Johanna Rothman

Chapter 3

Building Teamwork with Interpersonal

Practices

Copyright © 2017

“Because agile is human-centric, collaborative

approach to product development, your team

needs to build its ability to work as a team using

interpersonal skills.”

What are interpersonal skills?

Communication skills, which includes:

• Verbal Communication – what we say and how we say it;

• Non-Verbal Communication – what we communicate without words, for example through

body language, or tone of voice; and

• Listening Skills – how we interpret both the verbal and non-verbal messages sent by others.

Emotional intelligence – being able to understand and manage your own and others’ emotions.

Team-working – being able to work with others in groups and teams, both formal and informal.

Negotiation, persuasion and influencing skills – working with others to find a mutually

agreeable (Win/Win) outcome. This may be considered a subset of communication, but it is often

treated separately.

Conflict resolution and mediation – working with others to resolve interpersonal conflict

and disagreements in a positive way, which again may be considered a subset of communication.

Problem solving and decision-making – working with others to identify, define and solve

problems, which includes making decisions about the best course of action.

Agile team members…

… require at least… the ability to receive and to

provide feedback and coaching

Allowing for a safe environment for collaboration

Helping team members to learn from their work

… as individuals and as a team

Agile team members are similar

Team members exhibit interpersonal qualities:

Team members collaborate with each other

Team members can ask each other for help

Team members are adaptable, willing to work on whatever is next and possibly outside their expertise

Team members also exhibit the following preferences:

Do something good enough for now (as opposed to waiting for perfection)

Creating experiments to try something and receive feedback on the product or the team’s process

Being willing to work outside their preferences as a generalizing specialist

Feedback

“Information about past behavior, delivered in the

present, which may influence future behavior”

“Peer based feedback helps team members collaborate,

learn, and adapt to what the team needs to finish work

now.”

Do you care to give such feedback?

Can you make use of the feedback to improve your

ability to collaborate, learn, and adapt?

“Here’s how it works…” page 44

Feedback

“Feedback is even more important when you have personal issues.”

People on agile teams need the ability to provide and receive feedback about the work and the work environment.

META FEEDBACK

When people don’t agree on anything.

Time needed to address problems in team relationships

Touchy!

… stick with facts, don’t label each other, and explain how the problem affects you personally

Team members coach each other…

… and should be able to learn from one another

Team members should take responsibility for

completing work… and completing work together

… helping to move the work to “done”

When team members realize they don’t know something

about how to do the work or solve a problem, they

should feel “safe” asking for help.

Servant Leader…

a different kind of leader

• Focuses on building a foundation of trust

• Stimulates empowerment and transparency

• Encourages collaborative engagements

• Is an un-blocker and empathic person able to truly

listen

• Shows ethical and caring behavior, putting others

needs first

• Is humble, knowledgeable, positive, social and

situationally aware

Scrum Master as Servant Leader

• Guiding the Development team towards self-organization

• Leading the team through healthy conflict and debate

• Teaching, coaching and mentoring the organization and team

in adopting and using Scrum

• Shielding the team from disturbance and external threats

• Helping the team make visible, remove and prevent

impediments

• Encouraging, supporting and enabling the team to reach their

full potential and abilities

• Creating transparency by radiating information via e.g. the

Product and Sprint backlog, daily Scrum, reviews and a visible

workspace

• Ensuring a collaborative culture exists within the team.

Possible “Consulting” RolesPossible Consulting Roles

Counselor: Coach: Partner:

"You do it: I wlll be

your sounding board."

"You did well: what

would you do differently

next time?"

"We will do it together and

learn from each other."

Facilitator Teacher: Modeler:

"You do it, I will

attend to the process."

"Here are some principles

you can see to solve

problems of this type."

"I will do it, you watch so

you can learn from me."

Reflective Observer: Technical Adviser Hands on Expert:

"You do it; I will

watch and tell you

what I see and hear."

"I will answer your

questions as you go

along."

"I will do it for you, I will

tell you what do."

Responsibility for client's results

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Teams must assess how well they collaborate

Rothman

“… teams that decided to track “asks and offers” as a way to

encourage the team members to work together”

Building trust

Only happens when the team works together

Team members are trustworthy when they do the following:

• Deliver what they promise to deliver

• Are consistent in their actions and reactions

• Make integrity a cornerstone of their work

• Are willing to discuss, influence, and negotiate

• Trust in themselves and their team members

Integrity

Integrity stretches to all aspects of an employee's job

An team member with integrity fosters trusting relationships with clients, coworkers and supervisors.

Coworkers value the employee's ability to give honest feedback.

Clients trust the employee's advice.

Team members care about the quality of their work.

They do their best to produce great work, not merely churn out what is needed.

The employee's commitment to quality improves the company's overall quality.

Creating a team environment of Safety

Safety allows the team to manage the ambiguity and

uncertainty about anything related to the work

Safety allows the team to learn early by creating small

experiments

Safety creates an environment in which team members

feel safe …

Helping team members admit and look for mistakes

Making possible team and team member learning

Facilitating the use of clear and direct language by all team

members

Providing an environment where “admitting what you don’t

know” and “acknowledging when you fail” is expected

What is resilience?

… the Ability to become strong, healthy, or successful

again after something bad happens

The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties

10 tips how to build resiliency in Scrum Teams

1. Providing unconditional “love” and acceptance

2. Trusting each other

3. Providing a safe environment for them to fail

4. Trusting their problem-solving skills

5. Encouraging independence and letting the team

solve their own problems

10 tips how to build resiliency in Scrum Teams

6. Listening to them calmly and providing a

comforting feeling when they are “hurt”

7. Letting the team know the consequences of bad

behavior

8. Setting the expectations and rules of the game

9. Providing enough freedom to be creative

10. Accepting your Scrum Team, they are the key to

making them resilient

“Team collaboration and learning helps the team

build safety and resilience.”

Brain-based model for

Collaborating with & Influencing others

Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness

Anti-collaboration patterns

1. When the team’s status is uneven, members are reluctant to take a risk in front of managers

2. When the team feels uncertain about its next steps… example: undertakes a large, not well understood Feature… there is less certainty about how to proceed

3. When the team has insufficient autonomy to work the way they want, the team is bound by decisions outside the team

4. When team doesn’t know or can’t manage its team membership (relatedness), the team does not have the ability to develop member relationships

5. When team members sense unfairness in how they are treated,

SCARF

Recognize Interpersonal-Skills Traps

Trap: Team members do not provide enough feedback

to each other

Trap: Team members inflict help when they see a

solution

Trap: Team members “sandwich” their feedback

Trap:

Team members do not provide enough feedback to each other

• Collaborative teams learn how to work with each other

• Team members feel safe to ask for help and to discuss

what’s going on for them

• … and do not ignore other members working alone when

they are “stuck”

• Management that rewards individual work, creates

incentives to work alone (stacking at Microsoft & GE)

“Agile teams work together to move work across the board,

to help each other finish work…”

… they learn enough to work with and contribute to other

team members

Trap:

Team members inflict help when they see a solution

You want to help team members … providing feedback

and/or coaching …BUT

… only if the team member has asked for help

If the team member is in need but will not ask for

help… for a Scrum Team, this is a problem that the

Scrum Master might need to be involved…

Trap:

Team members “sandwich” their feedback

Feedback can come in a variety of ways…

not all are helpful

The “sandwich” approach

Negative feedback is “sandwiched” between two pieces of

positive feedback

… thinking it’s a balanced approach and the best way to

deliver the negative feedback… reducing discomfort and

anxiety

Research shows that any kind of feedback is best shared as

soon as possible… without sugar coating the feedback