Liberating Structures - A continuous Learning Journey

One of the key attribute to being a Scrum Master is the ability to be a good servant leader. What constitutes to being a good servant leader?

A few of the important aspects are -

• Providing a safe open environment for the team
• Focus on the needs of the team - self organization and empowerment of team
• Restraining from solving and allowing the team to make the decisions
• Being a good facilitator

So, I asked myself - what can I do to help my team and how can I do something different? A part of the answer to this question was answered during the various interesting sessions held at LAST Adelaide Agile conference and I am so thankful for having had an opportunity to be part of this event.

One of the interesting session was about the "Liberating Structures", facilitated by @Romain Vailleux and this had all the right ingredients which can help the Scrum Master in being a good servant leader. I was fascinated and this started me on a journey of learning more about "Liberating Structures".

There is a clear purpose, a context, simple set of rules, inclusion of everyone and all have a voice, active discussions and de-briefing at the end by the team. Each of these elements help the Scrum Master to step back and let the team's creativity and self organization to be unleashed. It does take a few attempts, but when I tried this with my teams, the changes that I observed within the team dynamics and the increasing collaboration within them gave me the confidence to decide that I am on the right journey. It's a long way and a continuous journey of learning but the best part is evolution of the mindset change, which can be seen when we use the right liberating structures.

I used a few of the techniques like 1-2-4-All, Conversation Cafe and STAR Generative relationship structures so far. Last Friday, at the end of the session, I asked my team to share their feedback as a "check-out" activity and words like "empowered", "can relate more easily" summed it all up for me.

Thanks to LAST conference at Adelaide and to @Romain Vailleux for sharing his knowledge and insights on "Liberating Structures"

References: https://www.liberatingstructures.com/

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