How agile saved my marriage!!!

A few years back, before I formally started to pursue a career as a scrum master/agile coach, I was a budding and confident Product Manager, ready to take the world of product management by storm. Little did I know, that if I had continued down that path, I would have probably ended up as one of the worst PMs ever, it would have likely taken me a long time to realize where I was going wrong, and it would have most definitely left a damaging impact on my marriage! I say this because back then, I was almost blind to a number of my short comings that my wife and some good friends did try to point out a few times, but I often dismissed them as a difference of opinion or put a positive spin on them.

Luckily for me, before I could accept a PM role, I came across another exciting opportunity of helping an organization fix the dysfunction on some of their teams and deliver value to their customers faster. Although I had never been a scrum master before this, I did know the mechanics of scrum for the most part given my previous experiences and trainings. However, I was in for a treat as I slowly started to discover the philosophy behind agile and the many behaviors one needs to inculcate to be a good coach. As I began to embrace these new ideas and philosophy, not only did it have a positive impact on my professional life, but it also changed me at a personal level - so much, that a year after being in the scrum master role, my wife confessed that she thought I was a completely different person, and she loved the new me much more! We went from being a couple in love to being each other's best friends, and our bond is stronger than ever. So what exactly changed? Lets have a look.

1. Don't inflict your help on others

Most of us have heard some version of advice like - 'You just need to listen when your partner is complaining rather than solving their problems!' and 'Everyone needs to make their own mistakes to learn from them'. While we might all know what they mean, these are things that are easier said than done! This was the case with me too! Being a problem solver, I had this strong urge to solve all of my wife's problems. I wanted to be the expert in everything - her knight in shining armor - who would sweep in and save the day! Somehow though, this would often worsen the situation, and we would often end up in a big fight. Being a team coach however required me to act on the same advice in a professional setting, and gave me the patience and practice I needed to be able to internalize these concepts and support my wife by being a sounding board and helping her solve her problems, rather than trying to solve them for her.

2. Be confident but humble

This is another life lesson that we hear all the time, but is difficult to master. Before becoming a scrum master, I was definitely confident, but I also had a chip on my shoulder. My friends would often share that while I was a great friend, their first impressions of me were often negative. I would try to correct this behavior of mine, but it wasn't until I became a scrum master that I truly understood the impact my attitude could have on an entire team/initiative. Understanding and living the life of a servant leader is what helped me become humble, and this humility worked wonders in my personal life.

3. Win hearts with transparency & vulnerability

Agile and the book 'Five dysfunctions of a Team' taught me all that can be achieved by being transparent and vulnerable. I no longer suffered from sleepless nights, stressing about a problem I hadn't yet shared with my wife because I didn't want to upset her. Neither was I trying to gather all information possible about a certain issue and waiting for the perfect moment to share it with her, only to realize that I was too late, and she already knew something was wrong, or worse - had heard about the issue from someone else! Once I started knocking down the imaginary walls I had been building around myself, we were able to work on critical issues as true partners, sharing our worst mistakes & fears, while at the same time building trust and confidence in each other, which has strengthened our relationship ten fold.

4. Continuous learning & Improvement

I have always been an avid learner, but I have absorbed more books, articles and podcasts since I became a scrum master than I did in the years before that. This is probably because of agile's high degree of focus on continuous improvement and its interconnections to other schools of thought like Lean, Coaching, Design Thinking, Complexity, Systems Thinking and more. I have also started regularly self-reflecting and making changes to be a better version of myself. Once I internalized the value of continuous learning and improvement, in the pursuit of becoming a good scrum master, it was no surprise that I leveraged those same principles and habits to be a better husband and person. My wife and I now regularly retrospect on how we reacted in a certain situation which had a less-than-positive result, and take concrete actions to ensure if the situation reoccurred, everyone involved in the situation had a better experience. This also helps us share feedback, have candid debate, hold ourselves accountable, and remind us of how much we care for each other - turning a negative experience into a supportive and positive one.

5. Systems thinking for a happy life

When you are early in your carer, it is easy to let your professional success be the biggest driving factor of your personal happiness. Often people get so tunnel focused on their professional success, that they start neglecting parts of their life that play a very important part in their overall happiness, like - family, friends, and their mental & physical health. This often results in them eventually being unhappy, and then trying to figure out where did they go wrong. I too was headed for this slippery slope, however when I started applying systems thinking to not just work, but life, it gave my wife and I a new perspective, and enabled us to make conscious decisions about the different trade-offs we were comfortable making.

6. Perfection is overrated

From an early age we are taught 'Practice makes perfect!'. Given the importance the society places on perfection, I too was driven to ensure everything I did in life was as close to perfect as it could be. While a worthy goal, agile taught me that not only is perfection very hard to achieve, it also often comes at a cost so high that it renders the goal unworthy. Agile taught me that sometimes Good-Enough is better than Perfect. This does not mean that you become sloppy, but rather that you need to make an informed decision based on the return on investment. When I started applying this to my personal life it helped me achieve so much more in my day, and everyone around me was equally happy if not more than when I was aiming for perfection. This freed my mind of the stress that comes with trying to perfect something, and allowed me more time to enjoy the little things in life.

Would I have learnt these things if I did not choose to be a scrum master? Probably. But being a scrum master put me in a position where my work demanded I get really good at applying these principles in practice, and I believe this practice probably helped speed up my learning curve allowing me to apply these principles in my personal life too! My wife and I are glad I chose to be a scrum master when I did, because these learnings have helped shape the man I am today, and when I look back to the person I was just a few years ago, it is hard to recognize myself.