The Anchor Playbook

The Peer

Pivotal/Tanzu Labs

LIGHT-TOUCH LEADER OF A STRONG TEAM

Anchors often bring different types of leadership to the table: in many cases leadership is direct, and it’s clear who the anchor is. However, anchors can be very effective with indirect leadership. A very successful anchor or an anchor working with a very empowered team, may find that it is possible to step back and let the engineers on the team handle anchor responsibilities like stakeholder updates and cross-team planning on a rotating basis.

Responsibilities

• Emphasize that all engineers have these responsibilities, anchor or not
• Promote more active feedback
• Rotate responsibilities as skilled pairs
• Give everyone on the team a chance to grow
• Give everyone on the team opportunities to win trust

Considerations

• A team of peers may find that project stakeholders end up being more involved in the day-to-day decision-making process, and may make decisions for which they lack full context; this can be a sign that the anchor needs to take a more direct leadership role
• There is an implicit seniority around who talks strategy with project stakeholders. A team of peers operates best when expectations around decision-making are consistent

Challenges

• Project stakeholders and junior team members are likely to want the anchor identified, even if it is preferable for team dynamics to take a peer-oriented approach
• In cases where context is unevenly distributed, it may be difficult to know who has received complete context and who hasn’t