nvc Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Elly Griffith-Ward: How to help an overwhelmed team deliver! Flow lessons for Scrum teams

The team Elly was working with had a very large number of items in progress (high WIP). This was also a result of the team being under a lot of pressure to deliver. The team was motivated to deliver, but was also feeling down because of the inability to deliver all they wanted, when they wanted. Elly started to help the team by understanding their context, and then trying to understand where the work was being held up. She started learning Value-Stream-Mapping, a technique that helped identify the bottlenecks, something she had learned about in the book The Goal by Goldratt. Through that research work, Elly found out some options to improve the flow of work for that team. Listen in to learn what those were, and what technique she used to help the team! In this segment, we talk about the concept of Shifting Left, and Extreme Programming.

Featured Book of the Week: Nonviolent Communication by Rosenberger

In Nonviolent Communication by Rosenberger, Elly found a book that helped her as a Scrum Master, but also in other aspects of her life. The book offers a model of communication that tries to focus on resolving conflicts, and helps us become more self-aware of how we communicate with others. In this segment, we also talk about the hand-brain model, and the two thinking/acting systems (System 1 and System 2) that Kahneman describes in the book Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow.

How can Angela (the Agile Coach) quickly build healthy relationships with the teams she’s supposed to help? What were the steps she followed to help the Breeze App team fight off the competition? Find out how Angela helped Naomi and the team go from “behind” to being ahead of Intuition Bank, by focusing on the people! Download the first 4 chapters of the BOOK for FREE while it is in Beta!

About Elly Griffith-Ward

Elly is an Agile Coach at a major e-commerce company. Previously in user research (and a royal food historian). She aims to 1) improve the experience of work through reducing mental load, improving communication and forming strong teams 2) shift the focus from managing the worker to managing the work by focusing on flow and waste.

You can link with Elly Griffith-Ward on LinkedIn and connect with Elly Griffith-Ward on Twitter.

Jem D’jelal on creating the space for Transformation to happen

In this reference filled episode we talk about change, how to involve people in change, the different approaches to management and many other topics.

We also discuss one of the possible skills you can use as a Scrum Master: the energy level you put into the role. Finally, we discuss tips on how to engage with teams and team members so that your role as a Scrum Master is easier and pleasurable.

In this episode we refer to Non-violent communication by Marshall Rosenberg, Theory X and Theory Y of management and David Marquet’s book: Turn the Ship Around!. If you are interested in David Marquet’s work, please check also our interview with him here on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast.

About Jem D’jelal

Jem trained to be a social worker, but ended up dropping out & joining the dark side instead : investment banking 🙂 In a funny way, Jem was led back to his passion – helping people. This happened when he was introduced to Scrum in 2006, and has been a career Scrum Master since. He calls himself “nomadic”, having had almost 30 roles in 10 + years. He does say that he will be searching for a home at some point. Some of Jem’s other passions involve running, a part time mentoring charity for repeating youth offenders in North London & callisthenics.

You can link with Jem D’Jelal on LinkedIn and connect with Jem D’Jelal on Twitter.

Peter Götz shares patterns of successful change processes

Peter has gone through many change processes in his career, but in this episode he shares one specific process that helped him improve his own approach to change management. He shares some of the patterns implemented back then that are still used today by him in his work.

In this Episode we refer to the #NoEstimates movement and #NoEstimates book as well as the the book Non-Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg.

About Peter Götz
Peter is working as a consultant, trainer and coach based in Munich. He started working as a Java software developer in 2001, changed to consulting in 2006 and has been working as software developer, software architect, technical project manager or team lead. He is a Professional Scrum Trainer at scrum.org and supports teams in adopting Scrum since 2008.

You can link with Peter Götz on LinkedIn and connect with Peter Götz on Twitter. And our listeners in Germany can find Peter Götz on Xing.

BONUS: Melissa Lang on using Nonviolent Communication as a method to build stronger teams

Nonviolent communication is a method of a communication process developed by Marshall Rosenberg beginning in the 1960s. It focuses on three aspects of communication: self-empathy (defined as a deep and compassionate awareness of one’s own inner experience), empathy (defined as an understanding of the heart in which we see the beauty in the other person), and honest self-expression (defined as expressing oneself authentically in a way that is likely to inspire compassion in others).

Melissa was made aware of Non-violent communication via the work of Bob Marshall (check out his episode on Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast), and his blog where he published several articles about Nonviolent Communication. Thanks to this work, and some of the Marshall Rosenberg Nonviolent communication videos on YouTube, Melissa got started with NVC. A journey that changed her view of communication and what matters when it comes to building stronger teams.

But how can we, as Scrum Masters benefit from this method?

A simple context where NVC may be useful is when teams and team members want to get and give feedback. NVC can be very useful to phrase our feedback in a way that highlights what we are looking for (our needs being met) without expressing judgement over others (our opinions of them). But that’s only one of the contexts where NVC may be useful. There are many others.

I bet your team has a lot of written communication with stakeholders and within the team. Is that right? Well, then you know that written communication has a lot of potential for misunderstandings and to generate conflicts. How can we avoid that? By using better approaches to communicate. Melissa also explains how we can use NVC ideas to make written communication less conflictuous and more likely to have the impact we hope.

What we need to be able to communicate effectively

NVC is a good method to structure our communication, but before we can use that method we need to understand how we feel. NVC, being a needs/emotions driven communication method requires us to be aware of our own emotions and feelings. So we need to learn about emotions and needs. And especially we need to enlarge our vocabulary about needs and feelings so that we can communicate them in a way that is understandable by others. This is especially important if you are not a native speaker of the language you use at work.

Where should I get started if I want to know more about NVC?

When it comes to getting started with NVC, Melissa has a few recommendations for us. The first is the book by Marshall Rosenberg: Nonviolent communication, A Language of Life, but is also very important to practice every part of the method as well as read and learn about emotions, feelings(PDF) and needs.

In this episode Melissa also shares simple practices you can take into use immediately to help you practice NVC and help your team learn about, and maybe even get started with NVC.

About Melissa Lang

Melissa has worked in many diverse jobs over the last 20 years: ethnomusicologist, cook, IT project manager, agile coach. In all of those jobs, her main focus has been on strengthening team work and facilitating communication. As a dedicated agilist for 10+ years Melissa has worked at a range of companies, from start-up to multi-national corporation. Currently she is coaching teams from Barcelona and Hamburg at Xing AG where she has been employed since December 2011.

You can connect with Melissa Lang on Twitter and link with Melissa Lang on XING or LinkedIn.

If you want to follow Melissa’s writings, be sure to follow her blog over at Medium.

Cliff Hazel asks us to stay curious and never assume you know what others are thinking

Very often we are in situations where we must quickly act to fend off some conflict situation. The natural tendency is to “take charge” based on our observations and conclusions about other people’s intentions. But is that the right approach? Cliff talks about how he learned to stay curious and never assume he knew other people’s intentions. Great advice!
We also mention the book Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker.

About Cliff Hazel

Cliff Hazel is a coach at Spotify who is trying to learn about how to build effective teams, and how we can create the conditions for them to thrive. His main interests are: Complexity and Systems, Visualisation and Information Radiators, Curiosity and Continuous Learning
You can link with Cliff Hazel on LinkedIn, connect with Cliff Hazel on Twitter and catch him in some conference near you.