People

It starts with the person. It does us good to contemplate how important each individual is on a team. You do not have a team without people, how trite but all so true. When you start treating the members of a team as resources in a company you have removed their humanity. A team members first of all wants to be respected for who they are. They are a complete person with dreams, goals, likes, dislikes,  families, and a job. We a leaders must value each individual for who they are. Rarely does an team member purposefully not be productive. If we do have a situation like that we need to understand where that individual is in their personal life and where they need help. I cannot emphasize enough the value of the individual first.

Passion

When you are passionate about a task nothing will stop you. It is amazing how many obstacles are overcome when we have a goal that we are going to meet no matter what happens. We have all had experience where we worked on a project that we really enjoyed. It was hard to keep our minds off the project. Passion comes from really believing in yourself and the vision of the project you are working on.

In a class Mike Cohn commented on he did not want his team members working on open source projects. He wanted them so passionate about their work that they had no desire to work on any software outside of their job.

I know many of us downplay emotion on the job. But what would happen to our work place if everyone was passionate about their job?

Productivity

Getting the job done and doing it well what we all want. As we build up the individual and guide that team we will see amazing productivity. I am always perplexed when managers interfere with the composition  of a team and do not expect any changes in productivity.

When you have a closely knit team, any change in the makeup will have a very negative affect on  productivity. The worse case scenario is when a team member is removed from the team without any team input. This is like losing a family member.  It will take the team time to adjust.

As you know, I am very interested in what is involved in creating a high performing team. Why do we not see more high performing teams in corporate America? I believe that the “command and control” management philosophy contributes to this.

Now if you ask most ScrumMasters if they use command and control and they will say no they do not. But is this really the case when they are working with teams?

Here are questions you should ask yourself about you interaction with the team:

1. Are all decisions involving the team made by the team?
2. Does the team feel they control their destiny?
3. What are the factors that prevent the team from being empowered?

Review you own style of facilitating. Then ask the team to evaluate you style of facilitating. As with all Agile processes this constant inspection helps us to improve how we interact with the team.