Our Competition with our Self!

 

Do you know with whom you are competing? First, we are competing with ourselves!! To develop into stronger than what we were yesterday!!Then we do roles, market, and strength-based competitive analysis in the market to obtain inspiration from others. The intention is to develop into better in our self and offers highter.

EGO trapped!!

 You are in EGO trapped when you have below symptom:

• You are overlooking the negative comment.

• Submerged into positive feedback! People can use this

superficial flattery to appeal to your ego and, finally, influence

your decision-making in order to benefit themselves or their

business.

• You love control; you feel wonderful when you exercise this

power

• You know everything and no need to change anything. You are

not welcoming any fresh suggestions.

• You do not walk the talk,

• You always walk with “yes sir” people. You choose to walk with

them as they listen to you and accept you.

• You do not like to receive criticism if someone wants to share

with you You think you have all the answers in the room, and nobody

knows as much as you know

• You demand people follow you

• You lost in touch with the latest happenings and you live in

your own best world

• You love to receive 1000 likes on Facebook, if it less, you feel

sad!

• You are worried about how others will read you! You work for

others to get acknowledged

• You benchmark yourselves with others always

• You are living in the past, carrying past and worry about the

future

• You judge the individuals based on their action

• You communicate with others to impress them

• You take yourself seriously

• You need individuals to be around yourself to acknowledge

your contribution

• You want to win at any cost and always right

Coaching & Mentoring tips:

As Mentee or coachee, I adhere to these below points
A) As a Coachee, I understand the purpose of our meeting
B) As a Coachee, I understand what I am going to discuss
C) As a Coachee, I am prepared and share all the challenges and progress I am making
D) As a Coachee, we discuss together to measure the progress
E) As a Coachee, I devote my times to demonstrate dedication and commitment
F) As a Coachee, I look for feedback which can help me to experiment, study and reflect
G) As a Coachee, I openly discuss what is working and what is not working and we agree to course correct
H) As a Coachee, we identify the development areas and work upon on those
I) As a Coachee, I comment about the openness, a trust created in our discussion
J) As a Coachee, I share my feedback about my coach/mentor
K) As a Coachee, I ensure I cancel the meeting well ahead and the same action admitted from the Coach/mentor side
L) As a Coachee, I ensure our relationship maintained and we work together to improve the same

Scrum Masters Skills

 

Remarks from Ruchi

 

Great Achievement

 

Book Comment

 

Book Comment

 

Book Comments

 

Book Comment from Balaji

 

How to Support the Underperformance in a team?

Look for the underperformance and highlight those in the team discussion

Underperformance is when a staff member is performing their works below the recommended level as demanded.

Underperformance for a long time results in job losses and business impact. It reduces team motivation and causes attrition.

When we know the team is underperforming

a) When Goals and OKR are not meeting fully, as a whole team, and team is not able to meet our overall goal and OKRs either monthly or quarterly.

All team members should be able to feel for that. In a team when someone says that individuals are doing great but we are not able to meet the team goal, that is a not good signal.

b) Communication line has crumbled. In the team, several communication channels are not working properly. The team meetings, mail communication, other message channels are not operated for numerous projects, team discussions. As a result of that many issues, conflicts, project challenges remain undressed and they are spreading into major impediments.

c) Conflict and Silos among team members: Team members are arguing on many issues. Conflicts among team members are not diminishing. Silos or lobbying among team members growing in unsatisfactory performance as a whole team.

d) External challenges: The market pressure, technological changes causing many issues in the employment. There is a blame game within the team causing negative ambient at the team dynamics.

e) Leadership: From all levels, leadership can play a significant enabler to cause of underperformance. Leadership can engage, motivate the team, and surmount many internal challenges. If leaders are not earnestly seeking all the challenges and not helping the team to surmount those, team performance gets worse.

f) Competencies and Capabilities: Team capability and competencies play a crucial reason in poor performance. When a team is not adequate to deal with many technical or other challenges, there is fear and the blame game appears. Leadership and team members require to deliberately work on those capabilities gaps and resolve such challenges with aggressive action.

g) Team Ambiance: There is too much pressure on deliverables, the quality of the work is not encouraging for the team members, the motivation in the team environment is not advocated, there is a worry in the team environment, etc can lead to team members to underperform.

h) Not enough employee connect with Manager or feedback mechanism is missing: The lifeline of the team and the manager is building bond and people connection within team. When such activities reduced over all performance degrades.

i) Employee career progression is not encouraging: Everyone wants to present their best when they can identify a promising career ahead in the journey. They go beyond their defined boundary when they can associate with the big future. Once an organization or team leader not able to create such a journey path, the resultant effect could be manifested in the performance.

As a coach let us watch out for all these phenomena at the team level and work to build a high-performance team.

Scrum Master as a Servant Leader

300 Copies sold in 12 months

 

Thanks to all my readers, every day one copy of "The Scrum Master Guidebook" is able to sell. So far in one year of existence of this book, 300 copies have been sold!! Gratitude to all my well-wisher colleagues for making this book famous. Whoever is reading this book, please compose a few words about this book on Amazon. Help me to help the Scrum Masters to perform outstandingly at their career endeavor.

Self-compassion? How to expand?

Any high-performance team includes individuals who are well mature and they can take care of themselves adequately, as well as others.


What is Self-compassion?
It is the capability to change, master, acceptance, and love inward.

Life sometimes can be taxing. Most of us are crazy busy, have demanding activities, or are too exhausted with technology to establish a time for ourselves.

Self Compassion allows us to care for the wholeness of who we are, in every condition, by calling the wholeness of our emotions.

We have to design self-compassion for our own growth, which is more relevant for us.

Self-compassion is significant in enhancing our well-being and quality of development.

The Buddhist understanding of compassion means offering patience, kindness, and nonjudgmental understanding to others as well as oneself.

Let us assess which areas of our life require further attention and self-care. And review our life repeatedly. As our situation evolves, our self-care needs are prone to shift too.
Painful feelings are, by their very nature, temporary. They will weaken over time as long as we don’t prolong or amplify them through resistance or avoidance. The only way to eventually free ourselves from debilitating pain, therefore, is to be with it as it is. The only way out is through. — Kristin Neff

The question which every team member can identify to boost self-compassion.

Below are some points every team member should practice or the coach should educate the team members to work out such exercises.
What are the three greatest strengths and why I am grateful for them?
List of my three greatest challenges and what can I learn from them.
What would I do today if I had all the confidence in the world?
What does success mean to Me?
What I would say to a good friend if he or she was experiencing a difficult or stressful situation. Then, when I find myself in this kind of situation, direct these compassionate responses toward Myself.
In which past conditions in my life I have been an emperor?
What are my favorite confidence-boosting songs that help me to make it through my morning routine on an arduous day?
What makes my heart sing?
What is a new habit I can take up in encouraging me to feel more joy or calm in my way of life?
If I loved myself absolutely, how would I treat myself every day?
Do I remind myself that failing to make something happen is part of being human?
Am I Minimizing people-pleasing? Unless that’s what I really want to do. we do not have any responsibility to please anyone.
Do I have healthy ways to transform my emotions?

Lending a hand not only boosts mental health but may also lead to a longer life. Am I helping others?

Let us Write down at least ten things that make me feel like I am a worthy person.

Let us Document the great things people say about you to read later.

Let us Do one thing today just because it makes you happy

Let us Think about what I am good at, and find an opportunity for it today.
Self-compassion is simply giving the same kindness to ourselves that we would give to others. — Christopher Germer

Most of the time when pressure is high at the project team chances are there we may be stressed out and we may not be at our best at the team level. Team performance starts decaying when more such team members are not in their right mental state.

With the help of a team coach, we have to identify to strengthen our mental strength and be at our best performance.
It’s like a mother, when the baby is crying, she picks up the baby and she holds the baby tenderly in her arms. Your pain, your anxiety is your baby. You have to take care of it. You have to go back to yourself, to recognize the suffering in you, embrace the suffering, and you get a relief. — Thich Nhat Hanh

25% off on all these books ....

 

Please avail of the 25% off feature on these books. 

1. We can Lead, available here

https://notionpress.com/read/we-can-lead

2. The Scrum Master Guidebook, available here

https://notionpress.com/read/the-scrum-master-guidebook

3. The Agilst's Guidebook, available here

https://www.zorbabooks.com/store/technical/the-agilists-guidebook-a-reference-for-agile-transformation/

Please know more about these books before you decide to buy...

here

https://pataryguidebooks.blogspot.com/

#agiletransformation #agilecoach #scrummasters #scrummaster #agilecoaching #agileprojectmanagement #scrumteam #changeagents #leadershipdevelopment #leadershipcoaching

Social Loafing: Killer traits for a High-Performance team

I am certain all of us have come across such challenges in a team context, named Social Loafing.

Social loafing is the phenomenon of an individual exerting less effort to accomplish a goal when they function in a group than when working alone.

I am sure during your coaching engagement you might have come across such a condition.
In 1913, Max Ringelmann, a French agricultural engineer, conducted what many believe was the first recorded social psychology experiment.

He carefully measured how much force people exerted when they pulled a rope alone, and when they pulled it with up to thirteen additional people.

He conducted additional studies in the lab and in the field and summarized all these results together.

His results were mind-boggling.

Applying his findings back to the rope experiment, Ringelmann found that when a person was added to the rope, everyone pulled with less strength.

When two people were on the line, they each pulled with 93 percent of the force of a person working alone.

Three people each pulled with 85 percent of the force, and so on.

By the time eight people joined the rope, they were each pulling with half the force of a single person.

As a result, a team of eight pulled the rope with no more total force than a team of seven.

In a set of simple rope pulling experiments he discovered that, in what is now known as the Ringelmann Effect, people’s efforts quickly diminish as team size increases.

According to Ringelmann (1913), groups fail to reach their full potential because various interpersonal processes detract from the group’s overall proficiency.

Namely, two distinct processes have been identified as potential sources for the reduced productivity of groups: loss of motivation and coordination problems.

How do we come out from this Social loafing problem?

Let us concentrate on a few issues.

The Sucker Effect: When individuals start to feel that others are slacking off, they try not to get stuck “holding the bag” themselves. In the attempt to escape becoming the “sucker,” overall group output goes down. What do we do about this issue?

Let us connect with all the individuals and try to understand why they are slacking? this could be a personality issue, skill issue, communication barriers, etc challenges.

As a coach, we need to single out such individuals and fix such issues.

Missing accountability, Every team member has to hold each other accountable. Once they recognize that they have to contribute, they will less likely miss their own accountability issues. This is generally practiced to explain the bystander effect, or the tendency to be less likely to help a person in need when others are present.

Some time Social loafing happens when the team does not have stretched goals identified for themselves. There should be a clear SMART goal identified for each team member. Every team member should have a clear distinct goal identified for themselves. And at a certain regular interval, we should check how well those goals are happening.

Team size also matters, more team members do not necessarily mean faster work. More team members more social loafing will be noticeable. 

Team agreement, there should be clear team rules and an agreement needs to be written. Team members only write those rules and maintain those. Team members need to modify those rules whenever it is requisite, and they should abide by those rules. An exception could be there, but the majority of the time team should follow those. As a coach, look for these team agreements and guide the team whenever we find the team is not following the written rules.

Peer Review helps most of the time. The team can set the rule of the team agreed that some of their team members will review artifacts produced by other team members and improve those.

Need to enhance Team cohesion. Team cohesion occurs when a group of individuals feels connected and driven to achieve a common goal. They share values, goals, and processes.

One of the best ways to get everyone involved is to make sure that they feel as though the Manager or leader values their contribution. When they believe the benefits they bring to the table are key to the success of the team, they will be more likely to play an active role.

There should be a team performance reward system also there should High performers within the teams should be recognized and rewarded to alleviate this effort.

Head First Or Heart First Individuals?

Why do we desire a harmony of Head First and Heart First Individuals in a high-performance team?

Are you a Head First - Rationally Driven, or Heart First - Emotionally driven Individuals?

How about the same percentage on the team? How effectively these distributions are in place?

Both have their strengths, both have their challenges.

A Head First team member can think more logically and in a circumstance when Emotion takes over those head first individuals can support the emotionally loaded Individual to aid them through logically thinking.

“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I would spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes about the solution,” Einstein once said.

Heart First Individuals, however, are more prone to produce instant decisions based on their intuition and feel happier with that call in the long run. The Heart First individuals expressed themselves as ‘distressed’ and ‘nervous’ when encountered with frequent stress. To “have a heart” indicates higher degrees of caring and empathy.

"One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong. Only through the bringing together of head and heart-intelligence and goodness-shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

“People who said their ‘self’ was located in their heart (about half the respondents) were more likely to be female, and ‘heart-locators’ of either sex were more likely to rely on their emotions when making hypothetical moral decisions, such as how to respond to a sadistic prison guard who says he will kill your son and another prisoner unless you kill your own son,” explains Dr. Christian Jarrett of the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest.

Head First Individuals placed higher importance on autonomy, and Heart First Individuals valued belonging to social groups.

The Head First Individuals can plunge into analysis paralysis, where they keep weighing facts and collecting ever more intelligence in an endeavor to generate the perfect decision, leading to confusion, anxiety, indecisiveness, and self-criticism, which in turn can impact productivity and performance.

The Heart First Individuals are more creative as they are associated with emotions. They can relate smoothly with others through emotions. Sometimes when emotions are heavily laden, these individuals are slow down by the emotions. That time Head First individuals can protect them!

How to stabilize the same in the team?

I have examined some teams that are frequently dominated by the substantial with heart Individuals and frequently few Head First Individuals will influence the team with their rational analyzing capabilities.

As a whole team, let us watch out and practice to reach an intermediate ground.

If we as a team majority are Head First individual, practice for a week just listening to our Heart first team members; slowing down and asking ourselves how we feel several times a day and then choosing the risk of acting on those feelings. If we are higher of a heart First Individuals, work out for a week tackling that assignment that we don’t feel like working out to build up our willpower and discipline. Show empathy but deliberately set boundaries on how much we can/will support someone who’s battling.

Most of the time before the PI planning, you might have observed which backlog items will go into the PI, though it is logical and rational. But sometimes, these decision making also is driven by intuition, emotions and based on empathy.

" My heart says one thing. My head says another. Very hard to get your heart and head together in life." - Woody Allen

Watch out for such instances and coach the team to balance these traits.

Best Selling Scrum Master Book

 @07th November 2020, If you google search these words, “Best Selling Scrum Master Books”, you will discover “The Scrum Master Guidebook”, specified!! thanks to all my fellow companions to promote and popularize this book to reach this level. Thanks for all your encouragement! Please keep recommending this book to your associate Agilist’s colleagues...It illustrates this book has many wellwishers….

#scrummasters #scrumteam #scrumteams #scrumtraining #agilecoach #agilecoaching

The Guidebooks

Foster Team Creativity?

Every team would prefer to be the finest in developing many creative solutions.

How can we assure a team to improve creativity skills?

How can to encourage the team members to work out some actions which will empower them to raise creative skills and work out the same to come out with different solutions?

The business has only two basic functions — marketing and innovation. —Peter Drucker

For innovation to thrive, organizations must establish an environment that fosters creativity; bringing together multi-talented groups of people who work in close collaboration together — exchanging knowledge, ideas and shaping the direction of the future. —Linda Naiman

As we all perceive, creativity is about bringing out unique ideas and solutions for a unique problem.

The team ambient plays an absolutely critical role to establish innovative solutions that come from the team.

Leadership style also performs a substantial role.

Organizational culture plays pivotal roles. Can we figure out what is the current state of all those and take actions?

Every team can not remain on prior success. They require to continually remake themselves to remain relevant in today’s business. What should we do as a team?

All the members can investigate how frequently they are contributing to that growth path by offering new propositions and solutions.

Leadership needs to challenge each team member to challenge each other about innovation speed. It has observed that when we have team members who always agree with their bosses blindly, it is not a perfect habitat for innovation. “Yes Sir” team members are not always preferable for the innovating team.

The skills and competency of the team members play a considerable role in innovation. As a team can we find if we are learning, fresh knowledge gain is taking place? Do we have the appropriate set of team members? The collective intelligence serves the team to brainstorm and come out with fresh ways of generating solution for a definite problem.

By considering at the last six-month trend of ideation or fresh ways of working will explain if we have enough innovation is taking place in a team. In the close examination, we can find out where ideations are stuck, why the flow of innovations is not advancing? What actions as a team we can choose to strengthen this idea boosting drive?

Leaders can inspire team members for a bigger purpose. With that drive, it will clear up the motivation issue. Leaders also can throw open challenges to have conversations, debates, constructive criticism, and healthy conflict. In a process, new views and ideas will surface.

The question is how much time, in a day or in a week, we go to such a condition? Most of the time, we are terrified to go out of the prescribed task and boundary. Organizational culture sometimes does not inspire to distort the flow of operation. We all want to perform in safe known boundaries. Maybe for fear of failure & Crtisim or punishment etc.

Innovation challenges among team members will embolden them to crush some of the silos in mind. Such an initiative will motivate the team members to consider variously, come out of the monotony and stretch for something bigger accomplishments. In a process, we will be capable to collaborate and exercise our skills muscle and pick up something new.

“I believe the real difference between success and failure in a corporation can very often be traced to the question of how well the organization brings out the great energies and talents of its people.” Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Former IBM Chief Executive.

Thank God It is a Friday innovation hour!!! Team members can consider Friday is their period for innovation! where they are free for certain hours, do fly like birds, roam like wild animals in the wildlife sanctuaries. No barrier, no boundary and do whatever their passion drives them to do. Come back and demonstrate what different ideas they are bringing.

One of the best problem-solving technique is Design thinking, this approach helped a lot of resolves many complex problems as a team. More discussion, open discussion with visuals helps the structurally to think about a problem. Demonstrate the prototype to fetch more feedback. Run the same model several rounds with new innovative ways. As a leader or team member, we need to explore the power of design thinking to come out with better product and solutions.

“Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.” — George Kneller

The psychological safety and trust is the key driver in a team to experiment something new easily. The free flow open communication helps the team to view where we are heading, why we are not so successful in our approach. What should we try differently? all these approaches enable team members to think differently. These are the factors that otherwise constraints team members to come out with new ideas.

Let us not criticize whenever new ideas come. Let us look for the opportunity to explore and talk about those ideas. As a part of building a better team environment let us ensure all of us are exchanging, challenging each other to create and refine any ideas. It will take time for the team to reach such a state. It needs rehearsal and good trusting and bonding among team members. Sometime there will be team members who do not like to do open discussion. Thye tries to compete and create disturbance in the team setup. As leaders, they need to watch out for such team members.

A learning organization, To improve creativity in a team environment, leaders need to create many platforms where team members are continuously learning by sharing. We need to learn from others when I as team members share some of my new discovery, I feel proud of the organization to acknowledge in special setup. The same is true for every team member. There should be an inspiration for sharing, appreciation for sharing, acknowledgment of learning for failure.

Celebration whenever a mini-milestone has been achieved by the team members. The positive optimistic environment fires more innovation to come. One person who can drive such an event can track such a milestone of achievement, a kind of innovation in charge person. That person can mentor and coach the team members to improve & achieve such innovation milestones.

Look for the opportunity to become better. This is also one of the best techniques to continually refine our intentions, what can we do to make our existing ways of thinking further and better. This approach facilitates the team to challenges in many possible to come out with new approaches and solutions. Challenge each other from different elements to come out with unique proposals.

Watch out for the toxic employees. Find them, counsel them, and coach them to support the team. If they are not able to collaborate, communicate with them. The creativity will not be able to flourish when the team has such toxic employees. Ensure there us fun in the team, and all the team members are able to enjoy that fun-filled ambient. Toxic and negative people destroy the fun and flow of the team. Ensure that within a team, every team members secrete happy hormones! Serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins are famously happy hormones that promote positive feelings like happiness, enjoy and fun with better collaboration.

When team members feel good, they will voluntarily contribute. Innovation has to be aroused from inside it can not be commanded. People can go beyond their defined path when they are creative.

As a leader, we have to fire the curiosity among team members. Inspire them to resolve big problems. Influence them to take ownership.