In Marvel’s popular movie, Guardians of the Galaxy, Peter Quill is trying to come up with a plan to stop the villain and save the day and confesses that he only has 12% of a plan put together. As he engages support from his teammates, they each stand as they commit to the goal. As the final member, Rocket, stands he says “Well now I’m standing. Happy? We’re all standing now. Bunch of jackasses, standing in a circle.”
Yep – it's from the old joke about how many psychologists it takes to change a light bulb.
And the punchline remains the same: One but the light bulb has to *want* to change.
People attend Collaborative Leadership Team’s Certified ScrumMaster® (CSM®) courses hoping to learn to change their company. Or their Development Team members or even their leaders. And they get frustrated to learn it's not possible. These folks waste the learning opportunity hoping to learn to trick or control another person.
The only person that anyone can change is themselves.
Yes – Scrum and Agile approaches mean change. And that starts with every individual involved learning what those changes mean and then making a choice.
Once a group has made the choice to change this only happens by getting together and talking about the best way to do that. And still observe their goals, serve their customers, in the process.
How does this start? In Scrum the Scrum Master is the change agent who works as a neutral facilitator helping the people and the organization to change for the better. A Scrum Master needs people skills, people skills and more people skills! If a Scrum Master is in need of improving people skills, they may need to look outside of the Scrum framework for ideas.
Collaborative Leadership Team partners with psychologist Dr. Harvey Robbins. His book, “The New Why Teams Don’t Work”, has practical advice on identifying our own behavioral style and building plans to work better with others.
This isn't identifying personality types. It doesn’t mean ignoring personalities. It means that personalities are not always revealed in the way we behave. The way we behave with one another affects our performance (or not) as a team and as an organization.
To learn more visit our Ignite Agility podcast and learn from Dr. Harvey Robbins
Check out our upcoming course opportunities here!
If you have been following CLT’s recent blogs, you will see that we are on a crusade to end FAKE SCRUM. Here is a our next example:
We are seeing a trend in our classes and coaching engagements. We walk in “off the street” and immediately pinpoint the people problems. Clients repeatedly ask “How do you know that?” “Who is giving you this information?” They are dumbfounded when we say “Nobody did. We picked up on it right away.” “What is the secret to being a great scrummaster?”
