Agile Superpowers

Last week the Agile West Midlands meetup group had the pleasure of hosting Sergio Seelochan and his talk on “How to be Agile”. Seems a strange question doesn’t it, do we need to be agile or should we be Agile, Scrum or SAFe or LeSS or even something else?

Sergio, during his talk cut through the chaff and spoke about what agility means to you and I in our everyday working lives. Sergio spoke about the 5 agile superpowers, not about stand-ups or retros, but simple things we can all do in an environment to help our thinking and delivery processes. Those 5 superpowers included:

1)    Listening – We did a short breakout scenario which involved active listening. The task simply consisted of keeping eye contact with someone whilst they spoke for 2 minutes (not interrupting, just listening). Being heard is simple, we can be as loud as we want but it is being listened to which is essential to feeling part of a team, but how many of us interrupt people whilst they are in their talking and thinking process?

2)    Agenda – Be aware that everyone can have an agenda in any scenario, but being aware of it and making sure we are not pushing it on others when talking through ideas in a group, or on an individual basis is important.

3)    Trust – Colleagues will not open up to you if they don’t trust you. How can you get people to trust you and create an environment where they can bring ideas to the table? During the talk we spoke about letting others see our vulnerability thus showing others that they can be vulnerable too, being stoic is not always the answer as a leader.

4)    Clear leadership – Sergio gave lots of examples where leadership occurs, not all of them good. Examples went from very autocratic organisations, to HIPPO (highest payed persons opinion) to very collaborative and democratic styles such as Teale structures. Clear leadership no matter what it is or how it is portrayed gives the “ship” direction, allowing everyone one to know where they stand within the structure of the business.

5)    Decision Making – Some businesses are crippled by making the wrong decision, it is better to make a decision, go for it, then realise it was wrong. What happens is lessons are learnt and we must question whether that influences how we go forward in an even better way? But at least we did not talk about it for 3 weeks, we actioned it and learnt. For example, Michael Jordan famously missed more than 900 shots, lost almost 300 games, 26 times he had the game winning shot and missed, but he made the decision, is he a failure?

Sounds easy doesn’t it, but it’s not, it takes emotional intelligence and a number of other skills in the tool kit to be able to create the right environment to allow collaborative and engaged teams in order to deliver. Coaches like Sergio play a big part in holding up the “Mirror” to the business and take them on that journey to create the right environment. Which, in turn allows them to embed whichever methodology they end up using to thrive.

To watch the talk click the link - https://lnkd.in/dMeZwZZ

At Xpertise we talk about creating the right “locker room spirit” for the team to thrive and ultimately deliver for our customers. We work hard on engaging with the team outside of the day job, something we found very important, doing things like eating together or doing charity events together. They all create that environment that allows the team to succeed. Another method we introduced is using the Kanban board which also helps people prosper.

Please get in touch if you are interested in bringing an Agile Coach into your organisation, to hold that mirror up and set the right foundations for the team to thrive. I have one of the largest coaching networks in the Midlands if you wish to discuss how one could help your organisation.