psychology Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Pratik Dahule: Helping teams define their purpose, a step towards Scrum Master success

Pratik suggests that, for us to achieve success in our role as Scrum Masters, we must focus on a single purpose. As Scrum Masters, we can help the teams we work with understand that, and define their own purpose. Pratik also suggests a few questions that we can use to help understand and define that purpose for the team.

In this segment we refer to Vince Lombardi, an American Football coach, and the lessons we can take from his approach to the game.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Exercises to improve the team’s emotional intelligence

In this segment, we start by talking about Emotional Intelligence, as one of the skills that Scrum Masters must bring to the Agile Retrospectives they host, but also help their teams understand. We discuss the Hot Air Balloon retrospective format and the Peaks and Valleys Timeline exercise using the Happiness gradient.

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 Pratik Dahule

Pratik is an Agile Project Manager and Agile enthusiast working in the USA. He leads teams and creates a culture of lifelong learning, constant collaboration and continuous improvement. Pratik has 12 years of experience and is passionate about helping teams in their agile transformation. Outside of work, he has a blogging site ClassactLifestyle.com where he shares insights on books and exotic places to travel.

You can link with Pratik Dahule on LinkedIn.

Daniel Lutz: Psychological safety for Agile teams, a sign of Scrum Master success

Psychological Safety (see these episodes for details) is one of the key aspects that Daniel looks for in a team, and also a focus of his work as a Scrum Master. He shares with us some of the signs that indicate the presence, or absence of psychological safety, and recommends we have a retrospective question focused on psychological safety.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: A format for quick decision making, and one for new teams

Daniel shares with us why the Agile Retrospectives are the most power tool we have in any transformation or change process we might be involved in. He shares with us 2 different types of retrospective formats. One that is more adequate for teams that are under time pressure and need to get quickly to actions, and improvements, and one for teams that are maybe at a crossroads in their forming process, or are just about to get started. For teams that need to get to quick actions, Daniel recommends the Start, Stop, Continue format or the 1-2-4-all Liberating Structure (see these episodes for more) as these help silent people speak up and get to actions quickly. And for teams that are at a crossroads, or starting their team journey, he recommends the Sailboat Retrospective.

About Daniel Lutz

Daniel is an organizational agile coach, working full time at a leading European Energy company, scaling agile with around 30 agile teams. After years in Marketing departments, he realized how much more impact he can have as a Scrum Master by empowering people and building cross-functional teams. He also works part-time as a freelance coach and business consultant helping clients on building high performing teams.

You can link with Daniel Lutz on LinkedIn and connect with Daniel Lutz on Twitter.

BONUS: The psychology of great teams with Christian Heidemeyer

The myth of Psychological Safety and the contrasting views on motivation

Right at the start of this episode, we talk about the study from Goole that originated the idea that you had to establish Psychological Safety for teams to have a chance to succeed. Even if psychological safety certainly plays a role, Christian shares with us why we should be skeptical about the study that originated the myth. This study was conducted by Google, exclusively with Google teams. Christian shares other theories with us that go beyond the fuzzy definition of psychological safety, and can help us analyze our team, and their work to help them reach a high level of performance.

In this segment, we refer to Self-determination theory, which focuses on what drives our intrinsic motivation and can lead to a high level of performance in any task.

Continue reading BONUS: The psychology of great teams with Christian Heidemeyer

Bob Marshall on Empathy, NVC, and other approaches to help develop organizations

In this very special episode we talk with Bob Marshall, aka Flowchainsensei on twitter. We discuss some of his outstanding work:
The Marshall model, where Bob Marshall explores the different types of mindsets and their influence on the effectiveness of organizations.

Simply put, the Model explains how the effectiveness of any knowledge-work organisation is a direct function of the kind of mindset shared collectively by all the folks working in the organisation – managers, executives and employees, all. – Bob Marshall

The Anti-matter principle, where Bob explores a single, overarching principle that could guide the actions of those that take Agile seriously.

“Attend to folks’ needs.” — Anti-matter principle

Empathy as a key skill for Scrum Masters

We also discuss one of the key skills for Scrum Masters: Empathy. How to develop it, and what resources are available for those that want to grow their ability to experience empathy.
We mention resources such as videos by Marshall Rosenberg and Carl Rogers.

The Story of the Anti-matter principle

If you are familiar with the anti-matter principle, you have probably wondered where the idea came from. Bob explains the organizational setting that led him to develop what he later called the anti-matter principle. In this section we also discuss the Theory X and Theory Y contrasting theories of management, developed by Douglas McGregor in his famous book: The Human Side of the Enterprise.

A special attention is given in our conversation to the impact of Extrinsic Motivators on the degrading of organizational performance over time. A must listen, if you ask me 🙂

Enjoy this first special episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast.

About Bob Marshall

Bob Marshall has been at the forefront of Digital Business for more than twenty years.
Throughout, he has consistently inspired people to improve their effectiveness – along with the effectiveness of their teams and organisations. He spent three years as founder and CEO of Familiar, Europe’s UK’s first one hundred percent Agile software house and digital consultancy start-up, serving major Digital Business clients in Telecoms, Finance, Travel, Media, and eBusiness.
He has for the past fifteen years headed Falling Blossoms – a Digital Business Consultancy advising organisations how best to go about applying Digital to achieving their business objectives.

He is also the co-founder of the Rightshifting movement, and the creator of the Marshall Model (Dreyfus for the organisation), as well as Prod•gnosis, Emotioneering and FlowChain; the enterprise-wide approach to developing software-intensive products and services.

He has also pioneered the application of psychology and psychotherapy techniques to Digital Business and Digital Business Transformation.

You can find Bob Marshall on Twitter, and link with Bob Marshall on Linkedin.
You can read his regular postings on the Flowchainsensei blog.