Category Archives: Teams

Agile leadership myths

Agile Leadership Myth #2: Self-Organizing Teams don’t need any help.

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How did we arrive at this place where so many people believe that self-organizing teams do not need help? The fact is, self-organizing teams DO need help.

Self-organizing teams DO need help!

What teams can experience: Teams might not know exactly what kind of help they need or even how to describe it. This can be especially true if they had a manager-led team and were told what to do and when to do it. I hear teams say, “we don’t need managers”, but they often mean that they don’t need managers telling them what to do.

What managers can experience: Managers are often put in a position of shifting from being an expert and telling teams what to do to some new approach that is not clear to them. They may not know exactly how to help a self-organizing team. I call this clumsy management. It is not that they are doing it on purpose, they just happen to be bumping into things when trying to help. Managers are sometimes told to “stay out of the team’s way”, so they end up disengaged and not sure how to reengage. The fact that a manager may not be sure how to help a self-organizing team does not mean that help is not needed. Continue reading →

Agile Commitment — Classic Pig & Chicken (Part 1)

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The Pig & Chicken is a cartoon that many in the agile community are familiar with. I know some will see it and ask, why is this one being rehashed (I know this because I reviewed it with a few people and they asked). Some will be quite annoyed, since many “strongly dislike” the cartoon (which is fine – please add your comments!). So, for anyone reading this and thinking any of those things, please read on. I’d like to say “don’t worry, I have a plan”, but only you can judge for yourself how it pans out! Tweet the Agile Safari Cartoon!

agile-safari-pig-and-chicken-part1

What Is The Pig & Chicken Cartoon?

For readers who are not familiar with agile (or any agile folks who have not seen the cartoon), the ideas is that the pigs are the team (or Scrum Team). The chickens are everyone else. Continue reading →

Focusing your retrospectives - what will you focus on?

Focusing Agile Retrospectives

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The most common agile retrospective focus is on the sprint (or iteration) that was just completed. For most agile teams, this is the past two weeks. We have many more options for retrospectives than simply looking back on the last sprint. We can look at a specific topic, an event, use a future focus, or look at a much longer timeline. Regardless of the focus, we are aiming to learn, generate ideas, and (ideally) agree on actions to take moving forward to improve to sustain. Continue reading →

Agile Safari – What’s Not Being Said?

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agile-safari-elephant-in-the-roomHave you been in a situation where no one would bring up the problem that everyone knew was “in the room?” I’d guess that everyone has been there. So often, we don’t bring up the “elephant in the room.” For anyone who has not heard of this, the elephant in the room is a saying for the real or obvious truth that is not being addressed. Given an elephant in a room would be hard to miss, when people ignore it, they are typically pretending it is not there. Continue reading →

Please Drop Me! I'm Antifragile!

Building Antifragile Relationships and Teams @ Santa Barbara Agile

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Building antifragile relationships is about finding ways for our relationships to gain from disorder, or be more antifragile. What tools and practices can we use to help us thrive from disorder? What mindset do we need to hold to be present with the teams and organizations we are in?

I’m excited to be presenting a session at Santa Barbara Agile titled: “Building Antifragile Relationships and Teams.” The session will be on November 19th! You can signup and find specific details at the Santa Barbara Agile Meetup.   Continue reading →

Working with Team Toxins

Resolving Conflict by Working with Team Toxins

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We know from Team Toxins and Team Conflict, that toxins are normal. So we can’t just “get rid of them.” In fact, pretending there are never toxins in a team could be viewed as a form of stonewalling. There are a number of ways to resolve conflict by working with team toxins. These not “iron-clad plans” or best practices, they are approaches to resolving conflict that ideally start before major conflict has emerged.

The four team toxins are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.

Below I list a number of ways to work with team toxins. These are ideas that make or break our teams and relationships. I believe they make the difference between being engaged and checking-out. Many of these ideas are concepts that should be explored Continue reading →