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In this episode of The Agile Coach Podcast, Pabitra Khanal talks to her sister and fellow Agile coach and scrum master Laxmi Khanal, who currently works at Mayo Clinic. As experienced scrum masters that practice the agile mindset, Pabitra and Laxmi share their many experiences in leading different teams to success.
By being true to the concept of having an agile mindset, both agree that to be a good leader is to facilitate an environment conducive to success. Laxmi also says that it is healthy to let your team members make mistakes if it means learning hard lessons that will be beneficial in the wrong run. The biggest mistake that you can make as a leader, according to Laxmi, is to make yourself more important than you really are, thereby making your team excessively reliant on you.
HIGHLIGHTS
QUOTES
Laxmi: "I don't find myself needing to jump in to fix things for my team. In the past, when I work with teams, I used to find myself in a situation that I'm sure a lot of scrum masters out there have felt this way at some point in their careers, where in the process of being helpful, you kinda create this need for your team to become excessively reliant on you."
Laxmi: "Allow the team to learn by doing something poorly. Let them have a bad daily scrum. We humans, I think, learn when we make mistakes. That's how I learn."
Laxmi: "First, it's really helping the team understand what we're tying to get out of by visualizing our work. What is the reason behind transparency."
Pabitra: "So it's not, you're not shoving and pushing, you're not a dictator. You're not saying, hey, like do this or do that. But you're really helping them come up with your own like ways in a way and saying, Hey, you know, I see like what you're doing here and that provides value, but here is like also by not having this in place, there's this here's what's causing us or here's the problem that's causing."
Laxmi: You really want to build out a one-to-one relationship and coach them a little to find out what is getting in the way of them being a better team member, right. What is that internal dialogue? And the biggest thing is you have to be open to the experiences of that person, without any judgment."
Laxmi: "I firmly believe our style and personality obviously plays an important role in our ability to effectively facilitate. However, as a scrum master, you shouldn't just subscribe to one way of facilitating team events. Yeah. So just like, you know, you're advocating to the team that, Hey, there is more than one way to achieve the same outcome. You also have to believe that there is more than one way to hold, for example, a daily scrum. If your team is still asking the same three questions, what did I work on yesterday, What am I working on today? What is progressing in my work? Then I believe you're just going through the motions and most likely, so is your team."
Laxmi: "As a facilitator, you have to create an environment for the team to perform at their best. And if you're not experimenting with your technique and, you know, doing what's necessary to provide, the setting that's needed, where the team can reflect, they can discuss and have fun, I don't think you're growing as a scrum master or caring enough to bring them, bring the group together."
Learn more about Laxmi in the link below:
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