How to Understand Your Team So Working with them Becomes Much Easier
🎁 Notion Template: How to work with [team member]
Hello 👋, It’s Vibhor. Welcome to the 🔥 paid member only🔥 edition of Winning Strategy: A newsletter focused on enhancing product, process, team, and career performance. Many subscribers expense this newsletter to their Learning & Development budget. Here’s an expense template to send to your manager.
This is the story of a day I will never forget.
My Manager forwarded me my team’s 360-degree review. You know, those anonymous, annual check-ins about how everyone’s feeling? Yep… that one. As a Scrum Master, I was always curious about what worked and where to improve. So I clicked my way right into the details.
As a Scrum Master dedicated to servant leadership, I prided myself on removing impediments, facilitating events, and being the shield that protected my teams from organizational chaos. So you can imagine my shock when I saw one particular question glaring back at me in red:
"Does your Scrum Master support the team's self-organization?"
The majority of responses showed they felt I was micromanaging their process!
WHAT!!!!
How could they possibly think that?
I was constantly advocating for them! I was always prepared for every event and meeting. I tracked down blockers and protected them against unreasonable stakeholder demands
Wasn't that the definition of supporting self-organization?
How was that micromanaging?
That evening, I reached out to a colleague, a Program Manager, whom I greatly respected. After listening to my confused venting, she asked a simple question that made me pause:
"Have you ever actually asked your teams what self-organization means to them? Or assumed you already knew what they needed?"
She was right!
I realized that I had been projecting my definition of support onto my team members, each with unique dynamics and needs. Some wanted more active feedback, others wanted more space. Some valued conflict resolution, others prioritized stakeholder management.
The truth was uncomfortable. But it was necessary.
Even as an experienced Scrum Master with the best intentions, I missed a fundamental aspect of agility: meeting people where they are, not where I think they should be.
But…how do you know where they are?
This question transformed my approach to leadership, which is why I'm sharing this powerful exercise with you today. This can dramatically improve your connection with your team members.
Let’s get started.
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How do you know where they are?
No two team members are the same.
It sounds obvious. But I can’t tell you how long it took for that truth to really sink in for me as a Scrum Master. I assumed that if I were consistent, fair, and followed the Scrum Guide, I would support everyone equally.
Equal, however, is not always the same as effective.