Improvements or complains – choose one

Sprint retrospective meeting is a time when all team members can share what they are happy about, what bothers them, what is worth being taken a deeper look at and what can be or already is problematic. It is a really good idea to practice doing those meetings even if you are not doing Scrum and have no Sprints at all.
You just have to agree for some period of time after which meeting will be provided.

Sprint retrospectives give you a possibility to blurt out everything what’s on your mind. Dedicated time makes it comfortable. You are not looking at your computer. You are not in a rush because of “another meeting is in five minutes”. It’s scheduled, it’s planned and this is time for your Team.

Yeah, not completely. And to be honest, when you are starting to think about those meetings in this way in the same moment you are starting to do malfunction retrospectives. Why is that?

Negative or positive feedback?

Positive feedback is like a compliment or a reward for your effort. Your skills were good enough (or even better), you made right decisions. Your actions get us closer to success. No matter whether we reached a goal or not, you’ve done the best that you could and what is even more important – you’ve done more than anyone on your place would do.
It’s always great to hear words like this. It proves that our efforts are put in the right direction. That we are valuable member of the team/project/organization. It shows us that we grow in the right area.
It’s easy to receive feedback like this, because who doesn’t like to hear a few good words about himself?

Don’t shout at me!

Hard day at work? You got up on the wrong side of the bed in the morning and feel that everything is against you? A difficult problem occurred and you don’t have a clue what you can do about it? You don’t agree with someone? And even more – you don’t agree with someone who is really important for you? And this is extremely sensitive issue? Different opinions? Emotions? Yelling!

the one who always helps…

There are people in your team, project, around you, who are recognized. They know a lot, they are doing a lot, they are always here whenever there is something to do, a problem to solve, need for help. Everyone knows how good, passionate and motivated they are. They are eager, they will do everything what they can to commit what they promised.
It’s good to have a such person in your team. Especially if the person is a team player with passion that can affect others. People will invest in themselves to reach such level, with the attitude such person will motivate them to grow.
However, there is also another side of the coin and as a leader you should remember about it.

Say it with different words

People are really amazing. Our ability to learn, to develop our skills is just astonishing. Whenever we find ourselves in a situation that is new for us, we can always find a way how to adapt, how to solve a problem. We are getting better at what we are doing, with handling our duties. To be more effective and have better performance, we look for new ideas, we learn new things, we gather knowledge and try to use it in our daily lives.
And regardless of all this passion, willingness to discover the new and become better every day many of us forget about development of one of our main and most important skill, a skill used almost all the time, with no break. The skill of communication.

It is known far and wide that communication is not only about spoken language, but let me focus on it.

What's the goal?

Through communication we are trying to share some emotions, knowledge, information, etc. with another person or a group of people. But the sharing process is not the most important aspect. The thing which really matters is not what would be said, but whether our interlocutor understands us or not. Whether message that he/she will receive is the one that we intend to convey.

We can be the most skilled orator, we can know fancy words, we can speak for hours and be the greatest expert in our area and we can still fail to communicate our thoughts. And it's not related to knowledge or intelligence of other people. We can be just misunderstood. And many factors can stand behind this, starting from the place where we grow and ending with our current mood.

Is there something that we can do to increase the level of understanding between us?

Learn, you fool!

I believe there's not a single person who will argue there's any activity that we are consciously doing more often than communicating. Yet, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, even since we heavily communicate with each other we spend barely no time on improving our skills in this respect.
And I'm writing also about those who really invest in their own development, those who reserve some time during the day for learning activities.

Why there's so few of us who spend some time on learning about communication techniques, who learn how to do it better and more effectively?

One trainer that I had classes with, told us something that sounds really reasonable. That's why I let myself to use her answer for this question.
Why aren’t we learning how to communicate better? Well, try to ask any person around you and most of them will answer with sentences similar to: "What for? Why should I waste my time? I already know how to speak!"
Do you already see the "Why"? Do you see the reason? Most of us put equality sign between communication and speaking and since they know how to use words, how to build sentences and even more complex statements, they don't see any reason for gaining the knowledge about communication quality itself.
Yet, speech is only one of tools used to communicate our thoughts. And as any good expert, we should know as many tools as possible and know it well to realize our goal - communicate exactly what we want to in the way the other person understands.

That's all about communication.

Please, understand me...

I believe that each of us find yourself in situation of being not understood. I believe it happened not once. Some of us tend to think that our interlocutor just doesn't want to hear us or take our arguments into consideration. But there are also people among us who start to think what I could do better, what happened that my words and my intention wasn't understood as it should have been.
And this is the first step. Once you notice the fact that maybe it was something with your sentences, that maybe message wasn't shared in a way understable by another person, then you can maybe will look for tools which can help you reduce the gap or even remove it at all between what you had meant to say, and what was in fact understood.

Did you just say that?

One of my favourite tools to improve understanding is through paraphrasing. What is it about? It's simply repeating what you just heard in your own words. Using different sentences allows you to verify whether everything was understood well.

When someone is talking about something new for you, he's sharing important information or you are just unsure whether it's exactly what he intended to say, it's a good idea to gently interrupt him and start your statement with "Did you just say ..." and use paraphrase to finalize the sentence.
Whether you hear that it's correct or not - it brings value. Either you will change uncertainty into sureness or you will hear more explanations which would clarify the discussed subject.

You see? You are always winning!

And what when you are the speaker?

And how to handle the opposite situation, when you are the person who talks and wants to be understood? Can you use paraphrasing with the same result? The answer is Yes. However, it's harder in such a situation.

In the first example, when you're asking, you are conquering your own fears - many of us are afraid of asking, because they think they can be seen as unprepared, not qualified enough or even dump. In most cases it won't happen. To be honest, when you ask, you show that you are interested and you are listening with understanding. You are showing your respect. Yet, asking still depends on you and probably your interlocutor won't feel uncomfortable with that.

When you are paraphrasing your own words to describe what you just said to increase a chance that you were understood well, there are people who can feel somehow offended by this. "Do you think I'm dumb?", "Do you think that I didn't understand when you said it first time?"
That's why using this tool as a speaker must be more careful and gentle than as a listener. It's a good idea to build your speech in a way that provokes questions. Or after the important part you can always ask questions like "Am I right with that? What we can do better? How we can improve it?", "Do you have any other ideas?", "What are the weak points in my thinking?" and many others. You can also build it in the way that questions and answer will be an inherent part of your statements. It would be even better.

The main idea is to engage people who are listening to you and provoke them to ask questions. I'm sure that it will bring value not only for them, but for you as well. Things will be more clarified and maybe even improved by their input.


So, don't wait - improve your communication skills and increase your toolset :)
Be successful in your attempts!

Leadership bullshit

Leadership is about passion, vision, goals, learning and growth. It’s about people, communication and relationships, about taking care of others.

It’s about serving them.

Leadership is about showing others that it’s good to go out from your comfort zone and challenge yourself and others. Leadership is about being an example that others would like to follow, about being a visualization of what you are saying and sharing. Being a leader means that sometimes you have to stand against, sometimes you have to make a difficult decision and it happens even when you don’t have enough information. Leadership is about forgetting your ego, about being humble, about taking risk, sharing successes and taking responsibility for failures. That’s what leadership means for me, that’s how I’m defining it.

What would convince you?

I have recently participated in a really great training run by Sylwia Królikowska-Evenhuis. The training was about Interpersonal Communication and despite the fact that I wasn't sure whether I should go or not I decided to do so and... well, it turned out to be great experience packed with a lot of information (new and reminders) and a ton of fun.
And because I always thought that a good piece of advice and knowledge should be spread, in next few posts I will share with you some of the most important things I heard there.

who knows best?

Each of us was in a situation (and I'm pretty sure that more than once) when we wanted to get something, do something, convince someone to our opinion or plans. It just happens and there’s nothing special about that.
And what have you usually done in such cases? Personally, I used to take notes (either on paper or in my mind) and list all good things which would happen if we did it on my way, I list also bad ones be prepared to protect my idea/proposition. I thought hard about arguments which would convince my interlocutor — what would make him, as well as me, accept the offer?
It was hard. I know what would convince me, but how could I know what would convince the other side? Maybe there's a way to make negotiations easier and more satisfying for both sides? How to end up with a win-win result?

there is a person who knows the answer

And what would happen if you just asked your caller during the conversation, just when he shows any sign of resistance? “What would convince you?”, “What need to happen to do it on my way?”
It's great to come up with propositions but if your partner doesn't agree for any? Isn’t it better to ask him? Who would know better than him what would make him happy?

it can't be so simple...

And it's not always is. Of course, in the ideal situation we will receive an answer with conditions that we can fulfill. But it's not always the case.
What if the counter proposition will be impossible to meet?
Well, we should dig deeper, now there's time for our reaction. We can say that "It's impossible" and end conversation, but it's not our purpose. We want to achieve more, not even compromise, we want one result — a win-win situation when everyone is happy. That's why we can say something like: "ok, that's fine, but maybe there is something different, something within my reach which allows me to make you satisfied with the result?" We can just ask more question.
If the second side also want to make a deal, he will help us. And if not directly (I want this and this), those questions can put us on track, and show us more than we could imagine ourselves.

People are usually willing to help you help them.

it can be even worse

Yes, it can. We can hear simple: "no, there's nothing like that" and our interlocutor will just give us impossible conditions and he would say that's his "last word". Of course, we can ask more questions, but it can bring no result and make the atmosphere even more tense. What then? In that case, simply change the topic. Before you get any answer, first you will have to know "what". What are the reasons why he don't want to help you make a deal. Maybe there's something more and you have to know what. Maybe it's not about proposition? Maybe it's not even because of anything that happened during the conversation? Maybe it's something that is not even related to the case?
After you solve this problem, you can move forward with what is the real goal of your conversation. And I'm pretty sure that if you solve this issue, your partner will be even more willing to help you find answers to your first question.

Now, I'm curious, what would convince you to try it yourself?