In the fresh new series ‘Agile Reflection of the Day‘, inspired by the inspirational Yves Hanoulle, I ponder ‘Who is your hero, and what would he/she say/do if he was on your project today?‘.

The one figure that stands out for me in my agile work is my father-in-law. His name was Roger Norman (it still is, but sadly he passed away a couple of years ago). He wasn’t a hero in the cape and red underpants sense, his particular heroic tendencies were infinitely more subtle than that. He was a engineer (a proper one!) and retired as a Production Manager in a pump making factory.

The qualities that inspire me about Roger can be distilled down to his decency as a human being which manifest in being respectful to everyone , listening and being interested in each person, a fantastic ability to see the good in anyone, being non-judgmental and a willingness to try something to see if it might work  (and then quickly inspect and adapt a way to make it work). He was also a very hard working guy.

In my work as a coach, facilitating transformational change in organizations and teams, I work closely with everyone in the organization – from management teams to janitors and everyone in between and I end up having multiple clients and client teams. All these participants in the pursuit of organizational success (commercial or otherwise) often have conflicting personal agendas and motivations. Compounded by the recognized shortage of good social skills in the IT sector as a whole ( mostly the ability to collaborate and communicate, but sometimes extending to indviduals’ personal hygiene!), it makes for an often difficult role (as a facilitator of interaction and collaboration).

One client comes to mind – they have very clear lines between the ‘business’ and the ‘engineers’. ‘Us’ and ‘them’ (always present, but changing – depending on who you speak to). In my first month with the client, someone said to me ‘The business generally don’t talk to the engineers and the engineers never listen anyway’.

With this team, when facilitation becomes frustrating (as it often becomes) and I want to just yell -  ‘you are wasting my time and your money, why can’t you just have a simple conversation!$£@!!’ – I conjure up Roger and imagine he is pair-facilitating with me.

Roger brings his calm and measured approach – assuming nothing and putting everyone at ease. He quietly listens, sometimes briefly bringing a similar experience from his engineering days to the discussion. Roger reminds us that we can work together, he asks simple probing questions – that he often knows the answer to – but which encourage dialogue and breakdown of barriers. All of a sudden people who are against each other are talking calmly and constructively together.   Then I imagine that Roger helps to emerge some action from all this dialogue to at least make sure more of it happens or maybe even some working software at the end of the sprint!

Every coach and organization needs at least one person with these qualities I described about Roger. And such people exist, even if these qualities are often suppressed by everything else. We can all get a little better at listening, at empathy and at respecting everyone. Go on , just try.

Tags: Agile Coaching, retrospectives

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Agile Coaching, agile, blogs, improvement, retroflection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.