Tag: curiosity

Toxic environments

Building a great team is not that simple as it may look. Sometimes you are lucky and the team just forms without any effort, sometimes you are not and all you get is the group of individuals and all the effort forming a one unifying goal are failing. In such case, you may have a look at how toxic is the team environment. ORSC – Organizational Relationship and System Coaching describes four toxins (Blaming, Defensiveness, Contempt, and Stonewalling) as they are present in every environment. The same as any other toxins, if you only have a little of them in your environment, everything is fine, but they can be very culture and team destroying if they become common. So how do we deal with them? The good reply to those toxins is positivity and curiosity.

Team Toxins

Let’s start with positivity. Interestingly, it’s very powerful. It works as a bank account. If your account balance is high, and you got a parking ticket, you are indeed not happy about it, but after all, nothing happens. You can still go to the restaurant for a dinner and pay the checks. On the contrary, your balance is low, you might end up eating just a plain bread every day. Quite stressful situation. In the same way, if your positivity balance is high, nothing can really spoil your day. No silly comments from your colleagues, no blaming can harm you. Again, you might not be happy about it, but you would take it easy and try to see it from the different perspective. Be curious. What happened that they are blaming? Maybe they are stressed, maybe they didn’t have a good sleep, maybe they had some troubles at home. Well, maybe there is a 2% right on what they say. Maybe there is a different perspective. Let’s try to understand the reasons behind it. What is the toxin really trying to say? What is the real issue here?

Positivity is a prerequisite. Curiosity is the way to limit the impact. If you have both, it’s easy to build great teams. So how about this. Next time you see someone blaming, being defensive, using contempt, or stonewalling, instead of reacting with another toxin you try to apply your curiosity and see the situation from different perspectives. After all, there is no right or wrong in the complex systems, everyone is right, but only partially as they say in the ORSC. Look at the things from the bright side. Make positivity and curiosity your friend. Toxins will disappear.

It’s all about the relationship

Some time back I went through the ORSC – Organizational Relationship and System Coaching and wrote this article to share my learning with the Agile community. Now it’s time to share some experiences. I tried most of the concepts with maybe few exceptions (like Deep Democracy). I kind of digested the overall idea and simplify it back in my mind into “it’s all about the relationship”. I still remember my first ORSC class when one of the facilitators come and reminded us of not to coach the problem but the relationship. I looked at her with surprise. “If the relationship is strong, it will solve all the problems itself,” she said and I got my first aha moment. I guess it took me much longer to truly understand that.

As a time went I realized, that the whole idea of coaching the relationship and looking at organization and team from the system perspective is the key to 99% of my work with organizations, teams, managers and leaders and ScrumMasters. The ability to look at things from the top detached from details and stop evaluating what is happening, because “who knows what is right and what is wrong” and “everyone is right but only partially” was enlightening. It gave me a freedom in a sense and allows me to be much more effective in changing the organizations and working with leaders. As I wrote in the Great ScrumMaster: #ScrumMasterWay book, one of the key metaskills ScrumMasters need is curiosity, have a culture anthropologist mindset. This simple change in the approach will unblock the most of the ‘unsolvable’ situations. And it’s not only true for ScrumMasters but Agile Coaches, managers, and leaders of the organization.

Look at the organization from the system perspective. Don’t evaluate. Be curious. Focus on inproving the relationships.

Have a good team spirit and collaborative mindset. Good relationships solve the problems and enable the organizational success.

My intention was not to explain you any ORSC techniques as you need to experience them in several days program followed by your practical implementation but start a conversation with fellow Agile coaches about their experiences with ORSC and the need of ORSC in the Agile space.

So, if you write your experience with ORSC in a short text, I publish it or link it from here and if that goes well, maybe we can create a blogs series about ORSC@Agile.