Leadership & Agile Teams' Motivation

DAHM M. HONGCHAI, PH.D. STUDENT OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT, PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY, OREGON, U.S.A.

RESEARCH CONDUCTED FOR A QUALITATIVE RESEARCH CLASS AT PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY TAUGHT BY DR. STéPHANIE WAHAB

Since the spreading of COVID-19 at the beginning of 2020 many Agile product management teams have been confronting challenges and difficulties which decrease their business outcomes and values. Agile is a mindset of responding to change and handling uncertainty from business volatility, customers’ requirements, and unpredictable situations. Agile product management teams consist of team members and stakeholders who are practicing to embed the Agile mindset by following twelve principles behind the Agile Manifesto: 1) satisfying customers’ requirements as the first priority; 2) being open to customers’ requested changes; 3) delivering products more frequently; 4) meeting with all stakeholders daily; 5) building product teams with motivated team members and providing needed resources with trust; 6) communicating via face-to-face meetings; 7) measuring work progress from working products; 8) sustaining constant work speed; 9) developing technical excellence; 10) emphasizing simplicity and prioritizing product backlog; 11) promoting self-organizing teams; and 12) conducting retrospection regularly; According to principle no. 5, therefore, how can leaders build Agile product teams around motivated people during the COVID-19 pandemic? I interviewed three Agile coaches for this research paper. Paul and John have more than 15 years of Agile experience. Sam has less than 5 years of Agile experience. (I do not use their real names in order to protect their privacy.) I transcribed their conversation and used coding and thematic analysis to discover their insights. My interviewees agreed that motivated team members are driven by intrinsic motivation. However, they need resources and support from related stakeholders to create supportive work environments to accomplish their business deliverables. My research analysis reveals four roles for leaders to build Agile teams around motivated people during the COVID-19 pandemic: basic practitioner, mindful listener, cadence conductor, and laughing creator.

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1. BASIC PRACTITIONER

Leaders often avoid following basic responsibilities. Leaders who are basic practitioners understand and perform their primary roles to provide needed resources for team members to accomplish their product goals. Leaders need to analyze resource allocation and availability to ensure that Agile product teams have all the resources essential for developing their products from the beginning. Along the way, they need to check-in with their teams to see what additional resources they may require to complete their tasks. However, in reality the lack of resources is generally problematic because leaders do not pursue their basic roles for their teams. Paul argues that “ it's a very simple equation and everybody knows it but we don't all behave that way”. Leaders know that they are in the position to support their team members’ needs, but they do not keep practicing their roles. Instead, they pressure their members to search for resources to survive by themselves. That is why many Agile teams fail to provide their customers with working deliverables. Paul emphasizes that leaders should support teams with basic needs for working like planting seeds with appropriate care from the start to the end. They cannot throw seeds on earth and fully expect that all the seeds will flourish without attendance. Different seeds need different initial cultivation and protective maintenance until their harvest seasons. Similarly, team individuals require different equipment, support, and reinforcement from the time their project starts through to its completion. Leaders should understand each team member’s requirements and provide what they need to finish their duties. Actually, they know that they need to do this, but they do not do exactly what they know they should do. That is why leaders are required to practice their fundamental leadership responsibilities to assure that their Agile teams are ready to start working and to complete their products’ goals with success.

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2. MINDFUL LISTENER

Listening with a closed mind leads to not listening. Leaders who are mindful listeners can completely turn off their inner voices, fully hear their team member's needs, and authentically react with continuous improvements. Even though leaders say nothing while listening to other people, it does not mean that they fully listen. Actually, their heads are full of their own inner voices which block them from hearing others’ needs. That causes leaders to prejudge their team members’ proposed ideas and insist on creating supportive work environments. Paul states that “It's listening to what they really want because a lot of times they just want to be left alone, too. That's the other thing right? If we created an environment, have we given the right tools? Have we given the right kind of training? So do we have the right kind of books? Do we have the right kind of software? Do we have the things that they need? We don't.” Paul urges leaders to perform deep and active listening with their team members. As a consequence, they will realize what the team members exactly need to accomplish their business intentions with happiness. For instance, when people work on many projects, they cannot concentrate on achieving their objectives. They dedicate less time availability with unsuccessful outcomes. The leaders often do not respond to this matter; instead they assign a greater workload to the team members. If leaders listen to their people with mindfulness, they will perceive how unproductive and unhappy their people are. They will discover root causes, execute corrective actions to eliminate emergencies, and implement preventive actions to ensure that troubles will not recur. This will promote continuous improvements for long-term sustainability. Therefore, leaders with mindful listening can totally understand and support their people.

3. CADENCE CREATOR

Maintaining constant cadence is challenging. Leaders who are cadence conductors can initiate, facilitate, and continue Agile meetings: planning, daily update, product review, and team retrospection. Each meeting aims for different objectives and outcomes. For example, The planning meeting is for communicating iterative product goals, definitions of a working product, and committed tasks to ensure that team members can satisfy their customers’ needs. John identifies it as an important component of Agile “making sure that the people are highly aligned to work together”. He stresses that team members should assure that they know what they are doing and they work together toward their team goals. That means they are on the same page and working together to the end point. Moreover, he suggests that the planning meeting is for sharing common understanding and sharing positive feelings which will drive the team to be on the right track. Sam explains that the product review meeting with all stakeholders will benefit Agile teams by receiving feedback from all relevant people at the same time. This will avoid the time consuming task of reporting separately to each stakeholder. As a result, the team will have more time for working on their product. He emphasizes that the team retrospective meeting is important for the Agile team. Sam mentions that “you can really do anything right if you don't talk about how things went well or wrong”. That is why reflection from team members can help teams adjust their activities or behavior to support their goals. If leaders can generate these meetings, facilitate their team’s participation, and achieve consensus regarding the meeting outcomes as their objectives, Agile teams will work together to align their efforts with their customer’s expectations. Unfortunately, leaders do not always initiate and orchestrate these meetings with their original purpose in mind. Worse, they do not continually conduct the meetings with an eye toward possible on-going improvements. That is why leaders have to act as cadence conductors.

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4. LAUGHING CREATOR

Laughing creates joy and productivity. Leaders who are laughing creators can construct a fun workplace environment and increase team effectiveness. According to principle no. 7, on-going assessment of the working product is the only measurement for Agile teams. It is a reasonable and logical metric, but it needs a joyful component. Paul suggests that laughing should be a new key performance indicator. He states that “If I don't hear laughing I’m really concerned that these people just haven't come together”. In other words, he could sense if their teams have a healthy sense of safety to share their ideas or fun stories. Sam insists that “If you're a leader, the leaders should be able to kind of laugh at themselves and tell jokes about themselves, because whether you believe it or not, it's modeling humility, and it's showing people that you're able to laugh at yourself”. Leaders should start poking fun at themselves to start a conversation and saying something silly. They will get their team members to smile, which will create relaxing work environments. They also can organize fun activities even in a 15-minute daily update meeting by encouraging people to share their preferences of favorite food, favored music, and fun movies. Literally, they will know each other individually and can interact properly. This would help them to open up their minds to different perspectives, especially when they have to deal with conflicts. It is possible when Agile team members work as a team, they will have disagreements about unproductive processes and unprofessional behaviors. They tend to provide constructive feedback for each other with direct messages and empathetic care if they feel comfortable and safe to speak up. They do not ignore or avoid confronting their roadblocks with their team members. That will not cause chronic and repeated issues. Thus, creating laughter is a requirement for leaders to build team comfort and bonding for both normal and unexpected situations.

Conclusion, the pandemic of COVID-19 has had negative impacts on many people and organizations both personally and professionally. They need to respond to unpredictable situations to ensure that they will survive in the volatile future. Leaders in Agile organizations need to behave differently to build Agile product teams surrounded by motivated people who know what they need to do because they can drive themselves by their own intrinsic motivation. They just need supportive encouragement from their leaders to guarantee that they will get what they need to finish developing their products and meeting their customers’ expectations. My research from interviewing three Agile coaches with many years of experience in Agile reveals four essential themes for leaders. Leaders should be basic practitioners who provide necessary resources for their Agile teams. Leaders should be mindful listeners who do not provide suggestions all the time. Instead they become quiet while they listen to their people. Leaders should be cadence conductors who arrange and maintain Agile meetings to achieve the meetings’ objectives. Finally, leaders should be laughing creators who generate fun and joy for teams. Ultimately, Agile team members with motivated people and this kind of leadership will enable themselves to develop their products with impactful deliverables for their customers and successful business outcomes for their organization.