Viewing entries tagged
psychological safety

How is Bob Doing?

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How is Bob Doing?

About 10 years ago I was an agile coach at a client organization and I was also acting as a Scrum Master for two teams.

I remember a director coming up to me and asking me, as the Scrum Master of a team with folks who reported to him, how was a specific engineer performing. He explained that he had concerns that the engineer wasn’t pulling his weight and he wanted some specifics to confront him with.

I remember my reaction viscerally to this day…

  • I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach;

  • I even felt a little weakness in my knees;

  • I struggled with what to say, knowing that the engineer he was talking about was indeed struggling;

  • I didn’t know if this was part of my role as a Scrum Master or not;

  • I wondered how he would take it if I declined to give him feedback;

  • I worried about the impact my feedback would have on the engineer…

It was a horrible experience because I wasn’t sure what to do. If I gave him the feedback, it would certainly compromise my role within the team. I guessed that it would get out and that I’d never really be trusted again.

AND, I was a part of the Scrum Team, wasn’t I? It would be like becoming a “snitch”. And nobody likes a snitch.

But if I didn’t give him the feedback, would it put me at risk?

In the end, I respectfully declined. I said that he’d have to observe the team in our sprint to sort out how everyone was performing. To my surprise, he accepted that reply. But I left feeling incredibly vulnerable and physically shaking.

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Them & Us in Failure

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Them & Us in Failure

This is inspired by a conversation I had at our Vaco Agile coach’s guild.  

We had a discussion around it being ok to fail is NOT simply leaders giving us space/safety to fail. It’s also about our internal willingness to fail.

For example, as I’m a strong and driven Type A, my personality isn’t that comfortable with failure. So, even if the ecosystem is “failure friendly” or encouraging…

  • Am I? and if not, why not?

  • Are other members of my team? And if not, why not?

  • Are members of my group or tribe? And if not, why not?

And if we’re not internally failure friendly, how do we get there? How do I/we move the needle?

Wrapping Up

This was a real short take post, but I hope it starts you thinking about your safety and failure friendly ecosystem.

While, yes, your leaders play a really SIGNIFICANT role in it. It’s not solely about them. It’s also about US and our WE walking our own talk?

How might we test it? Perhaps checking for –

  • When was the last time someone on your team failed…and shared it?

  • And, when was the last time you failed…and shared it?

Anyway, food for thought. Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

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Checking for Safety

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Checking for Safety

Safety is a hot topic in agile contexts today. Continuously begging the question – 

Is it safe?

With a nod to the film Marathon Man. Safety is incredibly relevant to the level of true agile performance at a team level.

In the following post, Joshua Kerievsky mentioned a technique originated by Norm Kerth that explores ways to “check for” safety.

https://medium.com/@JoshuaKerievsky/norm-kerths-safety-poll-bcccd5be6e44

While this may be a relatively short post, it’s an important one. And this is NOT simply focused on safety at a team level. It’s also applicable for all levels of the organization.

I also really like that Josh gives a nod to Norm. A true pioneer in this space!

Norm wrote the book Project Retrospectives, which is a foundation for nearly all of the agile retrospective advice (books, articles, etc.) that followed it. I don’t think he gets enough credit for this important work.

Anyway, please read the post and renew your focus on safety awareness within your teams.

Stay agile my friends,

Bob.

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The Sounds of Silence

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The Sounds of Silence

I was never a huge Simon and Garfunkel fan but there are a few songs of theirs that really stood out for me as I was growing up.

One of them is The Sounds of Silence.

It’s a haunting vision of the future.

And it swirled in my head as I read an article by Chris Murman. Chris is a friend and colleague that I find incredibly thoughtful about his (and others) agile journeys. But the article I found was published in September 2017, so nearly a year ago. And unfortunately, I missed it.

The article is entitled – What Can You Do About Organizational Silence?

And it focuses on a common corporate cultural phenomenon where the following occurs:

  • Leaders drive most of the “thinking”

  • Alternate ideas are not brought up

  • Discussion and debate are not realized

  • Disagreement with the status quo is discouraged

  • Creative ideas aren’t even suggested

And where silence, connoting tacit agreement, is the norm.

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