How does a facilitator inspect and adapt?

One of the principles behind the agile manifesto is:

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly.

But what if you don’t have a team per se?

What if you are the only person in your team or department in a specific role? What if you operate as a scrum master, a coach or an independent facilitator?

Sure you can (and probably should) ask participants for feedback at the end of a workshop, and possibly this feedback will help you to understand the impact and perceived quality, but it will be shallow.

Yes you can (and probably should) request insights from a scrum team that you are serving as to what is working and what can be improved, but this may be very subjective and sometimes even political.

If you want deeper, objective and maybe even critical feedback you need someone else in the room observing you. Someone who does the same role or something very close. Someone who can suggest improvements and variations of the different aspects of the session. Someone willing to learn from you but also willing to challenge you and offer advice on the whole process, on your energy, on your expected outcomes.

I hope that you are lucky enough to have someone or a group of people in your organisation that you can call on for this. If not you could (and probably should) look to set up a community of practise in order to find your tribe. 

But if this is not possible, or you simply want a different view point, you could look to the wider community outside of your organisation. 

Tobias Mayer and I are trying to create this at the moment by offering a safe space for facilitators to come and practise and observe each other in action. To have the community talk openly about variations and options that could improve each others practise. To try ideas or concepts that you’re not quite ready to use in your place or work. To provide every person who offers a session a rich debrief of objective feedback from a range of experienced practitioners. To help you deepen your art of facilitation.

If you’d like to join us then you can find the full details here. The venue is awesome. The cost is minimal. The experience is deep.