organization 4. Part 4 Self-organization mode 1. Influence patterns 2. The line manager manifesto 5. Part 5 Notes to a software team leader Watch #### The Coaching Architect Manifesto [![](https://www.elasticleadership.com/img/talk.jpg)Play “The Coaching Architect Manifesto”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgAJyC5keU0) Roy's talk at the DevTernity conference on leading and growing technical teams. [Watch on YouTube (opens in a new tab) →](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgAJyC5keU0) Part 5 #### Notes from other leaders The second half of the book collects thoughts and notes from other software leaders, each with annotations from the author on how it fits the elastic leadership framework and compass from the first half. Training #### The Elastic Leadership workshop Two days with Roy on the essential skills for leading software teams: the three team modes and how to tell which one you're in, getting out of survival mode, commitment language, delegation as a growth tool, clearing meetings, and the six influence forces behind how people behave. [See the workshop agenda](https://www.elasticleadership.com/training) From the 5 Whys blog #### Articles on team leadership - [Possible Anti Pattern: A Remote Team Member is Never Ever Visible in Video Chat (Zoom, Teams)Jun 15, 2020](https://www.5whys.com/articles/2020/6/15/possible-anti-pattern-a-remote-team-member-is-never-ever-visible-in-video-chat-zoom-teams) - [InfoQ Book Q&A on Elastic LeadershipMay 30, 2019](https://www.5whys.com/articles/2019/5/30/infoq-book-qampa-on-elastic-leadership) - [The Elastic Leadership Model in a pictureMar 22, 2019](https://www.5whys.com/articles/2019/3/22/the-elastic-leadership-model-in-a-picture) - [Johanna Rothman Interview - Agile, a Decade LaterFeb 16, 2019](https://www.5whys.com/articles/2019/2/16/johanna-rothman-interview-agile-a-decade-later) - [A Critical Chain of Bus FactorsFeb 21, 2017](https://www.5whys.com/articles/a-critical-chain-of-bus-factors.html) - [Elastic Leadership Book PublishedFeb 21, 2017](https://www.5whys.com/articles/elastic-leadership-book-published.html) [Read the 5 Whys Blog (opens in a new tab)](https://5whys.com/) About the author #### Roy Osherove Roy Osherove leads, coaches and consults for software teams. He is also the author of The Art of Unit Testing (Manning) and writes about team leadership on the 5 Whys blog. ![](https://www.elasticleadership.com/img/cover-400.jpg) #### Get the book Start with the free excerpt, or get the full book from Manning. [Buy the Book (Manning) (opens in a new tab)](https://www.manning.com/books/elastic-leadership?a_aid=iserializable&a_bid=4b8caedc) [Try the Book (PDF)](https://www.elasticleadership.com/excerpt) ## Pages - [Elastic Leadership PDF Excerpt](https://www.elasticleadership.com/excerpt.md): Read a free 20-page excerpt of Elastic Leadership by Roy Osherove: the preface, chapter 1 (Striving toward a Team Leader Manifesto) and chapter 2 (Matching leadership styles to team phases). - [Elastic Leadership Workshop](https://www.elasticleadership.com/training.md): A two-day Elastic Leadership workshop with Roy Osherove: the three team modes, getting out of survival mode, commitment language, delegation, clearing meetings and influence forces. - [Contact](https://www.elasticleadership.com/contact.md): Contact Roy Osherove about Elastic Leadership: training, consulting or questions about leading software teams. --- ## 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/