Me or the team

I have been privy to many a team observation in the last year.  it’s been a very interesting experience.  I have seen dysfunctions and outright conflict, hidden agenda’s and not so hidden agenda’s. Ambivalence and engagement, openness and transparency.  I have seen fear and bravery, righteousness, humor and acceptance. Curiosity and confusion and all these are just my view, my story.

In the last team, all the right words were talked about around the table, everyone knew what to say and how to be on their best behaviours, well almost.  We did have the disengaged mobile phone person.  Which got me thinking,  I know this person, they are engaged and excited but I am also realising they are also still only thinking of what they need, not what the rest of the team needs and how by helping the rest of the team they will also help themselves.

Then we had the over ambitious person, the one who really wants the top job, tells everyone they want the top job, can do the top job, but probably is seen as trying to hard, not caring enough about the rest of the team.

So what is holding these people back from being an awesome team, because they could be an awesome team.  At the moment they are just an ok team, a group of people still not 100% sure what they need to do in their roles and as a team.  We have a team that is still thinking of themselves and how to get themselves recognized as opposed to getting the team to achieve it’s goals.   We talked about the teams common goals, we talked about what each person needs from the team and what the team need from them.  This did bring them a bit closer as a team but not as much as it needs to be or as I hoped it would.

I think it all comes down to people still feel scared and lack the team trust.  They  don’t trust they can be themselves without being judged.   Is there a way to help the team through this storming stage?  They need to work through ways of dealing with their conflicts.  At the moment there is still a lot of conflict simmering around, judgement and assumptions, fear and insecurity.   In our team building meeting we talked about the social contract and ways of working, they all say they want honest communication.  But no one really wants honest communication you want constructive communication.   I saw a great post on LinkedIn by Adam Grant ” Narcissism: accept praise, reject criticism. Humility: reject praise, accept criticism. Confidence: accept praise and criticism. Grit: only accept praise and criticism with actionable feedback for building on strengths or overcoming weaknesses.”  I want to get teams to Grit.

They also mentioned that they have a zero acceptance policy to bullying,  but no one could define what bullying was.  I have heard from two the of the people in the team individually that they consider the other to be a bully.

I am going to suggest the team have a workshop on feedback practice.  We have a great trainer available to us at work and I think the team would really benefit from a communications workshop with her.  I will also suggest a bullying workshop with our Bullying and Harrassment lady, if we can get people to a clear understanding, and having the communication skills, hopefully it will help improve the relationships and build the trust.

 

I’m an adult so why don’t I know it all.

I have noticed lately that people forget that we are all on a learning journey, all of us.  I think it comes down to that picture we all had in our heads of our parents when we were kids, that they were adults, the grown ups and they knew what to do, they had all the answers.  But I’m an adult and I don’t know it all,  there is so much I don’t know, so much I am learning as I go.

So why don’t we keep that in mind and help each other,  why don’t we ask for help,  why don’t we act like a community and support each other more,  why are we always trying to be superhumans, doing it all and knowing it all and never admitting, hey I don’t know what I am doing, I am just giving this a go and seeing how it works out.   Because that is what we are all doing,  there is no one right way.  We are all experimenting, we are all learning.  Lets give each other a break, stop judging, start accepting and supporting.

There have been quite a few new people promoted lately and so many times I have heard people talk about how that person doesn’t know what they are doing. Hey  I don’t know what I am doing. But why would they, they haven’t done that job before, they have some skills and they have the desire to learn and grow, that should be all that matters, lets support each other and give the feedback to help each other rather than try and knock each other down before we even have a chance to grow.

Celebrating success.

A post it was added to our kanban board the other day and when I saw it I loved it.

It said “Celebrate ”  My first thought was fantastic idea, my next thought, what on earth are we going to do?

We don’t celebrate success enough at my work. It’s just a fact, which was recently supported by the results of our staff engagement survey.  People don’t feel like they are appreciated, they don’t feel they are given constructive feedback.

Celebrating success is important for motivation, for happiness in your work, for learning, for team bonding, (gotta love those happy hormones),  and knowledge sharing.

So why don’t we do it?

• It seems like a waste of time and money
• people have another piece of work or project to get on to
• it seems to fluffy.
• and the list goes on…….

What should we do?

• “Celebrate good times come on…”
• Give appreciation, notice people and the work they do.
• Have shared morning tea
• Go out for lunch to celebrate
• Publicly acknowledge the success.
• Enter industry recognition awards
• advertise success visually and loudly and often.
• Be creative and make it fun,

While I feel the introductions of retrospectives for many of the teams is helping with this, it is not going far enough,  we still need to celebrate success a lot more.  Have a time when we can just appreciate the awesomeness of what we achieve and the people we work with.

 

 

Backing yourself

My history means that I doubt myself a lot, I set myself high standards.  I have self talk that is best ignored.  I have often described myself as a control freak and people will describe me as very organised, in fact many complain that I am too organised because I detail out everything.   I plan, I track, and I didn’t realise until writing this how much I also inspect and adapt that plan.

I was worried when I started my role as an Agile coach,  here I was starting a job where I couldn’t control anything really, it was a probe, sense and react environment,  where was my plans, where was my controls going to fit in.  But this is what I wanted and I threw myself in,  I read and studied, I created a support network, I went to meetups, I was curious and soaked up as much as I could.   I still am curious, I am amazed at how much there is to learn, how much I also already knew but hadn’t linked together.   Even writing this post.  I didn’t realise how much I naturally inspect and adapt.  At this moment in time I believe that is my reason for success.  I have been waiting for things to blow up in my face,  I keep experimenting and so far everything seems to be working,  so far the feedback I am getting is great!  I am constantly amazed.  I knew this was going to be hard, there is just me and the organisation is not setup to support Agile ways of working, in fact many of the people will take forever to come around and some people never will.   I had figured that I just needed to have something fail and for me to get through that and I would be able to grow and have confidence to back myself.  Every so often I think of the big picture and freak out, so I go back to my goals and the next action I can take towards that goal, it won’t happen overnight but it is happening.

The thing I need to remember is the successes I have already had, I am already doing great, I am already growing so much, I am already making a difference and it’s only been 6 months for my team.  They have already come so far and are keen to keep going.  I am already using the tools I have to gather feedback, to inspect and adapt based on that data.  I am not just saying but doing as well.  I have a great support network and they are always giving me such great encouragement, I just have to start believing in myself more, then I can push my experiments more and really make a difference to people.

Its the people feedback experiments that are the hardest, the people interactions, helping people see what they are doing that is not helping the team,  those actions that they probably are not even ready to face up to themselves.   The ones we all have but have blinkers on about.  I know I am not immune either.  I can be judgmental and forget to be curious about what the other person is going through or experiencing.   I have asked people to hold me accountable, I have asked them to give me feedback, let me know when I am responding in a way that makes them think “WTF”,  then I will be able to learn and grow and improve.    Through these small wins I can build my confidence and back myself more.