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The quality of our thinking depends on the quality of the questions we ask ourselves. Therefore by extension, the quality of thinking of our team members depends on the quality of questions we ask them. Asking open questions is a powerful technique that can allow others to verbalise their thoughts, clarify their thinking and come up their own solutions. It can help remove blocker and it can be hugely empowering for our team members. The distinction between open and closed questions is that closed questions can be answered with a yes or a no while open questions can't. It can be simple to rephrase a closed question to make it an open question. Let's see some examples below: Closed Question: Did she agree to your request? Open Question: How did she respond to your request? Closed Question: Did you solve similar problems in the past? Open Question: How have you solved similar problems in the past? Closed Question: Do you want to try this? Open Question: What do you want to try? Open questions encourage more information to be shared. They encourage participation and involvement and invoke ideas and thoughts. This can be hugely beneficial specially in environments requiring creative thinking and problem solving.

Good leaders bring their coaching skills to enrich 1-2-1 conversations with members of their team. This includes active listening, asking open questions and empowering team members to come up with their own solutions. Here are some tips that can help with having great conversations. 1. Turn up This sounds simple but it can be hard to prioritise your 1-2-1s in a world of back-to-back meetings and urgent issues requiring immediate attention. It's ok to reschedule once in a while but doing it regularly sends a message to your team members that you don't value you time with them. Pick times of the day or week that are usually less chaotic and do have a conversation to explain if you must cancel. 2. Be 100% present Turn off you phone and email. Make sure you choose a quiet place to allow you to focus 100%. 3. Set expectations Explain that you are taking a coaching stance. This means you'll be asking questions to help them clarify their thinking in order to come up with their own solutions. If they want advice, then they should ask for it explicitly. It could be quite frustrating if they are expecting you to advice them or provide answers, and instead you continue to ask questions. 4. Listen to understand Listen to them. Listen to understand, to what’s being said, and also what’s not being said. Pay attention to their body language. Read this article for more details on listening skills. 5. Ask open questions Ask open question to help them think through the issues at hand. Hold you silence when there’s an awkward pause or when you feel you should say something. Count in your head: one Mississippi, two Mississippi.... Hold your silence longer than you think you need to hold it. Read this article for more details on this topic. 6. Empower The core belief in coaching is that the mind with the problem also has the solution to that problem. Allow your team members to come up with their own solutions. 7. Actions and Accountability Help them come up their own actions. Ask the following (or similar) questions: What actions do you want to take to achieve your intended outcome? What’s the one thing you can to today to move closer to the solution? Who can help you? How are you going to hold yourself to account? (Note: It's not how will I will hold you to account, but how you’ll hold yourself to account)

Good listening is a critical skill for anyone especially leaders. This skill is often overlooked. Stephen Covey, the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, said: People don't listen to understand. They listen to reply. The collective monologue is everyone talking and no one listening. Listening is a secret superpower we all have and it can provide huge benefits for us and our teams if utilised effectively. There are several listening models - these can be described in different way. There is no right or wrong here. Personally, I like to think of this in three categories - these are layer of the onion if you like: Attentive listening Attentive listeners focus on the speaker and work hard to eliminate distractions. They are also patient and let the speaker finish their thoughts without interruption. Responsive listening Responsive listeners demonstrate to the speaker that they are listening and understanding what is being said, which encourages the speaker to continue. Encouraging responses may include both nonverbal and verbal cues, such as, smiling, nodding and interjecting with "ok" or "uh-huh" at appropriate times. Active listening Active listening combines the skills of attentive listening and responding. An active listener monitors the communication of a message at both the content and feeling level. They pay attention to what people say, how they say it, and why they’re saying it. As leader, it's critical that we develop our active listening skills to fully understand the needs of our teams and build strong relationships.

My first introduction to Scrum was when the organisation I was working for decided to embark on an Agile transformation. We all received the same training - a two-day Certified Scrum Master course. It was a great experience. One of the best courses I had been on. As fate would have it, I found myself in a ScrumMaster role a few months later. I was happy! I could now apply what I had learnt and put it into practice. So I jumped right in. I quickly realised how näive and ill prepared I had been for this role. I was not equipped to deal with conflict within the team. I didn’t have the tools to have difficult conversations with my line manager and the leadership team about their behaviours that impacted team morale and productivity. It was a very uncomfortable situation. Let’s not forget we are talking about making a change to our ways of working, a change in mindset, a change in behaviours. There is no undisputed model. There are multiple models. Everyone is experimenting. It’s R&D on a massive scale. Looking back, I think it was unfair to expect a newly trained ScrumMaster to do everything I was asked to do. Some of these expectations came from me and some came from people around me. Unfortunately, I’ve seen this all too often. I’ve seen organisations expect too much from newly trained ScrumMasters, Product Owners and in fact from people in other roles including team leaders, senior managers and even executives. This causes a lot of pain and suffering for individuals themselves and people around them. Does this resonate with you? Remember, just because someone has a job title, a role and even some relevant training, it doesn’t mean they are well equipped to succeed and thrive in that role from day one. In the process of learning and growing in my career, I have taken some unusual and sometimes difficult decisions. I have pushed myself outside my comfort zone and invested time and effort in acquiring new skills and enhancing existing ones. If you are a ScrumMaster or a Product Owner, what are your plans for investing in yourself? What do you intend to do to increase your Agile Mastery in the new year?

The essence of Agile is customer centricity - with customers at the heart of the experience. As we consider Agile practices, it is important to highlight three aspects that support this: 1. Prioritisation of work 2. Responding to change 3. Delivering value - early, often and incrementally Firstly, the ability to prioritise work based on customers’ needs is key. A product backlog is a list of all features. It is prioritised based on value with highest value items at the top. Product development teams pick work from the top of the list and add it to their release and sprint backlogs, and work through it, thus working on the most valuable item at any moment in time. Secondly, the ability to respond quickly to customers’ needs is ingrained in Agile practices. This is achieved as teams work in short cycles or sprints. Sprint duration is typically 1-4 weeks. Thirdly, in Agile, the primary measure of progress is a working product or service. This is represented by a potentially shippable product increment. This allows customers to derive value from the product early and often. This is also an opportunity to provide valuable feedback to product development teams. I would argue that we can summarise the Agile Manifesto - that we Agilists hold so dear, as simply customer centricity or placing customers at the heart of the experience. Let’s evaluate each statement from the Agile Manifesto in turn. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. This is associated with creating independent, cross-functional, empowered and high performing teams. This creates a positive work environment, which is great for everyone involved of course. At the same time, I would assert that one of the main reasons we focus on creating such a positive working environment is that it enables us to better serve the needs of our customers. Therefore, it aligns with customer centricity. Tick! Working software over comprehensive documentation Customers value a working solution that addresses their needs above anything else. This again aligns with customer centricity. Tick! Customer collaboration over contract negotiation This aligns directly with customer centricity so no further explanation required. Tick! Responding to change over following a plan Again, from customers’ perspective, it’s important that their emergent needs are served rather than following a pre-agreed potentially out-of-date plan. Here we see customer centricity in action again. Tick! In summary, the essence of Agile can be summarised as simply as customer centricity. Agile puts customers at the heart of the experience through prioritising their needs, working in short feedback cycles in response to those needs, and delivering value early, often and incrementally.