“If you, as a senior leader, demonstrate vulnerability, it creates real magic in an organization where others can open up and be their authentic self.” – Renee Troughton
Renee defines success for Scrum Masters through deeply human values: integrity, holding her truth, being compassionately authentic, caring, open, honest, listening, and vulnerable. She emphasizes that vulnerability as a senior leader creates transformative magic in organizations, allowing others to bring their authentic selves to work. Drawing on Byron Katie’s “Loving What Is” and Frederick Laloux’s “Reinventing Organizations,” Renee explains that many corporate organizations focus on lower-order values like results and performance, while more autonomous organizations prioritize higher-order values rooted in the heart. When having conversations with people, Renee connects with them as human beings first—not rushing to business if someone is struggling personally. Success means seeing people completely for who they are, not as resources to be changed or leveraged. The foundation for collaboration, empowerment, and autonomy is trust, respect, and safety. Renee emphasizes that without these fundamental values in place, everything else implodes. She demonstrates how vulnerability, active listening, and accepting people where they are creates the fertile ground for successful teams and organizations.
Self-reflection Question: Do you demonstrate vulnerability as a leader, creating space for others to bring their authentic selves to work, or do you hide behind a professional facade that prevents genuine human connection?
Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Themed Retrospectives (Monopoly, Sports, Current Events)
“It gave a freshness to it. And it gave almost like a livelihood or a joyfulness to it as an activity as well.”
Renee recommends themed retrospectives like the Monopoly Retro or sports-themed formats that use current events or cultural references (aka metaphor retrospectives). While working at a consultancy, they would theme retrospectives every week around different topics—football, news events, or various scenarios—using collages of pictures showing different emotions (upset, angry, happy). Team members would identify with feelings and reframe their week within the theme’s context, such as “it was a rough game” or “we didn’t score enough goals.” The brilliance of this approach is covering the same retrospective questions while bringing freshness, creativity, and joyfulness to the activity. These metaphorical formats allow teams to verbalize things that aren’t easily expressible in structured formats, triggering different perspectives and creative thinking. The format stays consistent while feeling completely new, maintaining engagement while avoiding retrospective fatigue.
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 Renee Troughton
Renee is one of the most experienced Agile coaches in the Southern Hemisphere with over two decades of transformation experience across banking, insurance, pharma, and real estate. Since 2002, she’s helped organizations go digital, tackle systemic issues, and deliver value faster. Passionate about cutting bureaucracy, Renee champions a return to humanity at work.
Follow Renee’s work at AgileForest.com, her website as well as her work on the Agile Revolution podcast.
You can link with Renee Troughton on LinkedIn.
Retrospectives, planning sessions, vision workshops, we are continuously helping teams learn about how to collaborate in practice! In this Actionable Agile Tools book, Jeff Campbell shares some of the tools he’s learned over a decade of coaching Agile Teams. The pragmatic coaching book you need, right now! Buy 
Kulsoom is passionate about constructing sustainable, resilient, and high-performing teams, consistently delivering value to customers through the transformative power of Agility. She embodies a leadership style that inspires, empowers, and fosters the growth of her colleagues. Kulsoom enjoys reading and has also dabbled in blogging.
Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! 
Med Marouane Ajraoui enjoys practicing AIKIDO while helping individuals, teams, and organizations embrace the agile mindset. He is from Morocco but has lived in several countries, and he enjoys being a “citizen of the world”. He is the founder of Agile Africa, an NGO for disseminating Agile culture in Africa. He is also the CEO and founder of JediSquad, an international firm that supports developing Eco Agile businesses and meaningful digital products.