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Eliza Gregory: Addressing Communication Issues by Building Trust and Safety With The Scrum Team

In this episode, Eliza shares a story about an international team that faced trouble with communication and escalation issues. The team initially attempted to create team agreements using a shared whiteboard. However, Eliza later discovered that team members were escalating concerns directly to management without involving her. This raised concerns about whether the team felt safe communicating with her. Eliza offers the tip of addressing this issue through one-on-one conversations, emphasizing the importance of creating a safe space for team members to express themselves. She found that these coaching conversations had the most significant impact. Eliza advises making it clear to team members that you are there to listen and understand their concerns. Additionally, she recommends setting up one-on-one meetings and allowing individuals to define the cadence that suits them best. Eliza also suggests conducting more workshops, especially for teams that are not yet mature, to facilitate better communication and collaboration.

Featured Book of the Week: Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High by Grenny et al.

In this segment, Eliza describes the book “Crucial Conversations.” She highlights that the book is dense and cannot be read in one sitting. Although it is not specifically focused on Agile or Scrum, it delves into conversations that occur when emotions are high and people feel unsafe or threatened. The book emphasizes the importance of creating a safe space and presents essential skills for effective communication with one’s team and others. Eliza emphasizes the significance of recognizing within oneself when entering a crucial conversation.

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches – Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM’s that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!

About Eliza Gregory

Eliza Gregory has worked as a Project Manager, Scrum Master, and Agile Coach for U.S. Defense and the German automotive industry. She uses teachings from Agile to hone her writing process, and has a new novel out this May about an IT Project Manager coping with burnout and work stress. Originally from Virginia, she now resides in Bavaria, Germany.

You can link with Eliza Gregory on LinkedIn and connect with Eliza Gregory on Twitter, and you can read about her novel Painting the Whiskey Blue.

Mirela Mus: The Super Scrum Master, Blending Product Expertise and Coaching Skills

The Great Product Owner: The Super Scrum Master, Blending Product Expertise and Coaching Skills

In this episode, the focus was on a Scrum Master who went above and beyond the traditional role. This Scrum Master had extensive experience with the product side and demonstrated a highly personable nature with a coaching attitude. The phrase “it’s humans all the way down” encapsulated their approach, emphasizing the importance of understanding and dealing with people from a human perspective. The episode highlighted the multifaceted skills and perspectives that this Scrum Master brought to the role, emphasizing the value of combining product knowledge, interpersonal skills, and a coaching mindset to create a positive and effective team dynamic.

The Bad Product Owner: Unveiling a Scrum Master Anti-pattern, and what PO’s can do about it

In this episode, Mirela discussed a Scrum Master anti-pattern where certain individuals disrupted the entire team under cover of implementing Scrum. Mirela suggests that one way to avoid this anti-pattern is to have a mentor to support the Product Owner. In the mentoring sessions, Mirela questioned the PO about whether the work of the Scrum Master was causing disruption and noise, and whether they were escalating numerous issues. She advised self-reflection to identify any triggers for such behavior. Building positive relationships within the team was recommended. Mirela emphasizes that excessive escalation is detrimental to everyone involved.

The Ultimate Guide to Supporting Product Owners as a Scrum Master

Are you having trouble helping the team work well with their Product Owner? We’ve put together a course to help you work on the collaboration team-product owner. You can find it at bit.ly/coachyourpo. 18 modules, 8+ hours of modules with tools and techniques that you can use to help teams and PO’s collaborate.

About Mirela Mus

Mirela is the founder of Product People, a Product Management Consultancy on a mission to help companies discover and deliver great products faster. They have 41 full-time Product Managers who help companies focus on product-led growth and/or profitability.

You can link with Mirela Mus on LinkedIn and connect with Mirela Mus on Twitter.

Rik Pennartz: How to coach your Scrum team like a Pro!

When Scrum Masters start their journey but come from project management or even line management background, there’s the temptation to “tell people what to do”. However, that’s not a good approach to help teams grow and improve. In this episode, we explore the role of the Scrum Master as a coach, and discuss how to set up and host “Coaching Conversations”. 

In this episode, we refer to Gregg Popovich, legendary coach of the Basketball team San Antonio Spurs

About Rik Pennartz

Rik is an agile coach, who’s worked during the last years at the Volksbank, the Dutch Railways and ABN AMRO bank. Rik also teaches various agile courses such as Professional Scrum Master, DevOps fundamentals and Leading SAFe.

You can find Rik Pennartz at the Cap Gemini Academy.

You can link with Rik Pennartz on LinkedIn and connect with Rik Pennartz on Twitter.

Moana Pledger: How to help Scrum teams stuck in a Waterfall organization

Not all teams have the benefit of working within an Agile organization. Some of the teams we work with are stuck between Waterfall and Agile. And as Scrum Masters, we very often get asked to work with teams that are struggling with exactly that problem. In this episode, we discuss how we can help teams that are in a similar situation, and what Mo learned from that story that you can use to your advantage.

In this episode, we refer to Martine Davos, and Agile Coach and Scrum trainer.

About Moana Pledger

Mo started her career in education and program management before moving into digital delivery. She’s pretty sure she was a servant-leader before she had even heard the term. Her passion is to build healthy teams and foster the all-important relationship between business and team, which allows a safe space for the magic to happen.

You can link with Moana Pledgeron LinkedIn and connect with Moana Pledger on Twitter.

Chelsie Raiola: How Scrum Masters can help teams handle critical escalations

Once in while, Scrum teams need to face critical situations. In this episode, we explore what a Scrum Master can do to help a team that is facing a critical customer escalation. These are situations where urgency can easily lead to conflict and negatively affect a team. Are you ready to handle such a situation? Listen in to learn how Chelsie tackled that challenge.

About Chelsie Raiola

Chelsie has been working as a Scrum Master in the Greater Boston Area for just over two years. She has experience working with both co-located and distributed teams developing on-premise and SaaS solutions worldwide. She is an avid lover of technology, dogs, and bullet journals, Chelsie loves finding ways to bring Agile outside of the office.

You can link with Chelsie Raiola on LinkedIn

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Get These Valuable Lessons Today!
Down-to-earth, hard-earned Scrum Masters lessons and the Tips from the Trenches e-book table of contents, delivered by email
Enter e-mail to download a clickable PO Cheat Sheet
This handy Coach Your PO cheat-sheet includes questions to help you define the problem, and links to handy, easy techniques to help you coach your Product Owner
Enter e-mail to download a clickable PO Cheat Sheet
This handy Coach Your PO cheat-sheet includes questions to help you define the problem, and links to handy, easy techniques to help you coach your Product Owner
Enter e-mail to download a checklist to help your PO manage their time
This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
Enter e-mail to download a checklist to help your PO manage their time
This simple checklist and calendar handout, with a coaching article will help you define the minimum enagement your PO must have with the team
Internal Conference
Checklist
Internal Conference
Checklist
Download a detailed How-To to help measure success for your team
Motivate your team with the right metrics, and the right way to visualize and track them. Marcus presents a detailed How-To document based on his experience at The Bungsu Hospital
Download a detailed How-To to help measure success for your team
Read about Visualization and TRANSFORM The way your team works
A moving story of how work at the Bungsu Hospital was transformed by a simple tool that you can use to help your team.
Read about Visualization and TRANSFORM The way your team works