TELEWORK COACHING - Way to win over a team as a new Agile Coach/Scrum Master

It has been more than a year now while most of us are WFH. It has become a new normal. It’s hard for a person to be a part of a new team or a new organization during these times while everyone is working remotely. It’s more of a challenge for a Scrum Master or an Agile Coach role whose primary job is to extensively connect with people to influence a positive change. I have friends who recently switched jobs and though their onboarding was smooth, but they are feeling the heat while working with their teams. They are finding it hard understand the people and processes, which in turn stopping them to determine the best course of action.

I like to share the approach I took over the last few months while working with a new team. I named it as ‘Telework Coaching’. This is the agile remote version of "management by walking around." In the beginning of your engagement with a new team or in a new company, I recommend you invest on a good headphone (you need to be putting them on for a lot of time) & an ergonomically friendly chair. During this time, you want to attend all the regular meetings and events and watch as many of the day-to-day processes as possible. Spend significant amount of your time to understand the workflow, pain points, dependencies, vibes, culture and attitude of the people. The purpose is to collect qualitative information, listen to complaint & suggestions, build genuine connects, and keep a finger on the pulse of the organization. Get into team’s technical discussions, Scrum of Scrums, have GTKY (get to know you) sessions with individuals, schedule virtual coffee meetings with your teams. Your outlook calendar should be blocked whole day for initial few weeks. Stay curious, ask lots of questions, really listen to the answers, build trust and relationship, and thank everyone for their time. Never be in a hurry to implement a new idea or process change. It may be tempting but hold on your horses. Treat initial 2-4 weeks strictly as an observation phase. Get to know how things work first. Listen your way to earning people’s trust and learn what the team or organization is really like. Then you'll be ready to move forward and help the team.