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Perhaps You’ve heard a lot of recipes, methods of giving a good feedback. Which of them it is the best? Why? The major thing what I wanted to tell You is that it doesn’t matter which “recipe” You use provided that You are :

 

• • • not honest in it;
    • not open to analyze yourself.

 

We often hear that feedback is very important, don’t we? We have two major words in that quote: “feedback” and “important”. Let’s start with the first one:

A receiver of the feedback perceives it as an energy transfer which can be positive or negative. In spite of the negative energy which feedback might contain, it gives us the energy to develop ourselves.

What is NOT feedback: 

• • • Commenting without commitment: someone who neither participates nor contributes is definitely not authorized to share opinions and claim them credible;
    • Biased opinions based not on objective reasoning but own strong beliefs (“Just Because”) and personal experience.

Why is feedback important? 

For me it gives benefits for both sides. Initially negative feedback points out a room for improvement, whereas when feedback turns positive that’s extremely motivating!  In my case a few good words about my work always make a huge difference. 

Advantages of giving feedback:

• • • Motivating;  
    • Showing  a perspective of people  we interact with;
    • Giving  a space to develop ourselves and our relations.

Of course these advantages are in place  when feedback is said in a good way. How to give good feedback? I will focus on it in the next article. Stay curious!

I am aware of the benefits of giving feedback but still it’s hard for me to give it. Why?  I think that it depends on the situation and the personalities involved.  However, the major reasons can be:

• • • The fear of reaction.

It is normal to care about relationships. However, not saying our opinion does not protect us against judgments and lack of acceptance. So, we have nothing to lose.

• • • The necessity of preparation.

In order to  give good feedback we need to prepare for it. No preparation – no goal achieved, or, even worse,  the wrong goal achieved. If you prepare too much and too long the context might change and feedback won’t be needed any more.

• • • Lots of requirements to fulfil in order to give good feedback.

Preparation needs time and commitment. If giving feedback is not your prioritate this factors will probably make it hard to give.

• • • Thinking that words you are going to say are obvious, shallow and primitive.

The internal critic does not let us appreciate our own little insights;

• • • Feeling vulnerable while referring to your own experience.

However, this is the only way to be perceived as honest people. If you are not open while giving feedback, why should people trust you?

When I’m looking at this list I can say that most of the points make giving feedback hard for me. Especially the point about fear – it makes me depreciate my positive thoughts about others quite often. And what about You?

Before I became a Scrum Master I made a long journey from a young, frightened software developer to a conscious team player. When I started my software development career I was focused on doing my work the best I can . Back then that was supposed to mean finding a resolution on my own and subsequently writing a piece of code. My team  developed one specified product. We worked in something similar to the Kanban model. One day we decided to add daily standups to our work. I remember that it was a very stressful situation for me. I was terrified because of the fact that I was supposed to tell my colleagues about my accomplishments and problems every day.  I was afraid of a lack of acceptance by colleagues, I was employed in a specified position and in my opinion, I had to know all the answers. So admitting that I have a problem with something was very hard for me. I had been often  unconsciously  choosing the path to escape from my fear during daily standups. Some of the possible ways out were:

 

– Taking too many tasks. Multitasking on purpose was supposed to hide and justify understandable problems, but indeed I was kidding myself and telling white lies to my colleagues.

 

– Even when foreseeing a problem in the task, I used to postpone claiming it until accomplishing all the understandable things. It was very comfortable for me because I had an illusion that I have done so much work in the task…. Why illusion?
Because a problem which was postponed can have an impact on the whole task. If that were so, the whole time devoted to the issue could be wasted. So this strategy was very risky….

 

Why was I acting in such a way? As a new member in the team, I didn’t feel safe. It is a natural pattern. If you don’t know people very well, it’s hard to ask for help, it’s hard to offer an idea. Especially, when You are  afraid that it might be interpreted as “stupid” idea. You need a psychological safety to do that.

How can we achieve psychological safety?

 

First of all, we need time.  But time is not a magic wand.

 

At the beginning of my way, I got a lot of support from my manager. He didn’t tell me how to do my work, but instead he gave me space to find solutions. He was also open to new initiatives. I remember that I had a couple of ideas about improving the process: the new workflow, scripts which show some more information about the team performance. My manager gave me space and trust to make those initiatives come true. He didn’t pretend he knew everything. In addition, he knew what my motivators were and he used that knowledge  to give me more power. His attitude makes me more confident.

 

But it’s not only the leader’s attitude that has an impact on our safety. We work with the other colleagues and relations with them are also important.

 

When I arrived at my team I was “closed in the box”. Moreover, it was my unconscious choice. I was focused on getting only my task done, I said I was frightened to get the feedback about my work from others. When we started making daily standups I slowly realized that nothing bad has happened to me when I was talking about blockades in tasks. Moreover, the problems were resolved faster. And that was the  point! When I saw that this causes that work is going faster I changed my focus in order to get out of the  box.

 

Before each daily standup I was thinking about the benefits which  my team and I would get from my open attitude. That helps me to talk about my obstacles, ask some questions. And this is the first step to  shape a team  out of the  group of people: firstly, individuals should change their focus from “me” to “us”. For me, the helpful thing in this was thinking about the benefits to the product. Now I think  that  the size of the group also has a big impact on that. At that time our team contained twelve members. Afterward we were divided into three teams. In my five-people team I observed that focusing on “us” was easier than in a team consisting of twelve members.

 

This focus  pushed me to start being curious about my teammates. I started  going for coffee with my colleagues more often, asking questions about different topics, not only work-related, I started observing their reactions. Building relations, getting to know them better – that is the second key. When we know what can block my colleague I can support him not only with problems in the task but also support in talking about the problem. When I have the relations with my teammates built, it’s easier to ask a question, it’s easier to say that something is unclear. The unbound  collaboration! I can say that in the best time of my software developer career I was feeling really safe in  my 5 person team. We were focused on developing one product, we knew each other, our obstacles and behaviours  well and we were curious about each other’s work!

 

Based on my experience, I can say that there are a few things that must be there in order  to change group to a team:

 

– Manager gives support. Leaders are crystal clear that they do not have the answers and give the space for choosing the resolutions.

 

– Teammates are aware of benefits brought by the mindset like “us” instead of “me”.

 

– Everybody is to some extent curious about each other.  Our  initial judgements can be a barrier on our way to knowing. Don’t let them stop us from knowing our teammates.

 

– Psychological safety is there . If we don’t know people very well it is hard to ask for help or offer an idea.

 

It’s hard to grow as a team if:

 

– The team is huge. If there are more than 9 members, then there are too many  connections between the people. We can not get to know each other fast, it’s getting much harder to gain the psychological safety. There is a risk of subgroups emerged. Every team player thinks not as an independent individual equally linked with every other independent individual within the team. Just the opposite, he or she  cares about the members of the microteam versus another microteam. People focus not on the  major struggle for achieving the goal, but rather on the internal struggle for power.

 

– The crew is not stable. If members of the team are changing frequently, it’s logically understood that psychological safety will be violated. Additionally,  the competences and knowledge about products are changing. Team may experience a decrease in their development.

 

– Team develops  a few products. Switching context between different fields is a waste of time. Also, deep knowledge about one of the products is not achievable.  That has an impact on product quality.

 

– Team members are sure that they know everything. If we are  convinced that our resolution is the only right idea, then we are not open to check other roads. On the other hand, if we are frightened that our lack of knowledge will be criticized, it’s a natural outcome that  we won’t ask questions, we will waste time to find answers by ourselves despite the fact that the other team members  might know the answer.

 

Creating a great team is a process. To do so, the environment in which the team grows should be team-friendly (leaders, stable team, focus on one product). If we give people a supporting environment and show the benefits of the open mindset, they will start collaborating. And what is the meaning of collaboration? I can describe it by two letters: WE.

 

Facilitating meetings online is very energy-consuming for a Scrum Master. When you don’t see people, you don’t see their non-verbal communication, so both questions and answers are being transferred via one single channel. You can’t ask a question face to face and elicit an immediate and often unconventional answer right away. Lack of live communication not only removes the chemistry from the relationship, people can’t feel each other anymore. Merely verbal online interaction does not reflect how people actually feel, think and act, which makes Scrum Master blindfolded but still forced the same challenges as before. Inevitably, something crucial might be overseen. What are we supposed to do in order to not throw the baby out with the bathwater while conducting a never-ending optimization and organizing the remote work?

First of all, keeping in mind that challenges are still to be faced, objectives to be achieved, expectations to be met does not only frighten but also mobilizes.

Questions

There are the questions Scrum Masters ask regardless of war and peace, life or death:

How do you (as a team) deal with the problem?
Question switch the team’s focus to finding the resolution. By asking a team about what they will do and how we show our colleagues: the resolution fully depends on their decisions. Therefore employee fellows feel involved in resolving a problem. Also, this question redirects responsibility for coming up with a resolution to the whole team, not merely to a single team member. 
When can we ask this question?
Whenever any problem is present and we don’t see any reaction for it from the side of team members.  Being a scrum master, in such a situation I can suspiciously anticipate that people don’t feel any commitment or maybe don’t have enough courage to deal with an issue. When I ask this kind of question I redirect responsibility to the team – that can help encourage single members.

 

Is the sprint goal endangered?
The question is focused on a very important thing, the goal of the sprint. I ask it when I suspect that work in sprint is going the wrong way and I want to verify it with the team. What’s means that the sprint goal is going to the wrong way? It can be many things, for example, when:

 

– I see that testers are waiting for work because many issues related to sprint goals are stuck in “to review column” and nobody seems to notice and care.

 

– I realize that a developer has caught three important tasks and tries to conduct all of them parallelly while justifying it the following kinds of “rock-solid” reasoning: 

 

“They are bonded”, “they are relevant”, “these tasks are supposed to be done by one person, preferably at the same time”. The Scrum Master is ruminating: “What about wasting time multitasking?! Our brain in that mode is incapable of working efficiently”, “What personal obstacles are hidden behind behavioral patterns?”, “Are the tasks specified in the wrong way?”.

 

“In the 1st task, I am waiting for the response, in the 2nd I wait for task X because without it I cannot proceed to the next step, and in the 3rd I am waiting for the network connection” – As a Scrum Master, I thereby ask myself: “Waiting, waiting, waiting… it is the one of 7 main wastes in software development. Perhaps, we should take a look at it and consider how to prevent such a waste of time?  ”.

 

The problems mentioned above have not disappeared with nowadays, while we live in the uncertainty of quarantine and work in the turbulence of remote work.

However, in every problem, there is an opportunity. Scrum Master is destined to spread the joy and share the enthusiasm. Nevertheless, in order to reignite the passion in the hearts of fellow employees, it is sometimes useful to get some privacy, detach oneself from the emotional flow in the team and see the big picture. 

 

Tools

 

No challenge is too big and a quarantine might give you new skills of empowering teams using the following tools:

 

1. Jamboard on Gmail with connection via Google Hangouts allows us to perform Team Estimation Game in a similar way as in the office. 

 

2. Funretro.io gives a chance to imitate the board with sticky notes in order to manage a retrospective. However, the good news is that those cards can be hidden until the insights from all the team members are received. Also, there is an option to hide voting. What for? Fully anonymous and subsequently no one is influenced by the opinions of other people. Option of hiding has also inspired me to use Funretro.io for the estimation process. 

3. Google Docs can be used for retrospective to get insights from team members. Alternatively, during sprint refinement or sprint planning. I usually write an agenda for a retrospective on Google Docs. When the meeting starts I share my screen and introduce the plan of meeting. 

 

4. If you have an empty wall in your room you can use electrostatic foil on it to make notes or visualization during your meeting and share the camera view with participants. Visualization helps us to understand spoken words faster. At this point it’s necessary to flip your camera view. Otherwise people will see your drawings / letters like in a mirror which makes it hard to understand. Why should one person be resposible for making notes? Making notes is not the purpose of the meeting. If everyone will be focused on making notes then the concentration on a goal will be violated. When one person is making and sharing the notes, it’s good point to check if we are on the same page. It’s especially important at times when there is a lack of full contact. 

 

Relations

 

However, the team spirit is likewise not to be forgotten. During the isolation people don’t have the same level of contact with the teammates as they had in the office. How can we deal with it? How can we maintain relations on the same level? As a Scrum Master I try to bond people together in different ways:

 

– I encourage fellows to show their camera view on any meetings;

 

– I propose a team to work in a virtual room. I try to create the whole day hangouts meeting in the Google Calendar which serves as a room in the office. Team members can get closer when they share voice/video. Applying this idea can cause that questions/ problems will be resolved faster.
Why?

 

One of 12 Agile principles says that:

“The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.” 

 

Why do I agree with it? I believe that face to face communication establishes more trust than any other means of communication. Dialog via text channels (emails, slack, etc.) lacks emotions. We don’t see what is the non-verbal reaction for our words. We lose real contact which builds trust. Also, spoken communication is more efficient because there is a lower likelihood of misunderstandings or misinterpreting.

 

– I propose a coffee meeting at the same time every day. Given that we were doing it at the office, why can’t we keep up with it virtually? At this meeting we can chat about everything. We can use it to gain a better knowledge of each other’s personalities, interests, and family. Everyone is in a place when they live so this is the occasion to share more pieces of our lives with teammates. Or maybe we can play something together? Some wordplays for example: telling weird stories about the objects in the apartment or making story chains. Alternatively, we can use Jamboarad for short puns session. It can be funny 🙂

 

Ideas described in this article are probably a drop in the sea of concepts. When we are standing in the room without an exit a creativity increases in our mind. We see the ways that in other situations we perceive as impossible or not efficient. That’s really entertaining: how powerful our mind is while we are nearing the dead end.

The words from the “Alice in Wonderland” now sound in my head: 

“To make the impossible you must believe that it is possible.”