A little history

If you followed our first Agiliwhat course, you discovered that agility was created in the 90s by developers and for developers. They wanted to rethink the organization of their work in a more efficient and customer-friendly way. Then in 2001, 17 specialists came together to share their practices and experiences. From their reflections was born the renowned Agile Manifesto for software development. 4 values and 12 principles to lay the foundations for a culture that is more respectful of people in an increasingly vulnerable, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment.

The heart of agile: getting back to basics

Over the past 15 years, the literature on agility has grown, and agile frameworks have multiplied, gradually dissipating the very essence of the Agile Manifesto and the values it stands for. In 2015, Alistair Cockburn, one of the authors of the Manifesto, proposed to go back to basics with the heart of agility.

"Agile has become overly decorated. Let’s scrape away those decorations for a minute, and get back to the center of agile." - Alistair Cockburn

Radically simplifying by removing everything that is superfluous, the heart of agile is made of 4 verbs.

• Collaborate Collaborate closely with others to generate and develop better starting ideas.

• Deliver Deliver small probes initially to learn how the world really works. Expand deliveries as you learn to predict and influence outcomes.

• Reflect Reflect periodically, along the way. Think about what you've learned in your collaboration and from your deliveries.

• Improve Improve the direction of your ideas, their technical implementation, and your internal processes.

How to apply the heart of agile approach as a manager?

Agility is first and foremost a mindset. The heart of agile is an interpretation of agile to facilitate its appropriation. From this culture stem postures, attitudes, and practices that allow the application of the heart of agile values. In turn, it is because these practices exist that the agile mindset can be nurtured. A virtuous loop between values and practices is thus created.

According to Alistair Cockburn, one of the first questions to ask yourself in order to grasp the heart of agile mindset would be: "Can you give your manager bad news?"

What is implied by this question: do we trust ourselves and others enough to come up with new ideas and correct mistakes as soon as possible?

This is what the rest of this course is about: it all starts with psychological safety and confidence.

Here are some ways to explore as a manager to build trust within your team.

Getting to know each other

This confidence is built not by looking at the skills and successes of individuals, but by getting to know them and having a deep insight of their qualities.

Several ways are possible, here are some of them:

• Behavioural assessments Predictive Index, Process Communication, Belbin Method, MBTI...

• The Moving Motivators You can do these workshops on your own to get to know yourself, but also one-to-one, or in a team.

"Make Safety a Prerequisite"

Remember the second principle of the Modern Agile: "Make Safety a Prerequisite".

Building a climate of trust means offering an environment where respect is one of the main values of the team's framework.

It is possible to co-construct this framework with your team, but it is also a daily task. Express appreciation for every intervention and feedback (even if you disagree) to encourage different points of view. Address and ban any misbehaviours (inappropriate remarks, mockery, interrupted speech). It is important to show that everyone's voice matters.

Setting up discussion times

In order for people to speak freely, they need a framework. Several discussion times can be set up in your team. These discussion times can be ritualized (i.e. be regular):

• The retrospective, which collectively allows us to take stock of the past weeks and shed light on what worked or not for the team, in a continuous improvement approach.
• One-to-one interviews, which are privileged moments between the employee and the manager. It is also possible to create specific discussion times, depending on needs, in the form of team building workshops for example.

Talking about your mistakes and what you don't know

You are a manager, but you are still human.

To encourage your team to be more transparent about day-to-day problems and mistakes, it is up to you to lead by example (although it is not always easy for the ego). There is no such thing as perfection. Everyone can cut someone off, not really listen, or lose their temper. What matters is to be aware of it. Don't try to justify yourself, just be honest and admit your mistakes. Also highlight what you are going to do so that it does not happen again. If it is an employee who points out your mistake, thank them for taking a risk!

"If I trust you completely, then I require no explanation or communication of your actions whatsoever, because I know that whatever you are doing is in my best interests. On the other hand, if I don’t trust you at all, then no amount of talking, explaining, or reasoning will have any effect on me, because I do not trust that you are telling me the truth." Hard things - Undertaking in uncertainty - Ben Horowitz

Psychological safety is worked on day after day by creating a climate of trust.

There are two types of trust. The first is the most common: a posteriori trust.

It is based on the ability to predict a person's behaviour based on past events. That is, trusting someone once they have proven themselves. It is the belief that they will do an excellent job because they have always done so.

But by basing trust on results and merit, it does not let room for mistakes, and therefore does not allow to learn and grow.

A priori trust is based on the certainty that the person is doing and will do their best, that their intentions are good.

When this trust is established, communicated, and shared, there is no need to be wary or play a role. A priori trust allows you to be yourself, without fear of being blamed or judged. There is no effort to appear different (more serious, funnier, more educated...) or protective strategy. Everyone can focus their energy on their tasks and achieving their goals.

A small test to recognize a climate of trust in my team:

😌 Climate of trust:

• I can share my weaknesses and mistakes
• I ask for help when I feel the need
• I welcome suggestions
• I give the benefit of the doubt before drawing negative conclusions
• I can take risks
• I know the skills of my colleagues and I know how to use them to my advantage
• I apologize if needed, and I don't hold grudges if somebody apologize to me

😰 No climate of trust:

• I hide my weaknesses and mistakes from others because I am afraid they will be used against me
• I hesitate to ask for help because I don't want to appear incompetent
• I hold grudges against some colleagues
• I often wonder how to act or communicate because I fear the effects it may have
• I spend time discussing rumours
• I do not raise awareness about the problems encountered

And as a manager?

The most important posture a manager can take when they want to build a climate of trust within their team is to be the first who show vulnerability. That is to say, to share what they know, but also what they do not. This may seem paradoxical for a manager, as they are expected to have a reassuring and strong image. They must also sincerely believe (and share) that their team is doing their best.

By being honest and authentic, the manager invites the members of their team to do the same.

Once trust is established, the team can then take risks:

• Try new things, innovate
• Give their opinion, challenge the status quo
• Share an experience, even if it is a failure
• Say "I don't know"
• Ask for feedback before receiving it

"No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." Edmund Burke - English philosopher

What is psychological safety?

This notion of psychological safety is found as early as 1999 in the work of Amy Edmonson, professor of leadership and management at the Harvard Business School. Her studies led her to analyze the performance of medical teams. She observes this strange paradox: the teams that made the most dosing errors were in the best hospitals. After observing these teams directly in the field, she concluded that the most successful were not those who made the most mistakes, but those who exchanged the most. By communicating about their mistakes, these teams were able to learn, exchange knowledge, and continuously improve. In these teams, individuals were not afraid to appear incompetent or ignorant. There was what Amy Edmonson calls psychological safety.

The notion of psychological safety can thus be defined as "the possibility of being oneself, without fear of reprisals for one's image, situation, or career."

Why is it important?

What Amy Edmonson demonstrates is that psychological safety allows you to learn faster. It is not only an asset for individuals, but also for the organization. If employees can speak about their mistakes without risk of consequences, to say "I don't know" without appearing incompetent, or to question the status quo without risk of being blamed, then they have the freedom to learn, come up with new ideas, and innovate. The organization becomes more responsive and resilient.

These observations correlate with the results of a large study by Google in 2012. The Aristotle project aimed to determine what distinguished high-performing teams from others. Many hypotheses were considered: the bonds of friendship, the complementarity of characters, the level of competence... It appears that what distinguishes high-performance teams is none other than psychological safety.

Psychological safety is therefore the starting point to ensure not only the employee commitment, but also their productivity. The manager is one of the guardians of this psychological safety; he must guarantee it to their team and to themselves by making it a prerequisite.

"Make Safety a Prerequisite"

This is indeed the second principle of the Modern Agile: "Make Safety a Prerequisite". Making psychological safety a prerequisite means creating interpersonal relationships, where malicious acts and incivility are excluded. It is about creating an environment where a climate of trust prospers. People are not afraid to give their opinion, to make mistakes, to try new things, because they know that they will not be laughed at or blamed if they failed.

The book

With his bestseller "The 5 dysfunctions of a team", Patrick Lencioni gives us a model of behavior analysis of team members.

The book is divided into two parts. The first stages in the form of a fable the arrival of Kathryn Petersen as CEO of the fictitious firm DecisionTech. There, she discovers a Comex made up of people with undeniable intelligence, but with worse behavior than anything she had seen before.

“ Therefore, no decision was made, the discussions were endless and uninteresting, with not a lot of real oral exchanges; and everyone seemed to be desperately waiting for each meeting to come to an end. "

Does this description remind you real life situations? The second part of Patrick Lencioni's book focuses on analyzing his model and suggests some ways to escape the cycle of team dysfunctions.

According to the author, there are 5 dysfunctions and they are interrelated: lack of confidence, fear of confrontation, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results. They generate tensions, quarrels, misunderstandings and errors. Here’s how to recognize them and treat them according to Patrick Lencioni.

The first dysfunction, at the very base of the pyramid: the lack of trust between team members. This happens when team members are resistant to being vulnerable. This means the ability to show its weaknesses or mistakes. We recognize a team that lacks confidence when its members don’t share, or just a little, about their private life, encounter difficulties offering and asking for help or do not give each other constructive feedbacks.

A team in which there’s no trust is therefore not able to have sincere conversations, or passionate debates ... and this is the fear of confrontation. The members seem to always agree with each other. This is actually a false harmony, meetings are often boring and important or thorny topics are carefully avoided.

Hence, the team members are not ready to give their opinions or ideas and fall into a soft consensus. So, they can’t make confident decisions and commit to implementing them: that’s what we call a lack of commitment. We can see that kind of dysfunction in teams where decisions and discussions are questionned without clearly setting priorities and next steps.

If the team is not committed to clear decisions and does not engage its members in achieving these goals, then they develop an attitude that results in avoidance of accountability. People do not respect deadlines, they place the responsibility on their team leader for the any problem or they do not challenge their practice.

The consequence: inattention to results. People show their own need (career, ego, recognition...) before those of the team. These people will take credit for success at the expense of the efforts of the rest of the group. The team neither learns nor evolves.

As we can see, these dysfunctions are linked to each other. If the team allows any of these dysfunctions to set in, then all the work done by the team is deteriorating.

Possible solutions

To overcome these dysfunctions, Patrick Lencioni proposes some solutions to implement. I update them with some tools used at Extia.

Generate trust

Trust must start from the leader.

“This means the leader accepts the risk of losing face in front of his team members, so that they take the same risk.”

It is also important to build a framework where vulnerability is not blamed or mocked. The leader must be vigilant on this point in order to prohibit mockeries or insidious remarks to take place in the discussions.

Then, it is possible to work on exercises that aim to get to know each other.

• Sharing personal anecdotes to encourage empathy. Sharing a personal anecdote doesn't just happen at the coffee machine. This can become a real exercise for teams (especially those whose members do not know each other much). This can be done in a variety of ways: crossed Chinese portraits, realization of personal mindmaps...

• The team efficiency This is a workshop whose objective is to highligh the strengths and areas for improvement of each team member. At Extia, we use the Totem game to talk about the strengths and positive contributions of each team member. Using competency maps is also a good tool to learn to recognize strengths in a team.

• Behavioral assessments The idea is to get to know yourself, but also to share this knowledge with others. Patrick Lencioni discusses the use of the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). At Extia we use the Communication Process for the same purpose.

• The 360 ° feedback This approach should be seen as a personal development tool in order to identify your strengths and areas for improvement without any consequences. The idea is to go and ask for feedback from colleagues, collaborators, managers, customers: in fact, everyone with whom we work.

• The team building Again, the goal is to spend time together in order to get to know each other better, especially in a setting that may be outside the professional sphere. Teambuilding allows you to have a common experience that unites the team. The challenge is to carry out activities (sports, creative or others) that could be debriefed so as to highlight the importance of teamwork.

Avoiding false harmony

The leader's position here is quite subtle, because as Lencioni points out, he or she must be able to frame the discussions, but without adopting a paternalistic posture that would overprotect the team. To do this, the author recommends taking a step back during conflicts by listening in order to allow the team to reach a natural resolution of the conflict.

Some tools to accompany passionate debates:

• Extraction Patrick Lencioni proposes a "minor" role that can be played by one or more people in the team during meetings. These people will go and bring up the buried disagreements by exposing them until they are resolved. This role requires objectivity while being courageous and caring with the team. To practice this role, it can be interesting to use the Bono Hats method to confront points of view.

• Permission in real time Extraction can be an awkward moment for the team and depending on the personalities, the tone can quickly rise while others will fade from the conversation. It is important to interrupt the debate to remind the team that confrontation is important and that it must be done in a healthy atmosphere.

• Behavioral profiles Behavioral profiles (MBTI, Process Com...) are also good tools to allow team members to understand the way they communicate with each other and use the right communication levers. They can be complemented by other more specific tools such as the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Management Tool (TKI).

Building team commitment

The leader must encourage team members to find a solution to problems, but also to meet various deadlines. To support them and ensure that everyone is committed, the leader's role is to maximize the clarity of the issues and the alignment of everyone.

• Cascading messages At the end of each management meeting, participants take a few minutes to list the key decisions that have been made and define among themselves which elements can be communicated to the teams and which ones will remain confidential. This allows employees to have the same level of information from all managers and it helps managers to build a strong and positive image.

• Deadlines Each decision is also accompanied by a deadline that must be communicated and respected with discipline and rigor. The synchronization of each one allows to avoid ambiguity.

• Worst case scenario For teams that would have difficulty committing to certain decisions, Patrick Lencioni suggests doing a worst-case scenario exercise. "What if the worst happens?" allows teams to ease their fears and better understand that the impact of a bad decision is far less damaging than what they imagine.

Making teams accountable

In an accountable team, the leader is not the only source of discipline. His objective is to intervene only as a last resort to take decisions. Patrick Lencioni discusses a few simple tools and practices that can be put in place to make each individual in the team accountable, once again avoiding ambiguous and unclear situations.

• Disclosure of objectives Communicate on what the team must achieve by specifying the tasks and the role of each person. It is possible to use visual management tools to make this information clear.

• Evaluation of the team's progress This evaluation should be done in a simple and regular way. In this ritual, the team members give each other feedback on the progress of the tasks or the behavior of each person. Each one can then intervene to give warning points if something is not going well.

• Collective rewards The team can create a culture of accountability by rewarding collective rather than individual achievements. This way, all team members become active in achieving the goals.

Keeping an eye on the team's results

Finally, for this last dysfunction, the author mentions two suggestions to overcome inattention to results.

The first one is to share the team's results publicly: Patrick Lencioni suggests that teammates publicly commit to their outcome, in order to create a stronger commitment and a greater desire to succeed. The second suggestion is to propose results-based rewards. Financial reward should not be the only motivational lever. However, according to Patrick Lencioni, setting a reward on the achievement of results has more weight than rewarding "sustained effort" because it adds importance to those objectives to be reached.