Building Resilient Teams
Although ‘working agilely’ is largely associated with scrum teams who share the same ‘heartbeat’ of regular scrum ceremonies and base their team cohesion on an assumed existing team spirit, I have hardly ever seen a peaceful customer centric project without a certain level of destructive and counter-productive stress for involved players.
Coping with stress in the 21st century in IT or change projects and turning it into a constructive resource has become a key competence for strategic as well as operative teams to get through heavy waters and maintain inner and outer balance regardless of industry.
Reality shows that peer pressure arises when deadlines are tight, resulting in neglected psychohygiene which puts social relations at stake.
Although the agile mindset propagates sustainability to deliver highest customer value in the shortest possible time, chronic time pressure and the unspoken fear of failure exposed by managers or customers gradually scoops out the social bonding.
The additional burden for many teams to fight with restrictions, piling up workload and a commitment level beyond reach diminishes a team’s valuable resilience.
Only fractured research exists about a team’s resilience, how it can be built up and how it can be maintained in order to preserve the wellbeing of the individuals in agile projects.
A study from M.Laanti, 2013, (‘Agile and Wellbeing — Stress, Empowerment, and Performance in Scrum and Kanban Teams’) investigates which factors have an impact on the wellbeing of a team. Although the study admits to have many weaknesses it clearly reveals that limiting the envisaged workload and the feeling of team empowerment has a positive impact on performance and reduces stress, thereby significantly contributing to the resilience of a team.
A whitepaper from ISS Denmark, 2018, (“Superdiverse teams drive well-being in the workplace”) investigates the soft factors of what drives well-being.
The surprising outcome of the study shows that there is a connection between a team’s diversity and its feeling of well-being. The study points to precisely three types of team behaviours (induced by superdiversity) which serve as foundation for ‘wellness’ in a team.
ISS Whitepaper, September 2018.
Key insights from this extraordinary study:
Working together from different linguistic backgrounds requires finding a common second language and developing creative ways for communication, e.g. physical demonstration, reading gestures and mimicry, using drawings and visualisations to overcome the linguistic asymmetries.
This results in strengthened empathy among individuals and the formation of solidary bonds which positively affect the level of open-mindedness for collaboration.
This gives rise to an extraordinary level of mutual assistance among team members. It makes visible the different skills and knowledge in the team which contribute to team collaboration, thereby enhancing the feeling of learning from each other to the benefit of mutual recognition and devotion to the team.
Another study from Teresa Stephens, 2020 (“Build resilient teams to tackle nursing burnout”), reveals an approach on how to concretely and systematically build resilience in a team. This pragmatic approach can be utilized to develop intentional strategies to cope with challenges, adversities and stressors in order to face future challenges.
She proposes the 4P approach (purpose — priorities — perspectives — personal responsibility) which form an umbrellaing framework for the growth of a team’s psychological safety and meaningfulness.
Guiding questions (examples are listed in the study) to explore the 4P aspects help the team to build a common view and yes, even a common ‘feeling’. Especially the self-reflecting question set regarding personal responsibility ignites very well each team member’s own engagement level and reveals the level of concern.
If the personal responsibility has been understood and accepted by each individual, it will foster an interpersonal climate of trust. Together with the aforementioned essential ingredients of the question sets (purpose-priorities-perspectives) a team gets a thorough orientation to reclaim inner and outer balance in stressful periods by putting circumstances and ambitions into perspective. This way a team is able to see the bigger picture including own role.
My own experience as Scrum Master and Organizational Coach of many teams in large scale scrum organizational contexts is, that it is worth the effort to invest in the exploration of the 4Ps (purpose-prioritities-perspectives-personal responsibility) especially at the start of a new team or when a team is unintentionally entering a change period and is forced to adapt to new situations.
Existing operative and organisational restrictions must be counteracted with perseverance to defend a teams’ need to enable them to navigate through heavy waters. Strong focus and a long breath is needed for the Scrum Master to pave way for organizational adaptations, or finding arguments to balance the powerplay between fixed tight operational schedules and effective team performance. Often the level of well-being of a team is victimized at the expense of the team’s resilience ignoring the consequences.
The more the outer circumstances de-stabilize, the more important it becomes that the team huddles together to maintain the inner balance. This is needed to remain in self-directed control and maintain the feeling of empowerment by holding up high stable social bonds.
Supporting the (re-)building of a team’s common ground through uncovering and amplifying the DNA of the team’s joint motivation is the base of a team’s well-being. It is a source of energy for good performance and serves as enabler for mutual learning. Building a team’s common ground is one of the best and most crucual things a Scrum Master can do for the team. It is a platform to re-enforce the solidary bonds.
In an acute situation, relieving the stress and re-establishing well-being by doing fun activites against all odds is one of the most effective ways to help to detox the team psychologically.
Nevertheless, the ambition must be to institutionalise ways of structured resilience building as a preventive measure. The 4P approach is a good method to touch on all crucial aspects. Retrospectives are a good way to re-emphasize aspects of resilience iteratively.
Therefore, the Retrospective Ceremony should be used in a variety of ways not only focussing on functional or operative mini-improvements, but lifting the issues of concern affecting a team’s resilience and well-being to a high level of attention in the team. Meaningful insights shall be derived so that motivation picks up momentum and the team regains energy to sustain the daily hinderances. Rather than targeting finding ‘action points’ as outcome, common sharing of reflective thoughts and deep learning shall
e the outcome.
The retrospective helps the team to consciously reflect on the common view on regular basis and to get enough space to find their means for understanding the importance of building the solidary bonds, thereby developing a common language and collective learnings.
Every minute that is spent like this is a valuable asset in the team’s performance, re-establishes psychohygiene and strengthens a team’s capability to fulfill their ‘purpose’, thus a solid way to build a team’s resilience.
Learnings
Limiting workload is a crucial thing which shall be adhered to consequently in a team. It leads to reduced stress, increased performance and strengthens resilience in a team.
Superdiverse composed teams develop strong solidary bonds by creative ways to connect to each other to find a common second language. This leads to mutual assistance which in turn serves to the benefit of mutual learning and a high level of recognition for each other.
Psychological safety can be built in teams by developing a common view on purpose, priorities, perspectives and personal responsibilities in a team.
Retrospectives need to be valued and respected as a meaningful way to build, maintain and renew the common ground in a team. It is a way to manifest psychological safety, well-being and serve as a pillar for resilience when utilized for issues that affect the heartbeat of a team.
References
M. Laanti, “Agile and Wellbeing — Stress, Empowerment, and Performance in Scrum and Kanban Teams,” 2013 46th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2013, pp. 4761–4770, doi: 10.1109/HICSS.2013.74.
Lotte Holck (Copenhagen Business School), Lotte Hjortlund Andersen (ISS Denmark), “Superdiverse teams drive well-being in the workplace”,
ISS Whitepaper, September 2018.
Teresa M. Stephens, PhD, MSN, RN, CNE, “Build resilient teams to tackle nursing burnout”, American Nurse Journal, Volume 15, Number 3, March 2020
Creating Psychological Safety at Work in a Knowledge Economy | Amy C. Edmondson, Harvard, 06.07.2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUo1QwVcCv
Amy C. Edmondson, Harvard Business School, 2018 Book: The Fearless Organization
Margaret Heffernan: Why it’s time to forget the pecking order at work, TED Talk 16.06.2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyn_xLrtZaY
