Isn’t understanding and being able to help resolve people’s problems part of our job as delivery leaders?
As a busy team that’s focused on getting to its next release, it can be all too easy to ignore the softer conversations needed to ensure the health and happiness of the team. I’ve seen first hand the penalties of judging the health of a team by its delivery capability, assuming all is OK and by the time it’s obvious that’s not the case, it’s too late. I can speak with confidence that issues take longer to rectify and building trust is harder after the fact.
Isn’t understanding and being able to help resolve people’s problems part of our job as delivery leaders? After all, without people we wouldn’t be doing much at all, well not until AI takes over. A mentor of mine once said, Danny, the soft stuff is always the hard stuff. It’s taken a few years for me to realise it, but he was spot on.
A typical health check might look something like this:
Me: Alright Dave?
Dave (with a nod and a smile): Alright Dan?
Actually what Dave’s thinking is the complete opposite. His response was a muscle memory reaction to a common question everyone asks. Some of you reading this post will, like me, have used retrospectives as a feedback loop to identify problems in the team. I’ve found that not everyone feels comfortable raising their issues in such an open forum. Some might say that’s a sign of a poorly performing team. I say people are complex. But what’s the best way to get teams to open up? To be honest I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer to this question and I’m interested to hear from others in a position where the health of their teams and the quality of the environment they work in is as important as the products they deliver.
I’ve recently used the bother scale to test the quality of working environments with a team I’m working with. They have been forced to temporarily move location, which has led to more remote working for some. Before the move, the team regularly talked about self-improvement, identified opportunities and tracked progress at the daily stand-up. Due to the change in the working environment and an increase in demand, self-improvement dropped off the radar and some key deliverables were sliding.
I asked everyone to feedback their views using the bother scale. Nearly everyone’s score ranged between 5 and 9 (that’s bad news) and team members went to town by supporting their score with detailed written feedback.
Ok, so we’ve uncovered issues. What now?
The next day the team cleared half a day to work through the issues and has now re-implemented regular time to talk about self-improvement opportunities. The team has previously shown it can take responsibility for its own improvement so will be fine, but it’s only taken a few weeks for things to start sliding in the wrong direction. Feedback loops with our teams are just as important as feedback loops with our customers. Ignore this at your peril.
