Implementing Agile Values and Principles: Chapter 2 (4th post)
A few years ago I wrote Understanding Agile Values and Principles (https://www.infoq.com/minibooks/agile-values-principles/). I’m working on a follow-up book about implementing them entitled Implementing Agile Values and Principles. I will post draft parts of the book on Medium.com as I finish them. I would certainly be interested in hearing people’s opinions about the draft material which I will certainly consider in making revisions as I work toward the final version.
This tenth post is the draft of a final part of the Communication topic in the second chapter.
Gossip
A truly unfortunate form of communication can be gossip. However, there are different opinions about what the word means. For most people the word implies negative talk about another person or group which is conducted when they are not present. A person wanting to talk with you might hope you would be willing to participate in such a talk.
Some people look at gossip as a normal part of people being involved with one another. They see a large part of conversations as gossip. However, they may see this as simply be how (social) information gets shared when people are together. With people so dispersed as opposed to physically present, they may feel a loss at not being able to exchange ideas this way. It’s harder to have such ad hoc interactions over something like Zoom or MS Teams, especially if it is being recorded.
Others see “gossip” as rumors and hearsay rather than objective fact and useful, informal discussions around collaboration. Such collaborative intent would be ruined if people felt such discussions were just about talking behind their back.
If someone does approach you saying something like “I really have to talk to you about <someone>” and explains their concern/objection, you could respond with “Really, what happened when you talked to them about that?” It’s a powerful question because they were likely not expecting such a response and you immediately avoid being drawn into offering some opinion about the person mentioned or their behavior. If they say something in response such as, “I haven’t, that’s why I’ve come to you,” you can respond with “What do you think would happen if you did?” Now it’s a coaching opportunity rather than gossip.
And be sure that if you fall into gossiping, as private as the moment might be, it will get back to other people, even the one gossiped about. Your accumulated trust from others and credibility will be gone.
Feedback
A continuous feedback culture is important to build the habit of exchanging constructive feedback among team members. Such feedback helps the team clarify understanding, think in new ways, make timely corrections to work behavior, and overall provide useful learning to individuals and the team.
Constructive feedback focuses on behavior by objectively articulating the impact of that behavior on how a situation could have been handled better or or how a good behavior might be made better in the spirit of continuous improvement.
However, realize that what you may say is less important than what you help others tell you. This makes the feedback a dialogue rather than directive talk. It also means you should be prepared to be influenced by what you hear. A good dialogue should lead to discovery. Therefore, it’s about trying to discover the right thing to do, not being right. This discovery will be of greater benefit than debating whose idea is the right one.
There are many Agile opportunities for people to get and give useful feedback. There are daily technical interactions where people can share insights and information. There are regularly scheduled team meetings each day and over the course of the agile iteration: iteration planning, daily meetings, the iteration review, and the retrospective. I’ll come back to all of these in more specific terms in later chapters.
However, for now, the important thing to remember is that these meetings reduce the delay in getting such feedback after an event occurs that calls for reflection. Teams under pressure to deliver may feel they don’t have the time for clear reflection at such times, even choosing to skip some to get the work done. The inclination for this to happen should be resisted by team facilitators and organizational leaders.
Feedback does have a cost, so using the opportunities to get feedback should become more effective and be an object of improvement itself. Feedback, in and of itself, does not tell you what to do about that feedback. As mentioned in Chapter 1, an agile approach does not fix anything itself. There must be a commitment to act on the feedback in a useful manner. Action can be more useful in short, simple experiments using the learning from each one to make the next step better rather than trying to be “right” at every step. More frequent feedback and small improvement steps can reduce the cost of engaging in feedback.
Judgment as Individual Feedback
So far the discussion hasn’t been specifically targeted at feedback to an individual, but that is certainly an important aspect of feedback for team facilitators, coaches, and management leadership. The key is to make the feedback as nonjudgmental as possible and, surprisingly, complements are as much of a judgement as criticisms. We like to hear the former rather than the latter, but both suggest that the person giving the feedback has some authority on the subject. While it may be true, such an authoritative stance can raise a person’s defensiveness.
Nonjudgmental feedback states what was done, how the person giving feedback was affected by that, and what need of theirs was or was not met. A good opening questions might be “What do you think has or has not worked in what has been done?” It focuses on the behavior rather than the person and initially allows the person to engage in self-evaluation. But it might also be effective to ask, “What challenges were there to get <some activity> done as fully as you would have liked?”
Again, powerful questions, rather than statements, can make feedback less psychologically difficult for the person receiving that feedback.
However, what do you do if you are the recipient of negative feedback? Such feedback, affecting us emotionally, can make us defensive, angry, and self-conscious. Depending on your own self-image you may feel you need to respond by challenging the feedback or shrinking back from doing so. Neither one is going to help you achieve a satisfactory result from the feedback.
The first thing to try to do is to understand how you respond to feedback that challenges your self-image. It can help to put the feedback into context with everything else about yourself, self-affirming that the feedback is not everything about you.
Another thing to try is to ask your own powerful questions of the person giving feedback to try to learn more about their perspective in giving the feedback. You may have made some improvement, but people don’t instantly notice and, if you don’t have an existing, useful relationship with the person offering the feedback, this can be discouraging.
Unfortunately, getting critical feedback from people may cause us to avoid dealing with them. While it may be hard, if you sense no malice in the feedback, as hard as it might have been to hear it, you should probably develop a closer relationship with that person and seek more frequent feedback.
Perhaps you’ve been in sessions where you were asked “What feedback do you have” or even asked this yourself of others. You may have observed that little or no response is offered. The word “feedback’” may be connected to something critical and people may be reluctant to criticize someone, especially someone in authority, in an open session.
On the other hand, asking “What advice do you have?” can open up the discussion. The word “advice” is more welcoming and suggests your response can be helping the person asking the question. It sounds like you are inviting feedback and feel the people you ask have potentially valuable knowledge.
Impact Feedback
One approach for providing feedback is known as Impact Feedback. It can be used to provide feedback to a person on something you observed and how you felt about it, then get them to reflect on what happened, what they thought about it, and what could be done going forward.
It can be used to note something you have observed and how you feel about it without necessarily focusing on responses from a particular person. You can also do this to complement what someone else has done that you felt was helpful or to point out something you might like to see done. In the latter case, after stating how you feel, you could suggest an action to get what you think is needed.
For example, there might be concern about how long a certain regular meeting was taking. It might bluntly be said that “this meeting takes too long you need to stay within the planned times.” It sounds accusative, uses the word “you” which can put people on the defensive, and doesn’t really offer any idea for where to go.
Alternatively, it could be said this way: “I’ve noted that our meeting seems to run longer than scheduled and I am concerned about how this impacts other work. What could we do to reduce the time, but still get the benefit from the meeting?” You aren’t blaming anyone and use the words “I” and “we” which suggest this. You also give people some idea of where they might go in discussing the subject. Finally, you are asking others to respond with their ideas about the length of the meeting.
Use of a powerful question rather than a statement is very effective in such a situation.
“Yes And” vs “Yes But”
Another idea is something I was introduced to at one of the early Agile Alliance conferences: “yes and” compared to “yes but.” Examples given to illustrate this idea came from jazz and improv theater.
Think about being in a meeting where you presented an idea. The next person who speaks up starts with “Yes but….” What do you think might be coming next? The “Yes” part may just be a weak nod to what you said before the “but” comes in to disagree with what you said sending the discussion in a different direction.
Thinking back to Chapter 1 and John Cutler’s two types of change, “Yes but” usually comes before a subtractive comment. That is, it turns away from what you just said, cutting it off. An additive approach might have been for that responding person to say “Yes and” with the impression that they wanted to add to the idea not reject it.
Jazz and improv need “Yes and” behavior to be effective. Jazz musicians listen to what the other musicians are playing and, when they play, attempt to complement what another musician introduced. They can take it in another direction but not by simply ignoring what the other musician has been doing and starting up some completely different melodic line. In improv, when one performer has established a story line, the next performer does not cut that off to create some totally different idea ignoring what has been established. They add to it but can take it into another interesting, but complementary direction.
The use of “Yes, and” instead of “Yes, but” is a way to take another’s ideas and build upon them. This transcends compromise by implying more positive give and take and by building on an increasing team collaborative idea. This form of communication offers the potential to bring forth people’s creativity and innovation and can lead to results that none of the participants had anticipated.
Performance Feedback Changes
Finally, it is sometimes observed that an agile approach encourages team-focused results through individuals working collaboratively. However, at the end of the year, most companies then conduct individual performance evaluations, suggesting that what individuals accomplished is the important focus. Also, the opportunities for performance feedback may be limited to a mid-year review (if that even happens) and the classic end-of-year discussion.
I suggest two changes if this is what you experience:
· In the spirit of frequent feedback, ask managers to have at least a 30-minute talk with everyone that reports to them at least once a month. This should strengthen the relationship between managers and their direct reports and avoid any end-of-year (or even mid-year) surprises. These talks should be more about “What’s been going on? What do you need?” as opposed to how the person is meeting their performance goals. That topic will likely come up but not through blunt discussion of key objectives.
· As part of the typical performance plan, include a section that talks about what the individual did to support their team and help other people on the team become successful. For example, this could involve helping others with their work in some substantive fashion or helping them learn something new. This could have a specific goal or two where it can be clear how such help is needed, but, for the most part, it should be something that the individual personally decides to do during the year to help in ways that might not have been predicted.
Much more could be said about communication practice details, but the topics in this section should give you a good idea of some places you might start.
