Many books on agile teaching have mentioned that agile teams should be self-organized, participatory in decision-making and efficient in cooperation. However, this is the ideal of many agile teams, not the reality. How can agile teams achieve self-organization, self-discipline and efficient collaboration? What is the secret of a high-performance team? Do personal superpowers matter? Or is teamwork more important? It is not realistic to have an all-star luxury team. Besides, all-star football teams don't always win the championship. Barcelona Football Club, which owns Lionel Messi of the World Player of the Year, has had bad luck recently. However, if the whole team can work together in Qi Xin, even if there are no stars, they can still achieve good results.
Five obstacles to teamwork is a good book to solve the mystery of teamwork. This book deeply analyzes the five obstacles that affect teamwork and how to break them. I believe it will help you! At the end of the article, I will talk about how agile teams achieve high performance in combination with this book.
Obstacle 1: Lack of trust
Trust is the foundation of teamwork. You can't call it a team without trust. In this book, trust means that team members believe that their colleagues' words and deeds are well-intentioned, so they don't need to be too careful or wary of each other in the team, and members can accept each other's criticism with confidence. Mutual trust means that everyone communicates openly and sincerely with each other. Can your team members trust each other? Do you know each other? Can everyone safely talk about their weaknesses in the team? Do you actively lend a helping hand and offer suggestions to other players' difficulties, or are you silent and indifferent?
The trust mentioned in this book is a kind of trust that dares to expose its weaknesses. A high-performance team doesn't mean that each of us is omnipotent, but that each of us is not perfect, but we don't need to hide in the team. Therefore, daring to expose and admit your weaknesses is a key step in building trust.
How do we build trust? A very simple and effective way is for everyone to share their personal experiences and backgrounds with each other. For example, where were you born? Then what is your experience, what are you proud of, what are your profound things, what is the most painful challenge he has encountered, and so on, so that everyone can know more about each other. Thereby generating trust. By sharing some important events and moments in your life with each other, you will find that others are no different from you, and everyone has the same joys and sorrows. Through such sharing, our relationship will become better.
Another way is to do a personality test. The DDISCcpersonality test is very common. Through the test, you will find that everyone has different personality characteristics. Knowing your own personality can help you have a clear understanding of yourself and help you understand your own personal characteristics, so as to find a more suitable position. Knowing others can help you better understand your own behavior patterns and cooperate with others better.
There is no good or bad personality. No personality is perfect. Leadership personality can make decisions quickly, but may not be good at cooperating with others. A healthy team should be composed of people with different personalities. A team can't all want to be generals and command others.
Another very good method is outdoor team building. Establish non-work contact through games. Even if you don't do anything, just eat, sing, talk about children, movies, anything. Do this activity a few times more, and you will find that everyone's relationship has become closer.
As a leader of a team, what should be done to promote trust between people? First, create appropriate league building activities to promote mutual trust. Second, create a safe and mutually encouraging team environment. Only in this way can everyone confidently show their weaknesses and be willing to discuss and argue frankly. I once joined a great club, where people were very active, helping and encouraging each other, and the atmosphere was completely different. Even newcomers will be affected by this and become active. This is the influence of the team environment on individuals, and individuals will be infected by the environment. However, when he returns to his daily life, he will become the same again. This is the role of the team environment. One of the main functions of team leadership is to create an environment suitable for the team.
The environment of the team depends largely on whether the team has the same values and principles. Generally speaking, it is a different way. If there is, trust will be easier to establish. Teamwork will also be easier. For example, the Toastmaster organization I joined, after several years, I found that all the small partners who can persist are a group of people who recognize Touma's values and practice them.
Obstacle 2: Fear of conflict
Have you noticed that some teams are particularly quiet? On the surface, everyone is polite, but in fact, they are lifeless and lack vitality. The reason may be a lack of trust. So everyone is afraid of arguing, and the result may be that no one really cares about the decisions and results of this team. Therefore, the second obstacle of high-performance team is that the team is afraid of conflict and argument.
A philosopher once said: The biggest problem is that there is no problem. As a team leader, we must consciously create or stimulate everyone's discussion, throw out our own questions, and actively invite others to participate in expressing their views. No matter what your opinion is, you should encourage a positive attitude before discussing the feasibility. So we must keep a safe environment. Pay attention to let everyone focus on the topic of discussion, and adhere to the principle of focusing on things rather than people. Only in this way can we gradually cultivate a team atmosphere that actively participates in the debate.
Obstacle 3: Lack of commitment
If everyone avoids talking about it, it's none of their business. Hang it high. Then it will lead to the third obstacle, lack of commitment. People either don't agree, even if they do, they won't admit it.
One reason for the lack of commitment is that people do not participate in decision-making and discussion. Without participation, the results are naturally not recognized. The best way is to let everyone actively participate in the discussion of team affairs. There are two simple and effective steps. First, participate in the discussion of team goals. Find out the meaning of team goals, and then reach a * * * understanding with everyone. Second, promise to work hard for the team goals.
In the process of acquiring * * * knowledge, two tendencies should be avoided. 1, it's too idealistic to pursue absolute agreement and ask everyone to reach complete agreement. The team should compromise when necessary. I hope I can be absolutely sure. A goal without risk is not a valuable goal. So don't pursue absolute certainty.
In order to reach an agreement as soon as possible, team discussion and decision-making must be time-limited. If some places are really uncertain, we can also carry out some exploratory experiments and make a decision on the basis of practice. An excellent team leader should be able to give full play to the principle of democratic centralism. He should have democracy, fully listen to everyone's opinions, and concentrate on decision-making at an appropriate time and be brave in taking risks.
However, once a decision is made, all team members must be committed to implementing it together. It is necessary to unify the caliber and express consistent information to the outside world. There must also be concerted action. As Intel advocates, even if I don't agree, I will carry it out.
Obstacle 4: shirking responsibility
In terms of management and work quality, it is often easy to evade responsibility. After all, it is the easiest to throw the pot. In teamwork, shirking responsibility means that team members can't remind their colleagues in time when they see that their performance or behavior is harmful to the collective interests. Everyone turned a blind eye to the elephant in the room.
How can we ensure that everyone does not shirk their responsibilities?
Announce clear work objectives and standards. Let everyone have laws to follow. Ambiguity of goals and responsibilities is the enemy of responsibilities. In addition, it should be strictly enforced. Otherwise, people will think that you are just pretending.
Check the results regularly. The implementation of work objectives can be published regularly. Otherwise, relying entirely on consciousness will buy hidden dangers to avoid responsibility.
Team reward. Students who perform well can be rewarded and cultivate a responsible atmosphere. I encourage my coach's scrum team to set up a reward area to recognize behaviors that embody team values. You can slowly drive the transformation of the whole team.
For team leaders, the best way is to set an example. When there are problems in the team, be brave to take responsibility and set an example for everyone. In addition, encourage a culture of mutual supervision. Finally, be prepared to point out the problem and solve it when no one comes forward.
Obstacle 5: Ignoring the results
The difference between a high-performance team and a general team lies in the output results of the team. High-performance teams pay attention to their own results and constantly strive to improve the team's results. In order to make the team successful, everyone should make every effort to achieve the team goals, instead of just focusing on the completion of their own tasks.
Do you know your team goals?
There are three classic questions in the daily station of Scrum team: What did you do yesterday? What are you going to do today? What obstacles did you meet? However, these three questions are inaccurate. The version in the Scrum guide is:
? Yesterday, what did I do to help the development team achieve the sprint goal?
? Today, what should I do to help the development team achieve the Sprint goal?
? Are there any obstacles that prevent me or the development team from achieving the Sprint goals?
Therefore, the real Scrum team is striving to achieve a Sprint (a work cycle of the Scrum team) every day. Pursuing the balance between certainty and flexibility.
Know this team, The Secret Behind.
Jim smith said in Agile Project Management that leading a team is better than managing tasks. But leading a team is far more complicated than managing a task. Learning this book made me realize the reasons behind the superficial problems of the team. Many previously puzzled questions have been answered. For example, I once found that many people only talked about two questions at the station meeting. What did I do yesterday? What am I going to do today? Few people talk about the third question. What difficulties have I encountered? At first, I felt that everyone was embarrassed, or the problem was not serious. After reading this book, I realized that the real reason is the lack of trust in the team, so everyone dare not expose their weaknesses. Now I begin to understand what happened in the team. Many questions in the team can be answered in this book.
Team health care doctor
Do you know how to evaluate your team? Is your team good or not? How are you doing? Even team leaders who live together day and night may not be able to evaluate accurately, because these are very abstract questions. Agile project managers or Scrum master cannot assume that your team can be United and intimate. When the team encounters problems, you can take the principles mentioned in this book as a reference and diagnose the team like a healthy doctor. It provides a concise team performance questionnaire to help evaluate the team. Corresponding solutions are also provided according to the different symptoms of the team. It has a strong guiding significance. I once used the test form in the book for evaluation in an agile team, and started targeted improvement according to the evaluation results. We start with building team trust and help the team to establish a unified value system, hoping to guide the team to maturity step by step, and then update this situation.
A Leadership Guide for Agile Team Leaders
Although the story in the first half of this book is a fictional story, it has created a powerful change leader-Catherine. She is experienced and courageous, leading a company management team that is on the verge of collapse out of the predicament step by step. Finally, she can turn the tide and lead everyone to break through many obstacles, get out of the fog and move towards success. Her series of strategies, actions, communication skills, leadership skills, how to trigger team changes, how to deal with unqualified players, how to win support, etc. It is of great guiding significance to the leading bodies.
For agile teams, there are a lot of agile methods and tools on the market at present, but they are generally based on the assumption of "perfect agile team", and rarely involve how to implement them in imperfect teams in reality. As the leader of an agile team, we can't take it for granted that as long as we master some agile methods, we can successfully implement them in the team. Otherwise, you will encounter many unexpected difficulties. Only by fully analyzing the current situation of your team, finding out the obstacles of teamwork, learning Catherine's leadership art, and adding appropriate agile practices, can you successfully promote Agile.
For most real agile teams, these five obstacles also exist to some extent. As the leader of an agile team, how can we achieve high performance? Here are some of my practices to discuss with you.
1, to build a team with consistent values.
Trust is the foundation of teamwork. Agile teams are no exception. Agile teams advocate * * * sharing office space, standing for meetings every day, and strengthening communication between people, all of which help to build trust. But even this would not be enough In addition to organizing the team building activities mentioned in the book, I suggest that agile teams can also establish team values as soon as possible.
Why does Agile put forward four values and the 13 principle? Only by recognizing these values and principles can we act according to these values and promote the implementation of Agile.
The same is true of the team. Different team members have different backgrounds and personalities. Only by establishing the same values as the team can it become a unified criterion for everyone's daily work. Everyone can coordinate their actions as a whole. I once led an agile team to spend an afternoon discussing their values, and wrote the values recognized by most people as team values on the team's home page.
In addition, values should not only stay on paper, but also be transformed into daily actions. Therefore, as a team leader or team coach, we should constantly remind everyone to follow the values, encourage behaviors that reflect the values and correct behaviors that do not conform to the values in our daily activities, so that we can truly become the genes of the team and become the internal norms of team members through continuous strengthening.
2. Establish a safe and pleasant environment.
Agile teams advocate participatory decision making. However, if team members lack trust and are afraid of conflicts and retaliation from others, then participatory decision-making will become a form and empty talk. Team leaders have the responsibility to establish a safe and trusting environment, so that everyone dares to speak, is not afraid of saying the wrong thing, encourages beneficial arguments instead of being amiable, and thus really produces innovative ideas instead of superficial participation.
A better way is to use brainstorming more. Encourage everyone to put forward more ideas, take an appreciative attitude towards all ideas, and finally discuss the voting decision. Over time, people will be more and more willing to put forward their own opinions.
3. Emphasize the overall goal of the team.
Agile teams emphasize * * * sharing responsibility. But * * * is also responsible for how to avoid becoming irresponsible, which requires leaders to have very clear standards (or the definition of DoD and Done) for the completion of each job. Strengthen the team's sense of purpose, and don't think that everything will be fine after completing a part. For example, in daily meetings, we should emphasize the overall goals of the team, not the individual goals. At the review meeting, should we evaluate whether the team goals have been achieved from the team's point of view? What should be done to guide everyone to reflect? For individual players with poor performance, coach guidance can be strengthened.
4. Use achievements as a tool to test yourself and your team.
Agile teams emphasize adaptability. But don't turn adaptability into an excuse for team procrastination or failure to achieve goals. Team leaders must measure their leadership ability with results. So is the team. Let the team gradually have such awareness. If, in the course of implementation, the situation does change, resulting in changes in the target (in general, we do not recommend changing the target in the middle of the sprint stage), then it is another matter. If there is no change, then it is best to reflect on the sprint goal at the review meeting. We can evaluate the team's performance by analyzing the team's speed change and burn-out chart. Then analyze the root cause with 5WHY work method and improve it in the future sprint. Only in this way can we keep improving.
No one is perfect, and neither is the team. It takes a long time to become a high-performance team, and it can't be established overnight. As long as we all uphold the same values, trust each other, argue actively, devote ourselves wholeheartedly and pay attention to team achievements, we will certainly succeed!