… a team, a scrum master or even a product owner?
“You need to empower them” – is one of those statements that scrum coaches throw around as if its a switch you can flick. But what does that mean exactly?
Here is a whole list of things you can do – so no more excuses! 🙂
- Dont make it difficult for them to give you bad news.
- Visit with them often – not just when things are high stakes or going wrong.
- Challenge them to improve.
- Encourage them to inspect and adapt.
- Delegate decisions, then live with the decision and support it – even if you dont agree.
- Be transparent to them, answer them honestly, let them know your fears and frustrations.
- Have high expectations but make them clear.
- State your expectations often.
- Keep your expectations simple, a couple of strong and easily recalled statements.
- Live your expectations – model the behavior you expect.
- Make boundaries and responsibilities clear.
- Let them know your boundaries and responsibilities – this helps with transparency as well.
- Don’t hide behind corporate politics.
- Let them know its ok to fail, as long as they learn from it.
- Let them fail safely, when stakes are low – without you stepping in.
- Give feedback – one-on-one and to the team.
- Ask how you can help and then act on what you are told.
- Ask them to help you.
- Let them review each other and hire for the team.
- Talk through problems and solutions but leave the final decision to them.
- Be available most of the day for walk-ins.
- Let people know they can talk to you anytime – be approachable.
What do you think? Easier said than done? Do you have other suggestions?