Personal Map - Increasing the understanding among team members

Introduction

How well do you know your work colleagues? Their hobbies, ambitions, or personal background? Forming closer connections with your team members leads to improved?team collaboration. You’ll learn what fires their ambition and keeps them motivated.?

People should get closer to the work of others to better understand what is going on. They can do this by moving their feet, moving their desk, or moving their microphone. Decreasing the distance between yourself and others helps increase communication and creativity. A great exercise for a better understanding of people is to capture what you know about them in personal maps.

What is in it for you?

• Great opportunity to know what personal map is from Management 3.0?
• Great opportunity to know how to build and grow a connection, communication, rapport, and trust within your team(s)?
• Know how to experiment with personal map practice with your team(s) but thinking about how to kick-off in a step-by-step pattern?
• Great opportunity to know the challenges and outcomes I observed while experimenting?
• Know how this practice adds value at different levels
• Lastly, Do you want to know how to scale and sustain this practice?

Are you ready? Let's dive In!!

What are Personal Maps?

A personal map is a mental map of a person. It’s a Management 3.0 technique and is designed to make it easier for you and your team to get to know your colleagues better.

Knowing more about yourself will help you trust each other and form a
stronger team.        

because knowing your colleagues is not just about having someone to talk to about the new Avengers movie during your coffee break. It’s about the fact that people can also talk about their personal lives, therefore it is easier for them to empathize together. Even a brief conversation about something near and dear to their heart can give a sense of security to the other person.

As a result, we will be less hesitant if, for example, we want to ask for help with work-related things. Likewise, it will be easier for everyone in the team, not just a few noisy individuals, to express their views and respect each other whilst doing so. And this is the main thing that makes the team successful and moves it forward.

In a good team, everyone is equal, and no one is afraid to contribute
with their opinion.This is the fundamental thing that can help solve 
severe problems quickly.        

The advantage of creating personal maps is that you integrate each team member equally.?You will make the?interaction?easier for introverts and people who may find it more difficult to start a conversation. You can also easily and quickly?integrate a new member?into the team. If you have a team that does not spend enough time together in person, the personal map can help to bring them together, at least imaginarily.

Why did I decide to use this practice?

It’s been now all most?4+ years since I am experimenting with Personal Map?with various Agile Coaching and Consulting engagement. This article especially focuses on one of my most recent Agile Transformation Consulting assignment with one of my Sweden-based Telecommunication clients started in Q1 2021. This experimentation was carried out for one of their Program consisting of ~80 Individuals - ~9 teams.?I was onboarded as an Agile Coach for one of their division which is going through a transformation.

The Program is quite diversified both in terms of demography and experience. I observed the groups for some time, and it was evident that the communication among the team members was not good, and when I tried to understand the real cause by using the 5 whys exercise with team members it was evident that they feel shy even to talk to their team members for a small chit chat because they are not confident enough for speak and most of them were infect introvert.

For a unit to work as one team, communication plays a very important role which further boost trust, collaboration among team members

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 use this practice?

Phase 1 - Know Your Team (KYT)

It's important for me as an agile coach that the Team can understand why this practice is important for them and KYT is a great tool to let them realize.

• I started with sharing the KYT checklist with each team member
• KYT checklist consists of team member names and some categories like sports, hobbies, family, etc.
• Each team member need to fill and then I aggregated the data
• When I shared the outcome of the exercise all team members were shocked to know that know very little about the other team members.

Phase 2 - Initial Kick-off

• I started by explaining what Management 3.0 is followed by the personal maps
• I highlighted the purpose and outcome of the exercise.?

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:

• Sports
• 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) (Team Personal Map)

I asked the team members to prepare Team Personal map-based personal maps of individual team members and try to find similarities and differences.

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

This variation is for all 9 teams within a program. 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.

Personal Maps Remote Teams (Tools and Techniques):

Since Q2 2020 as working remotely is now a new normal therefore it is important for the teams to use effective tools and techniques while working remotely and to establish new normal it is very important that teams outline what kind of information we share, how we communicate with each other, and how we know what each other are doing and virtual team agreements are a great way to establish the foundation.

I coached the teams to establish virtual team agreements on three categories

1. Information
2. Communication
3. Collaboration.

• The idea is for the team to define the information they need for the projects they work on, the communication protocols necessary to get their work done, and the tools they need so that everyone knows what the other is working on.
• Based on the virtual team agreement team decided to use Microsoft teams channels, Microsoft teams breakout rooms along with Microsoft whiteboard for brainstorming and discussions
• I trained my teams to use Microsoft PowerPoint for Personal Maps exercise.
• I use virtual team ice breakers like 2 truth one lies, scavenger hunts, take the picture of ... for check-ins.

My experience as a facilitator:

• 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.
• Great practice which can be used as an ice breaker.
• 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 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.
• Personal maps are better compared to Instagram and Facebook to know your colleagues because it gives a special touch when you write on the wall.
• Personal Maps practice allows feedback, communication, teamwork, and collaboration to occur quickly, easily, and naturally within the group of participants
• 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.
• It is a clear opportunity to learn more about team members including some intrinsic and hidden facts.

Core learning observed:

• 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.
• 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 what you would like to ask in advance. During the interview, we tend to forget to ask important things.
• Keep it simple start with simple categories like education, hobbies, etc.
• Visualize team personal map at the wall so that everybody can look into it, especially great help for new team members to connect with senior members.
• In my case, one trend came out is the majority of team members wanted to learn Machine Learning 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 an ML program, partnered with one of the online learning platforms along with several digital in-house SME sessions for the entire Program. Incrementally, based on the nomination process, people started getting themselves trained and up-skilled, so its a great tool to get to know the hidden ambitions

Next action in the pipeline:

• Would like to introduce a Psychological safety check for the teams before starting the exercise so that team members feel safe and open to share. Many tools are available on the internet like fearless organization scan.
• Would like to invite leadership, finance and HR people as well to strengthen the communication with the team
• With Personal maps at the multiple Teams level, I have relatively booming success in bringing empathy and making the teamwork a cohesive unit. This success helped me to try the same exercise at the program level for other lines of business, each line of business consists of 8-9 teams (80+ team members) including PO, scrum masters, leadership, and support functions.
• To initiate the process in Q1 2022 I am going to train Scrum Master and chief scrum masters on personal maps for separate lines of business and then in Q2 2022 we are going to plan the first personal maps exercise for that other business unit, it's going to be exciting.

Conclusion:

This experiment helped everybody to get to know each other and to map the common things.?Everybody would love to share their life which nobody knows which means they are now open and feel much safer, which is a vital sign for team psychology safety.

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 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/