Personal map: Get to know your Team 'better'

?Introduction

“Management 3.0?is a movement of innovation, leadership and management. 
It is redefining the definition of leadership with management as a group 
responsibility. It’s about working together to find the most efficient 
way for a business to achieve its goals while maintaining the happiness 
of workers as a priority.”
        

As Jurgen Appelo himself explains, with the Internet, the working model has changed, people now can work from anywhere and at any time remotely. As a result, they do not have to be physically close, but they have to be mentally connected, and the best way to make that connection work is through the Personal Map.

People’s behavior at work is very much influenced by their emotional state, their emotional well-being. It might be good to know something more about your colleague – even if you’re not the chatty type of person. A colleague’s behavior might influence the teamwork, and as a colleague, you should know in all cases what could be the cause. Connecting with colleagues on an emotional level, ‘team’ bonding, being able to talk about something relevant – besides the job is important. Moreover, working remotely?should not be a barrier to connecting with your colleagues.

All of this has massive consequences on how we collaborate with each other within the physical and digital workplace. In the past, teams that physically worked together were often seen as the best, however the goal today is to get your team to have “Mental Closeness” being “Physical Closeness” is becoming less important.

So, how can I know something more about my colleague, my team member, even my manager? Even when they are not physically next to me? – Try Personal Map

Why you should read this article?

• Do you want to know what personal map is from Management 3.0?
• Do you want to explorer how to build and grow a connection, communication, rapport, and trust within your team(s)?
• Are you planning to experiment with personal map practice with your team(s) but thinking about how to kick-off in a step-by-step pattern?
• How to interpret data points/trends coming out post-implementation of this practice and use it towards making more informed and meaningful discussion?
• Do you want to explorer/know the challenges and outcomes I observed while experimenting?
• How does this practice add value at different levels (In my case, at ART (Agile Release Train) level)?
• Lastly, Do you want to know how to scale and sustain this practice?

If your answer is “Yes” for any of the above-mentioned questions, then this article may be of your help.

What is Personal Map?

The Personal Map is a practice used to make a mental map about someone. This mind map has mainly eight basic ramifications (but may have more): home, education, work, hobbies, family, friends, values, and goals. The tool is very simple to use, but at the same time, it can give enormous strength to a team or an organization.

Personal maps are a way to note down and to visualize some information about a person. You can create personal maps of your colleagues for your own reference – or in a more transparent way: have an exercise in which each person is creating his own personal map. A personal map is like a mind map with info about that person.

Essentials of Personal Maps are very simple:

• The?Main Topic, the?name and/or a profile picture?of the individual is put in the middle of the page. Make it visible and clear for everyone to see.
• A few?Topics?such as a few?demographic factors,?home?or?family details,?Education,?Hobbies?and?Interests,?Values,?and?Goals?in life are then added and linked to the main topic
• Sub-topics?or details under each topic can now be added by each individual to explain themselves. The individuals have the freedom of exploring the map in any way they like. For example, they can add details about their favorite outdoor sport, travel destinations, and what drives them in life such as family, honesty, integrity, etc.
• Draw?connected lines?or?associations?from the Main topic to topics, and finally sub-topics to show a logical flow between characteristics.
• Use?images, and?colors?as appropriate to better describe the individual. Vibrant colors may indicate certain characteristics about the person so please do encourage the participants to express themselves.
• Add?descriptions?for each association to explain the relationships further.

The personal map is like the blueprint of someone’s life. So, get the participants to express themselves. Give them the freedom to be colorful, expressive, and vibrant (if they are extroverts) or even dull and boring (if they are introverts or simply because they are lazy). An expressive personal map will provide a wealth of information for coaches, leaders such as scrum masters, and managers to make decisions on interacting with their colleagues.

Why did I decide to use this practice?

Its been now all most 4+ years I am experimenting with Personal Map with various Agile Coaching and Consulting engagement I was assigned to. This article especially emphasizes one of my most recent Scaled Agile Transformation Consulting assignment with one of my Norway-based Telecommunication clients. This experimentation was carried out for one of their Agile Release Train (ART) consisting of ~120 Individuals - ~12 teams.?I was onboarded as an Agile Coach for one of their division which is going through a transformation ground-up.

When you have such a large number of people working together to deliver a solution – It is paramount that they must work as a single unit thereby, how do you scale empathy, How do you make connections, build trust, foster collaboration between various personalities? The problem is further exaggerated by the scope, in an Agile team you have 5 to11 people whereas in an ART (Agile Release Train) you have 50 to 125 people(As guided by SAFe). Dysfunctions at this scale can have a much bigger impact than at the team level.

Additionally, when I did my preliminary assessment for transformation; It echoed my suspicion!!! I extracted that there is a lack of trust and openness among team members. When I dig deeper, I realized that one of the main reasons is lack of communication, collaboration, and team members are introverted to open a bit with another person for chit chat, especially with non-work topics. ?

Hence, As an Agile Coach, one of my priorities was to make team members feel more open, build stronger connectivity & trust, improve collaboration with other team members followed by an environment in which everyone is equal, and no one is afraid to contribute with their opinion which is very essential for high-performance teams. Decreasing the distance between each other by getting to know each other better and knowing what the other team members have in mind does not only increase collaboration but also a great team spirit, prevents isolation, and therefore supports mental health.

To address such sensitive themes, the very first handy yet powerful tool prompted in my mind is none other than Personal Map from Management 3.0 practice stack!!!

How did I implement this practice?

Phase 1 - Initial Kick-off

• I started by explaining what Management 3.0 is followed by the personal maps during one of my monthly ART connect with various teams.
• I highlighted the purpose and outcome of the exercise.?
• Lastly, described the procedure and provided a high-level walkthrough of how to interact via a digital tool (Mural) to complete the respective exercise.

?Phase 2: Tool Configuration

By default, The mural was the first choice as teams were already using it for whiteboarding and it provides various easy-to-use templates too (Please note that there is no direct personal-map template available in Mural hence, we leveraged the mind-map template for personal map exercise and tailored it to our needs. However, both (Mind-map & Personal-map) are different.). The respective template can be found at:

https://www.mural.co/templates/mind-map.

We leveraged the Mural board to execute this experiment with 100% remote teams. I configured it for our teams and invited/shared it with team members/teams.

Phase 3: Execution

As one size doesn't fit all - I introduced various versions basis on participants/group's persona. ?Variations are as follows:

1.????Initial/Basic Version (Within Agile Team)

You create your own “Personal Map” and present it to the group and?let people ask you questions?on what they are curious about.

When using Personal Maps within the team, the best approach is to get individuals to create their Personal Map, then get them to share their findings in pairs or small groups. From there, other people can then provide feedback and insights back to the larger team about the person they “interviewed”. I used this variation for teams that are fairly new to the Personal map exercise. Usually, teams executed this in one of their retrospective events.

I initiated by creating my own personal map with seven basic categories as follows:

• Objective
• Work
• Interests
• Friends
• Family
• Education
• Values

Please note that you can do this with more categories than the ones presented above. Be creative and come up with new ones! These categories may need to change according to the group/team you are working with, the categories I suggest above are the ones I believe fit the majority of groups.

Slowly everyone in the team prepared their own personal maps based on the above categories.

2.????Second version (variation) (Within Agile Team with Pairing):

Pair people to do each other’s “Personal Map”.

I created a pair and suggested people do it by asking questions about the other. You won’t present your own Personal Map, but your pair. Invite the rest of the group to ask questions if they’re curious to know more.

Timebox:

• Give enough time for people to engage in the pairing, therefore I would advise 20 min.
• 5-7 minutes to present
• 5-7 minutes for Q&A

**Total time depends on the size of the group

3.????Third version (Variation) (Within Agile Team)

Especially for 'sticky' teams, I used the following variation:

While interacting with various ART teams I found that it’s been a while there are ~3-4 teams (Team Members) are working together and for them, I tweaked this practice as follows:

I put an?empty “Personal Map” and let the rest of the group fill it?(Suggestion: timebox this part, 5-7 minutes). Afterward, the person will go through the “Personal Map” done by the rest of the group, cross the ones that aren’t correct, and add the rest of the things about you. Explain why you crossed and present yourself with that and with what you added.

4.????Forth version (Variation): ( Multiple Teams - Cross Teams connection )

This variation is for all 12 ART (Agile Release Train) Teams. I suggested to do?first your “Personal Map” as a TEAM (Team's collective personal map) and then teams can compare theirs with the one done by the rest of the group/other teams.?Don’t forget to present both. The rest of the group can try to present you with what they have done and then you present yours.

Furthermore, same set of steps are being followed/performed with other ARTs too (There are 8 ARTs (Agile Release Train) in total with various team sizes). Scrum Master and RTEs (Release Train Engineers) have been trained and guided in order to execute the same in their workstreams/space.

Next Step:

With Personal maps at the Teams level/single ART (Agile Release Train) Level, I have relatively booming success in bringing empathy and making the teamwork a cohesive unit. I was pondering why not use the same concepts and scale them - it's time to think of Cross ART collaboration!!

Management 3.0 framework recommends following the proximity principle: the first principle is to match your proximity with the importance to work as people in your assignment/program, you work with, you have the same customer, you have to communicate very often. The second proximity principle is to be diverse regarding work, location, background.

There are 8 ARTs in total (By the way, when it comes to the type of ART/Teams topologies we have 'Full House' as recommended by SAFe - Platform, Stream-aligned & Complicated sub-system, Enabling Teams & Shared Services at scale). Since Teams (ARTs) are now comfortable with their standalone version of the personal map; I am planning to experiment with the same at Cross ART Level/Solution Train Level (ST) I&A (Inspect & Adapt) event by end of the first quarter or early 2nd quarter of 2022. The way I am planning is to create a cumulative Personal map per ART (1 Personal map for the entire ART. Of Course, categories will be different) and then present the same to other ARTs) thereby, will have 8 Personal maps encapsulating 8 ARTs - Finger crossed how team members unearth abstract facts!!!!

My experience as a facilitator and Implicit learning:

• Recommended Pre-Requisite:

It might be a good idea to do a “Safety Check” exercise before you execute it. As the more people feel safe sharing……...the better outcomes the exercise will provide.

In order to do so, I executed Safety Check with the team using https://www.fearlessculture.design/blog-posts/the-psychological-safety-ladder-canvas

• The other outcome of this was people figured out common interests and started to flock together across teams and bonding beyond teams started to build. People started creating interest/hobby groups.

Exclusive MS Teams, Yammer group/community channels were created with like-minded people to enable asynchronous communication.

Twice in a month, people started virtually collaborating for real-time digital conversations.

• I recommend that don’t let individuals present their own Personal Maps at the first instance, it’s better to have each team member present someone else's Personal Map. This approach naturally invites questions, discussions, moments of connection, and rapport between people within your team.
• The Personal Map practice forms the prospect to learn more about someone’s life history by creating an opportunity, time, and space to show interest in each other which can go a long way in creating empathy, trust, and rapport within a team.
• The fascinating element about the Personal Map practice/exercise is that you often realize how tiny you know about the other people within your team, which is fantastic as it provides the prospect to get to know them even better.?
• This exercise is really very important especially for new teams so that team members feel more comfortable with one another and be open with them In turn increases self-awareness, team bonding.
• The Personal Maps practice/exercise is the perfect team-building activity that naturally brings everyone within your team closer together and works well in both the physical and digital workplace.
• It’s a great exercise as an ice breaker in workshops.

Caution: Timebox this activity during any training/workshop etc. for a max of 10-15 minutes only else wise either trainer might struggle to complete real content within the timebox or at times participants tend to get themselves diverted from an actual workshop content. Hence, make it a group activity and do it quickly.

• Personal Maps practice allows feedback, communication, teamwork, and collaboration to occur quickly, easily, and naturally within the group of participants
• When somebody does not want to speak about personal stuff that much, do not force them to do that. Be satisfied when they talk about hobbies etc.
• Write down every question you have in mind about the person, and you would like to ask in advance. During the interview, we tend to forget to ask important things.
• A great exercise to know each other especially to identify the similarities between two or more persons which supports individuals to start the conversation with each other.
• Please be informed that these personal maps are not a one-time exercise, this evolves as life continues! Therefore, Iterate personals map on regular intervals.
• It is a clear opportunity to learn more about team members including some intrinsic and hidden facts.

In my case, one trend came out is the majority of team members wanted to learn Cloud skills (in the 'Goal' dimension of the personal map majority of team members mentioned the same), hence, concerned leaders brainstormed, worked, and along with the L&D team - introduced a cloud program, partnered with one of the online learning platforms along with several digital in-house SME sessions for the entire Program. Incrementally, on the basis of the nomination process, people started getting themselves trained and up-skilled.

• The personal maps activity provided an opportunity for the participants to be open.
• It provided greater insights into unknown strengths, behaviors, thinking patterns, and talents of individuals which could become useful for others and the team in the future.

Conclusion:

Scheduling, organizing, and actively contributing to this experiment helped me and my teams to get to know each other better and even discover that we had a lot of things in common.?Everyone was enthusiastic to share details about their “unseen lives”, which shaped an even larger ‘safe space’ thus fostering trust within the program.

It was really pleasant to witness that post this exercise relationships between agile team members became robust. Some colleagues even became good friends outside of work and all of this because they learned that they both are interested in the same things. I passionately recommend & persuade you and your team to give it a try.?It’s worth it.?

If you want to explore/learn more about Personal Maps, you can look at Management 3.0 page at https://management30.com/practice/personal-maps/

DISCLAIMER:

• This article is prepared & compiled basis on my personal Management 3.0 practice implementation experience/view-only; you may have your own version too.
• As project personal maps implementation images are classified; have not been shared/published with this article.
• Images courtesy –?https://management30.com/practice/personal-maps/