In my previous post I talked about how to create a common goal for your team and I mentioned a book that I read some weeks ago(The five dysfunctions of a team). This book discusses why even most successful teams struggle to get good results. By following the link below you can find the pyramid of dysfunctions discussed in the book.
Presenting this pyramid to the team could be the second exercise. Based on my experience, most of the team members will identify at least one problem from the pyramid. Visualizing this will make them think a bit about the status quo situation while realizing that much is required to be done in order to have a great team. I think one hour should be enough to familiarise the team with the pyramid and to answer all their questions.
Since the base of the pyramid forms Absence of Trust, I will focus on an exercise for improving this specific aspect. My team tried this exercise some weeks ago. Clearly, we had problems in the team and lack of trust was one of them. To improve the situation, the facilitator of the meeting came up with an exercise for the team: “The Appreciation Exercise”. The point of the exercise is in answering the five questions presented in the following picture:
Importantly, in order to answer the fourth question the team should express their request as a wish. This was an awesome opportunity to use NVC. Although seemingly a really simple exercise, it makes a difference: the participants will connect with the feelings, emotions and wishes. But make sure you reserve half a day for this exercise, you would want to spend a good amount of time on it.
It is too early to say if the exercise really worked, but one thing is for sure - the spirit of the team after the exercise was quite high and all of us were really pleased with the outcome. I am sure that everyone left the room eager to improve the existing situation. It is important to realize that it takes time to see the results of this exercise, because these issues cannot be solved in a day or two, but they are certainly useful for bringing the team together.
After the “Appreciation exercise” it might be the right time to refresh the Agile/Scrum values, but this is a topic for my next post.
Thank you and see you in my next post,
