Tag: Safety

The Scrum Values – Respect

~ Adam ~ 2 Comments

We’re working our way through the Scrum Values, the second value I want to talk about is Respect.

Last week I shared Steve Trapp’s blog post. In it he asked Scrum Team Members

  • I listen with equal intensity regardless of who is talking.
  • When listening to people I never talk over them.
  • I value everyone’s opinion equally.
  • I am never concerned who works on what item in the backlog.
  • I feel that my opinion is respected and that I have an equal say in the team.

Respect is key in a Scrum Team. A good team is diverse and brings together different people with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. People can only work effectively if they feel safe to share their own points of view. If you haven’t already I strongly recommend reading 5 Dysfunctions of a Team as a great fable about why this is so important.

If we want to work well as a team it’s important we can engage in constructive conflict without making people feel vulnerable and worried that their ideas will be ridiculed. We all need to take responsibility for creating a team where respect for each other is paramount.

Of all the Scrum Values this is the one I believe is the most important. Great teams can adapt and rise to meet challenges, however a great team cannot exist without mutual respect between the team members and between the team and it’s stakeholders. Reinforce respect and you’ll build a strong team who can achieve great things.

How do you nurture respect in your team? What do you feel when working in a respectful environment? Let me know in the comments below.

Radical Candor Book Review

~ Adam ~ 1 Comment

Radical Candor, by Kim Scott is a book I’ve been aware of for a while but haven’t actually got around to reading.

I was expecting lots of information about giving feedback but I was pleasantly surprised that there was a lot more in there than that.

Scott discusses that to be great leaders and team members we must both care personally and challenge directly. Without these two qualities we fall into one of three other quadrants.

Feedback & Radical Candor | Our Simple Approach To Guidance

People who care but don’t challenge fall into Ruinous Empathy. These are the people who won’t tell a friend that they’re unzipped because they’re afraid of the conversation. They’d rather let their friend continue to embaress themselves rather than push themselves out of their comfort zone.

People who don’t care personally are split into one of two categories. If they do challenge but don’t do it with someone elses best interests at heart then they display obnoxious agression. Or, simply put are just jerks. If they don’t challenge then they see what they could do to improve and don’t do anything to help them. This is manimulative insincerity.

Scott teaches us that we must always strive to give direct feedback to people we work with because we care about their success and their feelings. She also discusses lots of ways to do that.

I’d been expecting much of this content before I started the book but what delighted me was the actionable advice on how to go about this. I want you to read (or listen) to the book so I won’t give it all away here (plus, you know, plagurism). Suffice it to say that if you do now feel you should give feedback there are lots of tips in there to help.

But this is just for managers right?

Wrong!

Kim discusses that everyone should feel they can give feedback. Peer feedback is one of the most valuable thing we can give, it shows we care about our colleagues.

So, would I recommend it. Absolutely – go and have a read. Stop being ruinously empathetic today and start supporting your friends and colleagues directly!

The Advantage Book Review

~ Adam ~ Leave a comment

When I saw a copy of The Advantage on the shelf at the airport I picked it up straight away. I read Five Dysfunctions of a Team a few years ago and considered it leadership gold. Learning about organisational health from the same author, sign me up!

I’m disappointed to say that for me, The Advantage just didn’t hit the same high notes. Despite only being 216 pages the book took me around eighteen months to complete and that’s simply because I wasn’t engaged and I felt I had to force myself through the final few sections.

The early part of the book recovers a lot of the same ground as Dysfunctions, I have no problem with that. Creating a leadership team who feel safe and can operate together as a team is no doubt a key part. Then we moved onto organisational values, both desired and acididental. I found that part quite interesting but when we moved onto creating and reinforcing clarity I drifted and drifted.

It’s quite possible I missed the point, the book is highly rated on Goodreads so many people have clearly got a lot from it. Unfortunately, this won’t be one I pick up and re-read again in a hurry. I will however go away and try to define my teams’ values – I grant, that’s a very valuable exercise!

Have you read The Advantage? Do you disagree with me? Let me know either on Twitter or in the comments, I’m always happy for someone to point out something I’ve missed!

Five Dysfunctions of a Team Book Review

~ Adam ~ 4 Comments

I read this book a few years ago and really would recommend it. I believe it was mentioned in The Phoenix Project and I added it to my reading list.

Much like Gene Kim’s work Five Dysfunctions is a story, in this case of an exec team at a high flying company who are struggling. They have all the best people, but the company is failing.

Lencioni talks about how safety acts as the foundations for a team to be able to challenge each other and succeed. It really hammers home how people feeling comfortable sharing their strengths and weaknesses leads to dull meetings, lack of accountability, and poor results.

Not a difficult read, lots of useful information – definitely one to add to your reading list if you’ve not read it already.

Just How Safe Do You Feel?

~ Adam ~ Leave a comment

I’ve written quite a lot over the last few weeks about Safety in team discussions. What I haven’t really discussed is how to detect when the safety is starting to fail. Imagine you’re in a conversation with someone, at work or at home and they’re starting to feel unsafe. We know that this means they will stop sharing and will result is poorer group decisions. But how do we know if someone is feeling like that and what can we do to prevent it?

If you haven’t read it already I strongly recommend picking up a copy of the book Crucial Conversations. In it, the authors discuss that people generally go one of two ways when they’re feeling unsafe. They either go to silence or violence.

When someone goes silent they often stop talking or become very monosyllabic in their responses. Perhaps they want to shut down the conversation or move onto another, safer topic or maybe they’re only sharing certain parts of the story – the parts which support their argument rather than discussing the potential problems with it. However silence manifests it’s usually because the person doesn’t feel comfortable with the topic and wants to move on or gloss over the real issue.

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Other people tend to go to violence. I’m not talking about physical violence (at least I hope we’re not making people so unsafe they have to lash out). I’m talking about attacking an idea or, even worse, a person. Comments like “that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard” or “only a moron would say that” are attacks. People raise their voices and try to dominate the conversation through shear volume rather than calmly discussing the topic with someone else.

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Photo by Gratisography on Pexels.com

 

It’s important to realise that both of these are natural reactions when someone feels insecure discussing something. It may be that you’ve said something which has upset them, or it may be that they’re worried about the whole topic of conversation.

In the example I gave a few weeks ago the developer had an idea which he refused to share with the group because he didn’t think the team would listen to his opinion. However, he could equally have turned to violence and tried to force his point on the group by making them feel unsafe challenging him. Both of these are defense mechanisms. It’s our role as colleagues, as human beings, to look for signs that someone is starting to feel unsafe in a conversation and to look for ways to reassure them so we can resume constructive dialogue.

Collaboration is hard, if we really want the best decisions then we need to hear all viewpoints and listen to everyone’s experience. We can’t do that if we bulldoze our view too firmly. The next time you’re passionate about an idea take a look around you and see how others are reacting to you… are they going to silence or violence? We cannot change other people’s behaviour but if we try and support other people’s confidence then we’re likely to get ideas and suggestions presented which we’d never have considered ourselves – after all, isn’t that the point of a team?

Why is Safety So Important?

~ Adam ~ 3 Comments

I wrote recently about safety and how I’d describe it, I gave an example of a developer who suspected that a particular approach chosen by the team wouldn’t work but didn’t feel confident enough to speak out and challenge the design.

In this post I want to discuss just how serious that lack of safety is. Beyond that lack of a warning a lack of safety can lead to bugs, disengagement, and even resignations.

If you’ve not already read it then I suggest picking up a copy of 5 Dysfunctions of a Team but Patrick Lencioni. It really is very good!

To back up my statement over resignations I want you to think of the last time you disagreed with your spouse, friend, or family member folder what to do one evening or weekend. Maybe they wanted to go shopping or redecorate a room. I want you to think about how you felt doing that activity and question whether you really gave it 100%

Not really being engaged is hardly unsurprising. Let’s say you wanted to see one film but you were talked into seeing something different. Are you really going to admit that you enjoyed it or will you secretly (it not so secretly) believe that your choice would have been better?

The point of this simple example is that humans struggle to commit to an idea while they still believe that their option would have been better. When we have joint design discussions if someone has an idea and doesn’t voice it or has concerns but gets shot down then they will never feel like their voice has been heard. They become disengaged from the end result, because they never wanted to do it that way anyway. It’s not malicious, it’s a defence mechanism because don’t want to admit that out way wasn’t better.

Only be encouraging all team members to openly discuss their ideas so we gain not just consensus, but buy in. As for staff retention, if your team member never feels bought into the work because they don’t feel like their view is listened to, how long do you think they will remain in that team?

What Exactly is Safety?

~ Adam ~ 4 Comments

When I first heard about someone taking about safety in the workplace I assumed that it was part of an anti-bullying campaign, a Health and Safety initiative, or perhaps some huggy feely thing from someone in HR. It took a little while for me to realise that not only is safety everyone’s responsibility, it is perhaps the most important component of an effective team.

To try to illustrate what safety is I’m going to give you a fictional scenario.

I dropped in on the last few minutes of the team’s planning session. As their manager I’m not strictly required to attend but I like to join occasion to keep up to date with what they are working on.

One of the developers was up at the whiteboard, pen in hand, and he was gesturing enthusiastically at his design. The rest of the team nodded, some eagerly, others showing the fatigue so typical towards the end of a long meeting.

Seeing that the group were wrapping up I caught the eye of one of our senior developers. We had a 1:1 scheduled and I wanted to get started quickly so I wasn’t late for my next meeting.

A few minutes later, coffee in hand, he had just finished telling me about the new data access module he’d created for one of our legacy products. After giving him the appropriate thanks I shifted the conversation onto the upcoming work.

“So it sounds like planning went well?” I asked.

He shifted awkwardly in his chair, obviously not enamoured with the change in topic. “Yeah… but I’m really not sure it’s going to work.” He muttered “I tried something similar a few years back and it just got way to complicated too quickly, the code became unmanageable and we had to abandon the whole thing.”

My blood ran cold. There was a lot riding on the next piece of work. Deadlines, client expectations, the team’s reputation. Forcing calm into my voice into my voice I asked the most obvious question.

“Did you mention this in the meeting?”

“No…” he said “I didn’t think they’d listen to me…”

I’ve deliberately tried not to give extreme an example here. It’s all to easy to discuss nuclear reactors or operating theatres when taking about safety but that implies that the requirement to feel safe only matters in life or death situations. That’s not the case. The more confidence people have the better our teams will function at all times.

So, let’s talk about the problem here. The team has decided on a particular design for a piece of work. One of the developers believe that the solution is doomed to failure and has failed to share that concern. It’s very easy to blame the developer here, or the guy holding the pen for not listening, but in truth it’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure that people feel they can contribute important, and often unwelcome views without fear of reprisal.

But where does this fear come from?

Unfortunately it’s hard coded into our DNA. Based in the same rational as our irrational terror of public speaking the fear of speaking out and voicing unpopular views is grounded in our history as a tribal species. Millennia ago, if a member of the tribe appeared weak, either because their view had been successfully challenged or if they’d lost such a confrontation then they risked being ostracised from caveman society. We are programmed with a strong herding instinct not to challenge dominance or listen to viewpoints which may make us appear weak or incorrect. Unfortunately in the modern workplace these fears put projects at risk of failure.

Team members feeling safe enough to voice their ideas is crucial if you want your team to reach its highest potential. We need to build teams where everyone, not just those with fancy job titles or big egos feels safe to voice their opinions.

I plan to write more about safety over the next few weeks, however if you’re interested in learning more I highly recommend Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek and Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson.

April Agile Yorkshire

~ Adam ~ Leave a comment

I managed to get a seat at Agile Yorkshire this month, I’ve missed a few of these recently partly due to other commitments but also the sheer popularity of these events.

Royd (from NewRedo) organises and coordinates these evenings, this week he’d arranged for Chris Cheadle and Sean Craig from NHS Digital and John Le Drew who runs The Agile Path to speak to us.

Chris and Sean went first, they spoke to us about an event they’d run a little before Christmas. They’d called it Firebreak, during a two week period almost the entire organisation downed tools and worked on “whatever they wanted”.

They’d started with almost a kickstarter approach, people posted ideas on postit notes and their colleagues pledged their time – once a project was fully resourced it was banked and it would go ahead.

I love the idea of this sort of thing, really opening the doors to let teams work on what they want – what they feel wild make a difference. Anything from process improvement to a proof of concept or a piece of server maintenance. It certainly seemed to be a positive experience for the NHS team, some of the projects saved thousands of pounds on licence fees!

The second talk of the night was about Safety and how important it is to effective teams.  John explained that he considered safety to be “free to make suggestions, give feedback, and make mistakes without fear of punishment or humiliation.”

For me this feeds into the fundamental requirement of trust which Patrick Lenconi described in his book Five Dysfunctions of a Team. He postulated that without trust (or in John’s words safety) teams would not challenge each other and discuss ideas.

John had a few examples of this, my favourite was a role play exercise where three characters were so determined to avoid taking the blame for pressing The Big Red button which would overload the nuclear reactor they refused to cooperate to press the three buttons which would save them. Contrived? Perhaps… but it makes the point that if you are scared to look foolish then you’ll naturally be less confident to make suggestions.

Something which did niggle me was the idea of accountability, as managers we need to hold our directs responsible for their performance but this is challenging without undermining that feeling of security. In Lenconi’s book he encourages the team to hold each other accountable, finding the balance between a blame culture and safe, self motivating team is a difficult balance to find!

I’d certainly recommend listening to John if he’s speaking in your area. At the very least I’d say every manager should hear his views about engagement and workplace stress! I for one will be listening to his podcast.

It was a great night, as I’ve said before I’d always suggest Agile Yorkshire if you’re a Leeds based  geek!