In the journey toward team excellence, ScrumMasters and leaders play a pivotal role in developing high-performing teams. They serve as catalysts, coaches, and servant-leaders who create the conditions for teams to reach their full potential. But how exactly does a skilled leader guide a team toward high performance?
Understanding the Journey to Team Excellence
Effective ScrumMasters and leaders recognize that team development is a progressive journey. They understand that their approach must evolve as the team matures, requiring different types of support at different stages of development.
So what’s the ScrumMaster’s role in getting a team to a high-performing state? There are two parts to it. First, the ScrumMaster herself needs to be self-aware of her individual skills development journey and understand at what level of expertise she is at, and work on moving to the higher levels so she can effectively help the team as a whole. More on that in a later post.
An experienced ScrumMaster or servant-leader also understands team development models and adapts her leadership style as she helps the team transition through these stages to get them to a high-performing stage as quickly as possible. Once there, the work continues by trying to keep them there for as long as possible.
The Chicken Soup Metaphor: Finding the Perfect Temperature
Joseph Pelrine offers a powerful metaphor that highlights the ScrumMaster’s influence on team dynamics. He compares team development to cooking chicken soup, where the team represents the ingredients and the ScrumMaster serves as the cook.
Cooking delicious chicken soup requires more than throwing ingredients into a pot and applying heat. The cook must continually monitor the temperature and stir the pot to maintain the ideal cooking conditions. Without this extra attention, the soup will transform into something far less appetizing.
Similarly, developing a high-performing self-organizing team demands constant attention, reflection, and adjustment. This metaphor highlights the delicate balance a ScrumMaster must maintain to keep a team in its optimal state. Let’s explore the different states a team can experience:
Burning: The Burned Out Team
When teams operate at too high a temperature, they experience burnout. All the good thins the team has are now evaportaing.
The signs of an burned out team include:
- Visible stress and tension among team members
- Frequent interpersonal conflicts
- Declining quality of work
- Team members working overtime hours
- Diminished collaboration and communication
- Increasing cynicism and negativity
In the chicken soup metaphor, this represents a boiling pot where all the nutrients and flavors are evaporating, leaving behind something bitter and unpalatable.
Cooking: The Ideal State
This represents the optimal state for teams, operating at the perfect temperature, not too hot to burn. A team in the “cooking” state exhibits:
- Healthy creative tension that drives innovation
- Balanced autonomy and collaboration
- Constructive challenging of ideas
- Continuous improvement mindset
- Effective problem-solving
- Sustainable pace and energy
This is the “sweet spot” on the border between stability and chaos where teams are highly creative, innovative, and flexible. This delicate balance is exactly where ScrumMasters strive to maintain their teams.
Stagnation: The Cooling Team
As teams begin to cool, their momentum falters and progress stalls. Signs of stagnation include:
- Decreasing engagement in events (members skip events or disengage)
- Waning commitment to quality practices (no one is writing tests)
- Procrastination on important tasks
- Giving up when faced with obstacles or roadblocks
- Declining initiative and proactivity
- Fading enthusiasm for improvement
Like soup that has been left sitting too long, what was good is becoming bad and moldy. The team loses its vibrancy and energy. The elements that made it excellent begin to degrade, and there is not enough momentum or heat to sustain it or bring it back.
Congealing: The Settling Team
When teams cool even further, they begin to solidify into rigid patterns. This state manifests as:
- Increasing rigidity in processes
- Resistance to new approaches
- Disinterest in learning and experimentation
- Minimal discussion during team meetings
- Decreasing innovation
- Growing complacency
The team, like cooling soup that becomes gelatinous, still retains some flexibility but is rapidly losing its adaptability as bad habits become entrenched.
Solid: The Frozen Team
At this lowest temperature, teams become completely rigid and unresponsive. Characteristics include:
- Excessive bureaucracy and process
- Apathy and indifference to outcomes
- Clock-watching mentality (9 to 5 – Do my thing and leave)
- Minimal collaboration or knowledge sharing
- Complete lack of initiative (There’s nothing we can do)
- Resignation to the status quo (This is the way things work here)
Like frozen soup that bears little resemblance to its intended form, these teams have lost the essence of what makes agile approaches effective.
The high and low stages show similar behavioral patterns. The key is to control the heat and stir to keep the team cooking without burning out.
The ScrumMaster’s Balancing Act
The skilled ScrumMaster’s or leader’s primary responsibility is maintaining the team at the optimal “cooking” temperature. This requires constant vigilance and a nuanced understanding of when to:
- Apply Heat: When teams are cooling into stagnation or solidifying into rigid patterns, the ScrumMaster must introduce elements that energize and challenge the team.
- Reduce Heat: When teams approach burnout, the ScrumMaster must create conditions that alleviate pressure while maintaining positive momentum.
- Stir the Pot: Even at the right temperature, teams need regular movement to prevent local hotspots or cool areas. The ScrumMaster facilitates this through effective events, coaching conversations, and team activities.
This balancing act requires the ScrumMaster to develop a sophisticated understanding of team dynamics and a diverse toolkit of interventions appropriate for each situation.
Practical Approaches to Maintaining the Ideal Temperature For Team Performance
Effective ScrumMasters employ various techniques to help teams achieve and maintain their optimal state:
For Cooling Teams
- Introduce engaging retrospective formats that spark creativity
- Facilitate team learning opportunities through workshops or knowledge sharing
- Bring visibility to stalled work and impediments
- Create opportunities for the team to connect with users and see the impact of their work
For Overheating Teams
- Help establish sustainable pace and ensure team does not over commit
- Create safe spaces for addressing interpersonal tensions
- Advocate for reprioritization, descoping, and resetting expectations when teams face unrealistic demands
- Coach on delegation and work balance patterns
For Teams at the Right Temperature
- Protect the team from external interruptions and disruptions
- Facilitate continuous improvement through regular reflection
- Help the team celebrate successes and learn from failures
- Connect team members’ work to the overall vision and product goals
In our Building High Performing Teams Workshop, participants develop the skills to identify their team’s current “temperature,” select appropriate interventions, and create the conditions for sustainable high performance.
By understanding the delicate balance required to keep teams “cooking” at the optimal temperature, ScrumMasters can fulfill their role as servant-leaders who enable teams to reach and maintain high performance. The journey requires patience, practice, and persistent attention, but the results of a truly self-organizing, high-performing team are well worth the effort. Let’s take a look at the attributes of a self-organizing team next.
Further Reading:
Also, check out the complete Fostering Self-organizing Teams series:
- What is a Self-Organizing Team?
- Scrum Magic! Do Scrum – Become Hype-productive!
- 3 Models for Skills Acquisition
- The 3 Stages of Shu Ha Ri for Gaining Knowledge
- The Dreyfus Model of Skills Acquisition
- Situational Leadership
- The 5 Stages of Tuckman’s Group Model
- Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance Model
- The ScrumMaster’s Role in Fostering a High Performing Self-Organizing Team
- 7 Attributes of a Self-Organizing Team
- Delegation Board for Fostering a Self-Organizing Team
- The ScrumMaster’s Progressive Delegation Responsibility
- Fostering Self-Organizing Teams Presentation