🌿Prioritizing Growth Over Skills

What makes Expert Agile teams produce strong results? Spoiler alert: it's not hard skills! It's not experience!

Video Version

Credit: Tech Fleet https://youtu.be/MDI_GFTK6qY

It's Not About The Team's Skills or Experience

You may have a perception in your head that if only you had more experience and more skills, you can join teams and immediately start producing work.

You may think that expert Agile teams in the world are very experienced in what they do.

This is a false perception.

Expert Agile teams are experts in navigating uncertainty, experts in pivoting, and experts in supporting growth of others.

They are not necessarily experts in hard skills. They progress through product development by being of service to each other as they manage risks and build a working process together.

Yes, we're all here to make a living. We're all here trying to deliver results. We want to ship products. We want to have job security. We've got to make management happy if we want to stay working at a company.

But Agile teamwork is not really about producing work itself.

Any one person with skills and experience can perform work.

To work as a unified Agile team, teams must look past the skills and tight deadlines. They must look past seeking perfect outcomes.

They must provide environments for experimentation, risk taking, learning, and personal growth.

Agile Teams Help Each Other Grow

Teams that are Agile have the following foundations of active listening, empathy, understanding, learning, and support.

They make their own calls about how to prioritize work. Agile teams don't try to control outcomes or prevent failure. They play out scenarios and respond to change.

They collaborate and build working results quickly so that they can learn how to change their plans. The team decides how to work, and when to prioritize, and what to deliver. This requires a whole lot of foundational Agile culture and mindsets.

Expert Agile teams provide the space for others to disagree and hear people out. They support each other in failing "fast" together, adjusting their work, and looking in reflection. They never judge or blame each other.

The more a team provides these, the more a team produces strong end-results. The faster they will ship their product. The stronger that product will become at market.

Earning Work Efficiency

Everyone on an Agile team intentionally acts in support of growth. They:

1. Make each team member (even the interns) feel like an essential piece.

2. Seek to understand others, instead of seeking to be understood.

3. Help each other set goals and mark progress.

4. Allow space for people to try things for the first time.

5. Prioritize the growth of others around them.

6. Praise, celebrate, and acknowledge each other.

7. Encourage teammates to experiment with new ways of work.

8. Provide conditions for people to be themselves and be vulnerable.

Through this, they will grow together. They will gain skills and experience. They will ship very strong products. They will meet the needs of clients. They will be satisfied in their work.

Watch This Video About Prioritizing Team Growth

Here's a TedX Talk discussing the approaches you take as a member of Agile teams.

03:36: "You only want to coach when you win?..."

Agile is not about the work. It's not about the skills. It's not about winning. It's not about your competition.

This video talks about prioritizing growth and respect over the work itself. This is how Agile teams operate. Credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vIPrR_clEg

In the next lesson, learn about the four stages of team growth and the tenets of self-actualized Agile teams.

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