Let me tell you about the quietest moment I recently witnessed in a retrospective and the loudest lesson it taught me.
I was observing a retro run by a Scrum Master I coached.
She was doing everything “right.” Well-organized board. Thoughtful questions. Warm energy. I started timing something. She wasn’t aware of what I was timing. I timed her silences. The longest silence in the entire 60-minute session was four seconds.
Every time a pause opened up, she filled it. She rephrased the question. Offered an example. Gave a nudge. Answered her own question.
And the team?
Pleasant, agreeable and completely superficial. Why would they dig deep? Their Scrum Master was doing the thinking for all of them.
Afterward, I gave her one piece of homework: “Next retro, ask your opening question. Then count to fifteen in your head before you say anything.”
She looked at me like I had asked her to hold her breath underwater.
The next sprint, she asked: “What’s one thing slowing us down that we’re not talking about?”
Then she went quiet.
One... two... three... She told me later she nearly spoke at seven. At eleven, one of the developers who’d barely spoken in any of the sprints looked up and said: “Can I be honest? The code review process is crushing us, and nobody wants to say it because XYZ built it.”
The conversation that followed was the most honest conversation the team had ever had.
That’s the paradox at the heart of a Scrum Master’s job: sometimes the most powerful thing you can contribute is NOTHING AT ALL.
But silence is a skill, not a default.
Used carelessly, it abandons the team. Used skillfully, it builds the team.
This post is about how to use it skillfully.
Let’s get started.
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