Podcast Ep. 171: Fostering Vulnerability in Agile Teams with Alba Uribe, Quincy Jordan, and Justin Thatil

Episode Description

This week, Dan Neumann is joined by three of his colleagues: Alba Uribe, Quincy Jordan, and Justin Thatil. In today’s episode, they are exploring the concept of vulnerability as it is introduced by Dr. Brené Brown and its meaning for Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches who are seeking to foster a safe environment where vulnerability is welcomed and celebrated.

Key Takeaways

What is vulnerability?

According to Dr. Brené Brown, vulnerability is the emotional experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure
Vulnerability is related to having courage regardless of the circumstances

There are different phases of vulnerability: On an individual and a collective level

You succeed and fail as a team; it is not about each person’s performance but the collective execution
Teams need to trust and work together as a unit, as a collective

What techniques can a Scrum Master use when having a new team and trying to create some of the safety that can host vulnerability?

A Scrum Master should first show and model vulnerability and then ask the team what they need in order to feel safe
To establish safety
To open up to team members about the importance of fostering vulnerability
A team has to be aware of the responsibility implied in fostering a safe environment where vulnerability can take place

Human connection is the catalyst to establish vulnerability
Myths about vulnerability:

Vulnerability is disclosure: There have to be boundaries to what you share; vulnerability shows that there is trust and safety about what is appropriate to share at the right moment
Vulnerability is weakness

Techniques to encourage vulnerability:

Intentionally expose your troubles for others to see that you are willing to be transparent; vulnerability is contagious
Establish what is OK in the team setting

Mentioned in this Episode:

The Seat of the Soul, by Gary Zukav
Positive Intelligence
Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours, by Shirzad Chamine

Transcript [This transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate in its depiction of the English language or rules of grammar.]

Intro: [00:03] Welcome to Agile Coaches’ Corner by AgileThought. The podcast for practitioners and leaders seeking advice to refine the way they work and pave the path to better outcomes. Now, here’s your host ,coach, and Agile Expert, Dan Neumann.

Dan Neumann: [00:17] Welcome to this episode of the Agile Coaches’ Corner podcast. I’m your host, Dan Neumann, and super excited today to be joined by not one, not two but three of my colleagues. So we have Justin Thatil, Alba Uribe, and Quincy Jordan all from the coaching practice. Thank you all for taking some time here to join the podcast.

Justin Thatil: [00:37] Absolutely. Thank you. Happy to be here. Quincy Jordan: [00:40] Thank you Dan for having us.

Dan Neumann: [00:43] And it’s appropriate to take a moment to thank our listeners for A being listeners. So thank you very much. And we’ve had a couple episodes recently that have been responses to listener questions, and I just want to reiterate the invitation for folks who are listening to send us some questions. We’ll work them into the que. You know, it won’t necessarily be the next week or the week after, but we will absolutely get those in there. We love the questions and, it’s always a great engagement with folks that submit those. So thanks to the folks that did that recently, and we’ll invite other listeners to do the same thing to podcast@agilethought.com Today’s topic, Justin, you propose it and it’s on the topic of vulnerability and I’ll invite you to go and tee it up for us.

Justin Thatil: [01:29] Sure. Thank you, Dan. So vulnerability, how did I come across this the first time? So I was actually first exposed to this book by Brene Brown through a workshop or boot camp, if you will, that I attended. And even though it wasn’t fully focused on our works, there was a mention of it. So I had heard about Brene two or three years ago at this point. So always been on the list of books for me to read and finally I’ve gotten around to it and, essentially, it’s a topic top of mind I work with clients and engagements. Vulnerability is required in order for you to make change happen. Right. And so, I love how Brene quotes it or defines vulnerability it’s the emotion we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. Right. So what does that mean for us as agile coaches, as scrum masters? In order for us to put ourselves out there to create an impact into the world, you have to essentially be vulnerable. So I thought this would be a great topic for us to funder over, how does vulnerability exist in our agile teams? The individual team members that are on each of our teams, the leadership of those teams and thought it would be a great conversation for us to have. And speaking of, I know that us at AgileThought, we’re looking into more scrum masters and coaches and here we are talking about a subject of vulnerability and my direct line manager happens to be Dan and Dan’s manager is Quincy, right? So here we’re talking about a topic that inherently requires us to be vulnerable, you know? So that says a lot about our team here at AgileThought. So I just want to shout out for both Dan and Quincy, our leadership team at AgileThought. You’re thinking about joining our organization, this is one of the key reasons why.

Quincy Jordan: [04:00] Yeah. Start putting in sales, Justin.

Alba Uribe: [04:05] Why not? It’s the truth. Yeah. So I wanted to add what Justin was saying regarding vulnerability is related of course to have encourage and having courage regardless of the circumstances and showing off regardless of the circumstances, I wanted to add that.

Justin Thatil: [04:35] Yeah, I completely agree, Alba. When you think about teams showing vulnerability one of the things that we talked about when we were somewhat prepping for this or talking about this is the level of vulnerability that a team has to show just to work in an iterative way. At one time, if you were in the waterfall world and you know, there’s still a place for waterfall, but if you were in the waterfall world and you said we don’t know exactly when one will be finished, we don’t know exactly what will be done when we finish. I mean, you would’ve gotten laughed out the office. I mean, that was one of the worst things you probably could say. and so when you’re working in a way that allows for the freedom of iterative development, the freedom to do what’s best based on iterations and, you know, obviously based on feedback and so forth, I mean, that’s a great thing. And there’s a lot of courage that has to take place with that, which as you said, Alba, goes right in hand in hand with the vulnerability.

Dan Neumann: [05:57] So, there is a couple facets of vulnerability that I’ve heard brought up. So one is kind of individual vulnerability. A person being willing to be vulnerable, kind of on a person to person basis. And then the other one is vulnerability, kind of collectively, Hey, we as a team or me as a representative for the team, depending on how that org set up, would be able to share the uncertainty and the vulnerability and not always just make it go away. I know when I was doing waterfall projects, boy, you’d have your risks issues, dependency sheet, and your job as a project manager was to make the risks go away, not to go, you know what, there’s a risk and there’s literally nothing to do to make it go away. You can try to mitigate it. You can try and transfer it, et cetera, but it’s there and more insidiously, there’s other uncertainties that are out there that we don’t know, the unknown unknowns, which got made fun of at one point, but that’s totally a thing in life is the unknown unknowns. So why would this be important for a team? What other facets come to mind? And, Quincy you want to weigh in on that one.

Quincy Jordan: [07:05] So one of the things that you just said, actually started resonating and just making me think more about it, how, you know, oftentimes we’ll go in and I know I do this a lot, especially with scrum teams and I’ll push the notion that, you know, you succeed as a team or you fail as a team. And the level of vulnerability that an individual has to make when they say I’m putting whether or not I’m successful on the line based on what other people do as this team that I’m part of. Because that was a very difficult thing, you know, for a lot of folks back in the day to move away from, well, I have my part done and feel good about it. I did my part and I am good but to say, I’m not going to highlight my part, I’m going to highlight whether or not we have succeeded as a team. If we have all done collaboratively as a team, what we should do, or if we haven’t, and if we haven’t, then I’m going to help to solve that problem as part of the team and not sit back or stand back and just say, well, I did my part and it takes a lot of vulnerability to be able to do that.

Alba Uribe: [08:33] Yeah, that’s a great point, Quincy. I totally agree. And, the team is having the courage and the trust to work together as a unit, as a collective to experiment and not just have everything super defined and all, everything, ready for them, but just go having the courage to go ahead and experiment again, like I mentioned, to finish a sprint goal or not, or maybe coming up with different approaches along the way that are better than instead of having everything super defined at the beginning. Dan Neumann: [09:17] So what would you do as a coach, Justin. Imagining if you will, you’ve got a new team and you’re trying to build some support for this vulnerability. What types of techniques come to mind for you for the ability to create some of this safety for vulnerability?

Justin Thatil: [09:34] Um, yes, that’s a great question. So one of the things that essentially, it’s creating that safe container, for folks to become vulnerable. So one of the first things that I do, especially on a brand new team, myself as the scrum master, somewhat of a leader for the team, establishing my own sense, make myself vulnerable into what I’m about, what I’m here for, for the team, right. How I can serve for the team, how can establish, with the team that this is what I’m here to do for you all. And, genuinely ask to the team, what can I do for y’all to become the next level. So, just being vulnerable, opening myself up and essentially inviting folks to essentially fall along. Right. so I use retrospectives, mainly for these kind of conversations, because, typically unless there’s other dysfunctions happening on in the organizations, it’s devoted to just the team themselves, right? Ideally there’s no another line manager listening in that may be making judgments and whatnot. So establishing safety, one of the key roles as a scrum master and the scrum master themselves being vulnerable and opening up the team members to really address those root issues. That brings me to another point of vulnerability that I was thinking about and it’s when we’re bring brand new to a team, right yourself, as an individual on that team, you’re essentially establishing yourself, right, in the process of establishing yourself and showing to the team and the members on your team that, Hey, I know what I’m doing, here is the scale I was brought in for, this is how I’m going to be helping. In order for that establishment to happen, typically you’ll see folks start diving into soliciting information about themselves to establish that. So it takes a degree of vulnerabilities from their part at the beginning of the team, at the beginning of their journey with the team to essentially say, Hey, I’m here for you for you all. I’m going to be doing my part. Things of that sort. So if that’s the stifled, and there’s a culture inherent to the team that you’re part of a culture that you’re inherent to the organization where that’s seen as detrimental in a sense, right? It’s that group think mentality. So someone opening themselves up challenging ideas that have been established within the company. And if that gets stifled from the get go, you know, what does that mean for that new individual on the team? Right. So it requires one to be vulnerable to challenge ideas. But then if it’s not nurtured and actually accepted, you know, what happens, right? So things to watch for as a scrum master, if that’s happening and in part change, or try to drive change into an organization as you start seeing things of that sort.

Quincy Jordan: [13:12] And I think that actually, so I think that’s great context for the scrum master point of view. I think for the other members of the team, for the entire team, it’s also good context because when a team member is being vulnerable, there’s a great responsibility the other team members have to be responsible with that vulnerability that’s being shown. If someone discloses or shares within the team, Hey, I think I’m in jeopardy of not completing my task. There’s a lot of trust they’re putting into the rest of the team to be able to say, you know, there definitely have been teams and environments where people don’t say that they don’t feel that they can be vulnerable enough, you know, to do that. And sometimes they don’t feel enough. And sometimes it’s that the environment hasn’t convinced them that they can trust them with their vulnerability as well. And so she was saying that, I was just thinking about how much responsibility it is when people are vulnerable with us in what we do with that vulnerability.

Dan Neumann: [14:42] The phrase “Vegas, baby” I’ve heard that, you know, what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas. Although they’ve come up with a more family friendly theme, a little less double on time rate. So are you keeping the confidence and as we are doing some of the prep, I had a couple scenarios where people exhibited great vulnerability and I’m like, I can’t use those, because for that very reason it wasn’t something that was shared to be re-shared. But as I thought through it, I can think of situations where I had something going on in my world outside of work, and I talked to my coaching team. I’m like, my brain’s just not here right now. There’s a thing going on. Here’s what it is. If I have my head up my rear end for the rest of the week, I apologize. I need some help. So, fortunately we had a relationship where Susan, the lady I was coaching with at that point, she’s like, okay, thank you. I got it. Right. Neumann’s head’s going to be somewhere else for a little while. And it was great. I could also see other places where I would’ve had to hide that and muddle through as best I can, fake it all the way until, you know, the situation had resolved itself. So a great role in setting up the ability for people to demonstrate vulnerability.

Justin Thatil: [16:09] Yeah. I like that point, Dan. Cause that’s what fosters that connection, right? That those two individuals that Susan mentioned, right. So it’s key for us to establish relationships and trust and you know, all sorts of that human emotion, vulnerably essentially is the catalyst in a sense, right? Alba Uribe: [16:32] Yeah. And, to add to your point of being vulnerable, like vulnerability is contagious. So if I open up in front of my team, now they see, oh, wow, she’s really courage to say that. And especially, let’s say there is some personal, situation going on. Sometimes I, maybe you don’t do it in front of a team, but you do it with a couple of team members. They feel like, wow, like they connect more with you. And they also feel like they can do that as well as with the team members. And then I want to go back to your point, that what happens when you are vulnerable and you say something like, I’m not going to be able to finish my work and nothing happens. Like nobody helps you. So individuals have to be able to recover from that. So have the tools to recover from, Hey, I’m alone here. What should I do? So, you don’t close down in other words, so people continue to be vulnerable and recover from that. I think that’s key.

Quincy Jordan: [17:45] Yeah. Because you to measure out your vulnerability, you know, of course we want teams to be vulnerable. We want people to be collaborative. We want people to be transparent. but there’s a certain level of team maturing that has to happen, you know, on the journey to get there as well. And how vulnerable and transparent you are in your first two sprints are probably going to be pretty different. And your 35th sprint, at that point, you’ve been through some things you’ve gotten over some hurdles together. You’ve basically fought some battles together. and you have a much better idea of where we stand as a team within a scrum team and how vulnerable you can be. Dan Neumann: [19:03] You are talking about a scenario which is entirely possible where an individual says, Hey, I’m struggling with this or I can’t get to it. And they might literally get no help. Great opportunity for somebody to be curious about why a team might leave an individual struggling. Maybe others were also similarly overloaded. Maybe that person’s cried Wolf one too many times, or they feel like they’ve cried Wolf one too many times. There’s a lot in there to try to investigate to understand the scenario and what one might do to unpack the vulnerable feelings that came out there.

Justin Thatil: [19:41] Yeah. And so I’m thinking about some of the things that Brene actually mentioned in their book, sort of alluding to what I think what we’re talking about right now. So, a couple of myths, right? So the myth of being, when we’re essentially vulnerable and disclosing information too show essentially bringing empathy or sympathy towards yourself as an individual by being open. So the one in the myth that she talks about is vulnerability is disclosure. And, another one is vulnerability is weakness, right? So if there are members on your team that essentially believe these myths, will they essentially open themselves up in the same manner that you did? So potentially no. So essentially what she guides us to do is, you know, it’s not about disclosing everything, it’s creating an atmosphere where there’s boundaries in what you’re sharing, but it’s still with the essence that there’s that trust aspect, there’s that safety aspect present that you’re feeling that this is appropriate to share. So you’re not sharing every single thing, but if there’s a moment where you see it’s appropriate and it might help the team and help the creativity of the team, or whatever environment that you’re facing it’s encouraged essentially.

Quincy Jordan: [21:20] Sounds like, strategic vulnerability. How do you leverage it to really help others?

Dan Neumann: [21:29] Well, and some of us are going through a bit of a program positive intelligence, and it’s been mentioned in a previous episode and one of the saboteurs to use that term is the victim. So I believe there’s very much difference between being vulnerable, sharing something and being a victim of it. And yeah, it kind of gets into what you were saying, the disclosure part, just blah, blah, blah, blah. Here’s all, here’s everything that might have ever gone wrong. And in woe is me. And, that’s a different thing than I think the vulnerability we’re talking about here. So what might be some techniques folks could use to increase the safety to be vulnerable, to bring awareness to these vulnerabilities? Because you know, I think much like a bridge or a highway when there’s a vulnerability, eventually the thing falls over or breaks apart. And, so we don’t want that. So what are some of the techniques that as leaders, whether it’s scrum masters or functional leaders or manager types that you might bring to the table?

Quincy Jordan: [22:32] So I think one of the things that Alba said earlier, hit it right on, when she mentioned about it was the context, If I remember correctly, it was the context of a scrum master and if you make a mistake and you are, and it may have been a team member, other development team member, but if you make a mistake and you basically don’t try to cover that up, you’re exposing it and you say, Hey, look, I don’t think I’m going to finish. I need help. Can someone help? so you know, is that a technique? Well, I think it’s a technique if you intentionally expose your flaws, partly for the purpose of getting others to see that you’re willing to be transparent like that. Going back to, you know, again, something else that Alba said, as far as it becoming contagious, when that vulnerability is being shown and you know, as leaders, it’s very beneficial. I mean, I will actually intentionally, especially with transformations and so forth and even within our own team, here at AgileThought, but I will intentionally sometimes do something that I know might make me look like I don’t know what I’m doing or might be the kind of thing that you would say, ah, man, I won’t really say that or ask that question or you know, so forth. But I want people to know that it’s okay. You know, you can ask a question that you think everyone knows, but for some reason you don’t know. Now of course, getting back to the kind of victim thing. Yeah. You don’t want to, it shouldn’t be the same question all the time. You know, you should elevate beyond that. But even within transformations I, sometimes will coach leaders to share certain things or like share to a certain degree, in front of their areas in front of their departments, in front of their program so that they can see that level of vulnerability. I mean, you have to model the behavior. If you don’t model the behavior, how are you going to expect for it to ever happen? So for me that’s been one technique is to intentionally model those things, like I’ll look for an opportunity to do so. I mean, it’s genuine, but I will leverage it so that other people can see that it’s safe to be vulnerable.

Dan Neumann: [25:33] What about you Alba what comes to mind?

Alba Uribe: [25:35] Yeah. So one of the things I’ve done as a scrum master is when I start with a team is to share my personal map. So I have areas of personal area, phone area, social and professional. So I show, my map and I ask the team, so you have any questions, would you like to find out more about me? So opening myself more so people, first of all, get to know me and second of all, see that I’m being transparent. This is who I am. I’m here. You can ask me anything you want within the map. So I’ve done that. I’ve done also safety what is called psychological safety checks to see where the team is overall and how they feel regarding their interactions. So that’s also a technique I have used in the past.

Dan Neumann: [26:41] Sure. So a couple techniques and Quincy, what you described was kind of modeling the ability to have uncertainty or to point out knowledge gaps, and then Alba you were describing ones where kind of self-disclosure in a way, like building some familiarity with you as a person in your background, building some safety there as well. Justin, anything to add there?

Justin Thatil: [27:02] As I was listening to Quincy, you know, one of the things, the words that you said is, you know, establishing what’s okay. Right. So essentially modeling behavior or conversations, you know, within a team setting that may be perceived from somebody on the team that, Hey, this is an okay conversation. You’re okay to have. This was a genuine mistake that, you know, we’re owning up to for example. And then just establishing and team agreements essentially come to mind. So team norms, as time goes by on a team, you have these implicit agreements that someone is like tribal knowledge, right? And as you interact with your team members and your team on a day to day setting, the vulnerability, like the moments of vulnerability that may have been, that might have occurred, right, whatever situation may have been, someone failed to deliver, for example, it’s to what we touched on, then error was made, you know, any event, if you will, that required folks to be aware that Hey, this happened, we may have fallen from it, but here’s an opportunity for us to recover and you actually have a genuine conversation as a team and you establish that it’s okay. So whenever something like that happens again, you know, what’s the team going to do at that point. There’s a lot to establishing what’s okay. And, being vulnerable in the process as you do.

Dan Neumann: [28:43] Thank you for sharing. Well, I’m my looking at our topic here and it’s big, vulnerability is a very large topic. And what we’re going to do is have one or two more sessions, maybe three, we’ll see we’ll inspect and adapt, we’ll iterate and all that good stuff Agileists like to do. But we got a chance here to scratch the surface on vulnerability. The why of it, what it looks like, why it’s important for a team. And I’ll ask you to maybe for some closing thoughts here and we’ll start with Alba and then Justin then Quincy. So what final thoughts do you have on this little foray into vulnerability?

Alba Uribe: [29:23] Yeah. So for me is the teams working as a collective and be vulnerable in terms of if there are challenges just work together and bring any issues to the team so you can work as a collective to achieve your goal.

Justin Thatil: [29:51] Yeah, for me, I mean, as you mentioned, Dan, we barely scratch the surface. There’s numerous techniques on the role that you hold on a team, the things that impact a team member, their own individuality within a team, that person’s vulnerability, techniques that they can use that we could touch on. So yeah, we’ve just merely scratched the surface. So I’m looking forward to us to continue this conversation for our listeners.

Quincy Jordan: [30:30] Yeah. And for me, I would probably say that much of the reason people are not comfortable being vulnerable. and I say this within proper context of being vulnerable is out of fear. And generally, you’re not going to make really good decisions when they’re fear based decisions. It’s going to be very difficult to think about what’s good for the team. What’s good for the whole. It’s going to be very difficult to think about those things in a fear-based mindset. so when people are thinking about being vulnerable or not being vulnerable, then I would just say, you know, kind of maybe having in your mind, am I not wanting to be vulnerable because I’m afraid of something and if so, what am I afraid of and why? And what’s the worst that probably can happen? And more often than not, the worst is actually usually not that bad, you know? And if the worst happens, I’ve learned to go to sleep, to wake up, keep doing that. And that worse seems to go away. So, yeah, that would be my final thoughts on vulnerability for this session.

Dan Neumann: [32:00] Perfect. And what do you describe the difference between fear and danger, it might be scary, but often there is very little actual danger to you and it’s moving forward, even though there is some level of discomfort or fear of doing that. So thank you for reminding us that there’s often very little danger in some of the stuff that we find to be kind of fear inducing. Thank you again. And like I said, it might not be the next episode immediately after this and the one after that, but there will be a couple follow-ons as we peel this vulnerability onion just a little bit more. Let’s talk about what’s on your continuous learning journey and we’ll go the reverse order. Quincy, we’ll put you up on deck first and then Justin and Alba we’ll just kind of unwind the rubber band here.

Quincy Jordan: [32:47] All right. So I will be vulnerable. So I continuously read the Bible on a regular basis. It is, you know, I’m looking for wisdom. I read Proverbs, I read different parts of proverb. I know it’s not always considered the professional, you know, thing, per se, but there’s so much value that I personally get from doing so, and no matter how many other books or how other things that I get exposed to those things, which are valuable and helpful, I can always go back and point to where I can find it there and where that principle resides there. So my reading list is iterative on much of the same list over and over.

Dan Neumann: [33:45] That’s good. Well, you got like 69 books there. So I think that kind of thing, something like that. Perfect. Perfect. Thank you.

Justin Thatil: [33:56] I can’t beat that Quincy. I totally a hundred percent agree with Quincy there. Go back to versus in the Bible it’ll point back to whatever challenge I’m having to this day, a hundred percent. Another book, you know, Dan did mention that we’re together going through a positive intelligence training altogether. So that is the book I have in mind to read by Shahrzad on positive Intelligence and a lot of good things coming out of that to learn about, you know, myself, the judges and, some really good topics that were together diving into. Alba Uribe: [34:59] And for me, I started reading God is My CEO and, I heard this book on a podcast from Quincy and yes, I’m going to start reading that. And on the personal side, I bought another book, it’s called The Seat of the Soul. I don’t remember the author, but, yeah. Also, it touches some of these things that we use during coaching and as a scrum master, like having empathy and patience and things like that. So those two books, I think are very good, for those characteristics of an Agilest. Dan Neumann: [35:43] That’s wonderful. And I love that. I get to hang around with people who are always kind of learning something new, you know, regardless of what book or what source or, you know, it could be a Netflix who knows, right. People are always learning and bringing new eye ideas. and I love that. And my journey right now has me doing acting for the first time in my life, in my mid forties, I thought, oh, that’s a good idea. I’ll go learn to act. And so, it’s just interesting to see how much of the agile stuff translates and walking the line between, what, first of all, rule number one, if you’re not the director, you’re not the director, right. There’s a time to bring your ideas and this isn’t it. Right. You know so the working agreements, he’s, he’s very clear about that. There’s a lot of vulnerability because you’re doing a thing in front of people and you’ll get it wrong. And so what you do with that fear. And so, it’s pretty interesting journey, of mine, for sure. And the journey of time management too, with rehearsals just about every night. So yeah, it’s fun. I want to appreciate all of you Alba ,Justin, Quincy, thank you for taking time to join on the Agile Coaches’ Corner podcast again, and we’ll look forward to getting back together and a little deeper dive on vulnerability. Thanks folks.

Outro: [37:04] This has been the Agile Coaches’ Corner podcast brought to you by AgileThought. The views, opinions and information expressed in this podcast are solely those of the host and the guests, and do not necessarily represent those of AgileThought. Get the show notes and other helpful tips for this episode and other episodes at agilethought.com/podcast.

Speakers

Dan Neumann

Principal Enterprise Coach

Dan Neuman is the Director of the US Transformation and Coaching practice in the Agility guild. He coaches organizations to transform the way they work to achieve their desired business outcomes.

With more than 25 years of experience, Dan Neumann is an experienced Agile Coach with a deep knowledge of Agility at the team and organizational levels. He focuses on achieving business outcomes by shifting both mindset and practices, resulting in a disciplined, yet practical approach to solving problems.

10 Things a Java Developer Should Learn These Days

We are halfway into the year and, looking back at what the last 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic left us, we can say that the advancements on technology and all the different languages, frameworks and development tools have not disappointed us and even in many cases have overtaken us. It doesn’t seem that long since Java 8 was released more than 8 years ago and, although it is true that today the latest version is Java 18, we must remember that there are still many companies stuck with Java 8 and even a few with Java 1.4 a 1.6 and a few other legacy frameworks.Because of this great advance in programming languages and frameworks in recent years, many programmers could feel overwhelmed due to the large number of updates that we are exposed to in our industry. However, we have begun to see very marked patterns in different industries, and we believe it is important to mention what are the 10 things that every Java programmer should learn.

6 min read

August 25, 2022

Succeeding at Cost Takeout – Improving Cost Management Strategy

The cost takeout is a strategic initiative that can help your company become more efficient. The goal of the initiative is to determine ways to reduce expenses without sacrificing quality, speed or customer satisfaction. A successful cost takeout requires an accurate understanding of where costs arise in your business process and how those costs can be reduced through new technologies. In this guide, we’ll look at some of the most common drivers of costs in IT departments and explain how you can identify them within your own organization’s processes.Cost drivers are the factors that cause your costs to increase. They’re different for every business, but you can identify them by asking yourself: “What makes my costs go up?”

10 min read

February 7, 2023

Podcast Ep. 171: Fostering Vulnerability in Agile Teams with Alba Uribe, Quincy Jordan, and Justin Thatil

Intro: [00:03]

Welcome to Agile Coaches’ Corner by AgileThought. The podcast for practitioners and leaders seeking advice to refine the way they work and pave the path to better outcomes. Now, here’s your host ,coach, and Agile Expert, Dan Neumann.

Dan Neumann: [00:17]

Welcome to this episode of the Agile Coaches’ Corner podcast. I’m your host, Dan Neumann, and super excited today to be joined by not one, not two but three of my colleagues. So we have Justin Thatil, Alba Uribe, and Quincy Jordan all from the coaching practice. Thank you all for taking some time here to join the podcast.

Justin Thatil: [00:37]

Absolutely. Thank you. Happy to be here. Quincy Jordan: [00:40

Dan Neumann: [00:43]

And it’s appropriate to take a moment to thank our listeners for A being listeners. So thank you very much. And we’ve had a couple episodes recently that have been responses to listener questions, and I just want to reiterate the invitation for folks who are listening to send us some questions. We’ll work them into the que. You know, it won’t necessarily be the next week or the week after, but we will absolutely get those in there. We love the questions and, it’s always a great engagement with folks that submit those. So thanks to the folks that did that recently, and we’ll invite other listeners to do the same thing to podcast@agilethought.com Today’s topic, Justin, you propose it and it’s on the topic of vulnerability and I’ll invite you to go and tee it up for us.

Justin Thatil: [01:29]

Sure. Thank you, Dan. So vulnerability, how did I come across this the first time? So I was actually first exposed to this book by Brene Brown through a workshop or boot camp, if you will, that I attended. And even though it wasn’t fully focused on our works, there was a mention of it. So I had heard about Brene two or three years ago at this point. So always been on the list of books for me to read and finally I’ve gotten around to it and, essentially, it’s a topic top of mind I work with clients and engagements. Vulnerability is required in order for you to make change happen. Right. And so, I love how Brene quotes it or defines vulnerability it’s the emotion we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. Right. So what does that mean for us as agile coaches, as scrum masters? In order for us to put ourselves out there to create an impact into the world, you have to essentially be vulnerable. So I thought this would be a great topic for us to funder over, how does vulnerability exist in our agile teams? The individual team members that are on each of our teams, the leadership of those teams and thought it would be a great conversation for us to have. And speaking of, I know that us at AgileThought, we’re looking into more scrum masters and coaches and here we are talking about a subject of vulnerability and my direct line manager happens to be Dan and Dan’s manager is Quincy, right? So here we’re talking about a topic that inherently requires us to be vulnerable, you know? So that says a lot about our team here at AgileThought. So I just want to shout out for both Dan and Quincy, our leadership team at AgileThought. You’re thinking about joining our organization, this is one of the key reasons why.

Quincy Jordan: [04:00]

Yeah. Start putting in sales, Justin.

Alba Uribe: [04:05]

Why not? It’s the truth. Yeah. So I wanted to add what Justin was saying regarding vulnerability is related of course to have encourage and having courage regardless of the circumstances and showing off regardless of the circumstances, I wanted to add that.

Justin Thatil: [04:35]

Yeah, I completely agree, Alba. When you think about teams showing vulnerability one of the things that we talked about when we were somewhat prepping for this or talking about this is the level of vulnerability that a team has to show just to work in an iterative way. At one time, if you were in the waterfall world and you know, there’s still a place for waterfall, but if you were in the waterfall world and you said we don’t know exactly when one will be finished, we don’t know exactly what will be done when we finish. I mean, you would’ve gotten laughed out the office. I mean, that was one of the worst things you probably could say. and so when you’re working in a way that allows for the freedom of iterative development, the freedom to do what’s best based on iterations and, you know, obviously based on feedback and so forth, I mean, that’s a great thing. And there’s a lot of courage that has to take place with that, which as you said, Alba, goes right in hand in hand with the vulnerability.

Dan Neumann: [05:57]

So, there is a couple facets of vulnerability that I’ve heard brought up. So one is kind of individual vulnerability. A person being willing to be vulnerable, kind of on a person to person basis. And then the other one is vulnerability, kind of collectively, Hey, we as a team or me as a representative for the team, depending on how that org set up, would be able to share the uncertainty and the vulnerability and not always just make it go away. I know when I was doing waterfall projects, boy, you’d have your risks issues, dependency sheet, and your job as a project manager was to make the risks go away, not to go, you know what, there’s a risk and there’s literally nothing to do to make it go away. You can try to mitigate it. You can try and transfer it, et cetera, but it’s there and more insidiously, there’s other uncertainties that are out there that we don’t know, the unknown unknowns, which got made fun of at one point, but that’s totally a thing in life is the unknown unknowns. So why would this be important for a team? What other facets come to mind? And, Quincy you want to weigh in on that one.

Quincy Jordan: [07:05]

So one of the things that you just said, actually started resonating and just making me think more about it, how, you know, oftentimes we’ll go in and I know I do this a lot, especially with scrum teams and I’ll push the notion that, you know, you succeed as a team or you fail as a team. And the level of vulnerability that an individual has to make when they say I’m putting whether or not I’m successful on the line based on what other people do as this team that I’m part of. Because that was a very difficult thing, you know, for a lot of folks back in the day to move away from, well, I have my part done and feel good about it. I did my part and I am good but to say, I’m not going to highlight my part, I’m going to highlight whether or not we have succeeded as a team. If we have all done collaboratively as a team, what we should do, or if we haven’t, and if we haven’t, then I’m going to help to solve that problem as part of the team and not sit back or stand back and just say, well, I did my part and it takes a lot of vulnerability to be able to do that.

Alba Uribe: [08:33]

Yeah, that’s a great point, Quincy. I totally agree. And, the team is having the courage and the trust to work together as a unit, as a collective to experiment and not just have everything super defined and all, everything, ready for them, but just go having the courage to go ahead and experiment again, like I mentioned, to finish a sprint goal or not, or maybe coming up with different approaches along the way that are better than instead of having everything super defined at the beginning. Dan Neumann: [09:17

Justin Thatil: [09:34]

Um, yes, that’s a great question. So one of the things that essentially, it’s creating that safe container, for folks to become vulnerable. So one of the first things that I do, especially on a brand new team, myself as the scrum master, somewhat of a leader for the team, establishing my own sense, make myself vulnerable into what I’m about, what I’m here for, for the team, right. How I can serve for the team, how can establish, with the team that this is what I’m here to do for you all. And, genuinely ask to the team, what can I do for y’all to become the next level. So, just being vulnerable, opening myself up and essentially inviting folks to essentially fall along. Right. so I use retrospectives, mainly for these kind of conversations, because, typically unless there’s other dysfunctions happening on in the organizations, it’s devoted to just the team themselves, right? Ideally there’s no another line manager listening in that may be making judgments and whatnot. So establishing safety, one of the key roles as a scrum master and the scrum master themselves being vulnerable and opening up the team members to really address those root issues. That brings me to another point of vulnerability that I was thinking about and it’s when we’re bring brand new to a team, right yourself, as an individual on that team, you’re essentially establishing yourself, right, in the process of establishing yourself and showing to the team and the members on your team that, Hey, I know what I’m doing, here is the scale I was brought in for, this is how I’m going to be helping. In order for that establishment to happen, typically you’ll see folks start diving into soliciting information about themselves to establish that. So it takes a degree of vulnerabilities from their part at the beginning of the team, at the beginning of their journey with the team to essentially say, Hey, I’m here for you for you all. I’m going to be doing my part. Things of that sort. So if that’s the stifled, and there’s a culture inherent to the team that you’re part of a culture that you’re inherent to the organization where that’s seen as detrimental in a sense, right? It’s that group think mentality. So someone opening themselves up challenging ideas that have been established within the company. And if that gets stifled from the get go, you know, what does that mean for that new individual on the team? Right. So it requires one to be vulnerable to challenge ideas. But then if it’s not nurtured and actually accepted, you know, what happens, right? So things to watch for as a scrum master, if that’s happening and in part change, or try to drive change into an organization as you start seeing things of that sort.

Quincy Jordan: [13:12]

And I think that actually, so I think that’s great context for the scrum master point of view. I think for the other members of the team, for the entire team, it’s also good context because when a team member is being vulnerable, there’s a great responsibility the other team members have to be responsible with that vulnerability that’s being shown. If someone discloses or shares within the team, Hey, I think I’m in jeopardy of not completing my task. There’s a lot of trust they’re putting into the rest of the team to be able to say, you know, there definitely have been teams and environments where people don’t say that they don’t feel that they can be vulnerable enough, you know, to do that. And sometimes they don’t feel enough. And sometimes it’s that the environment hasn’t convinced them that they can trust them with their vulnerability as well. And so she was saying that, I was just thinking about how much responsibility it is when people are vulnerable with us in what we do with that vulnerability.

Dan Neumann: [14:42]

The phrase “Vegas, baby” I’ve heard that, you know, what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas. Although they’ve come up with a more family friendly theme, a little less double on time rate. So are you keeping the confidence and as we are doing some of the prep, I had a couple scenarios where people exhibited great vulnerability and I’m like, I can’t use those, because for that very reason it wasn’t something that was shared to be re-shared. But as I thought through it, I can think of situations where I had something going on in my world outside of work, and I talked to my coaching team. I’m like, my brain’s just not here right now. There’s a thing going on. Here’s what it is. If I have my head up my rear end for the rest of the week, I apologize. I need some help. So, fortunately we had a relationship where Susan, the lady I was coaching with at that point, she’s like, okay, thank you. I got it. Right. Neumann’s head’s going to be somewhere else for a little while. And it was great. I could also see other places where I would’ve had to hide that and muddle through as best I can, fake it all the way until, you know, the situation had resolved itself. So a great role in setting up the ability for people to demonstrate vulnerability.

Justin Thatil: [16:09]

Yeah. I like that point, Dan. Cause that’s what fosters that connection, right? That those two individuals that Susan mentioned, right. So it’s key for us to establish relationships and trust and you know, all sorts of that human emotion, vulnerably essentially is the catalyst in a sense, right? Alba Uribe: [16:32

Quincy Jordan: [17:45]

Yeah. Because you to measure out your vulnerability, you know, of course we want teams to be vulnerable. We want people to be collaborative. We want people to be transparent. but there’s a certain level of team maturing that has to happen, you know, on the journey to get there as well. And how vulnerable and transparent you are in your first two sprints are probably going to be pretty different. And your 35th sprint, at that point, you’ve been through some things you’ve gotten over some hurdles together. You’ve basically fought some battles together. and you have a much better idea of where we stand as a team within a scrum team and how vulnerable you can be. Dan Neumann: [19:03

Justin Thatil: [19:41]

Yeah. And so I’m thinking about some of the things that Brene actually mentioned in their book, sort of alluding to what I think what we’re talking about right now. So, a couple of myths, right? So the myth of being, when we’re essentially vulnerable and disclosing information too show essentially bringing empathy or sympathy towards yourself as an individual by being open. So the one in the myth that she talks about is vulnerability is disclosure. And, another one is vulnerability is weakness, right? So if there are members on your team that essentially believe these myths, will they essentially open themselves up in the same manner that you did? So potentially no. So essentially what she guides us to do is, you know, it’s not about disclosing everything, it’s creating an atmosphere where there’s boundaries in what you’re sharing, but it’s still with the essence that there’s that trust aspect, there’s that safety aspect present that you’re feeling that this is appropriate to share. So you’re not sharing every single thing, but if there’s a moment where you see it’s appropriate and it might help the team and help the creativity of the team, or whatever environment that you’re facing it’s encouraged essentially.

Quincy Jordan: [21:20]

Sounds like, strategic vulnerability. How do you leverage it to really help others?

Dan Neumann: [21:29]

Well, and some of us are going through a bit of a program positive intelligence, and it’s been mentioned in a previous episode and one of the saboteurs to use that term is the victim. So I believe there’s very much difference between being vulnerable, sharing something and being a victim of it. And yeah, it kind of gets into what you were saying, the disclosure part, just blah, blah, blah, blah. Here’s all, here’s everything that might have ever gone wrong. And in woe is me. And, that’s a different thing than I think the vulnerability we’re talking about here. So what might be some techniques folks could use to increase the safety to be vulnerable, to bring awareness to these vulnerabilities? Because you know, I think much like a bridge or a highway when there’s a vulnerability, eventually the thing falls over or breaks apart. And, so we don’t want that. So what are some of the techniques that as leaders, whether it’s scrum masters or functional leaders or manager types that you might bring to the table?

Quincy Jordan: [22:32]

So I think one of the things that Alba said earlier, hit it right on, when she mentioned about it was the context, If I remember correctly, it was the context of a scrum master and if you make a mistake and you are, and it may have been a team member, other development team member, but if you make a mistake and you basically don’t try to cover that up, you’re exposing it and you say, Hey, look, I don’t think I’m going to finish. I need help. Can someone help? so you know, is that a technique? Well, I think it’s a technique if you intentionally expose your flaws, partly for the purpose of getting others to see that you’re willing to be transparent like that. Going back to, you know, again, something else that Alba said, as far as it becoming contagious, when that vulnerability is being shown and you know, as leaders, it’s very beneficial. I mean, I will actually intentionally, especially with transformations and so forth and even within our own team, here at AgileThought, but I will intentionally sometimes do something that I know might make me look like I don’t know what I’m doing or might be the kind of thing that you would say, ah, man, I won’t really say that or ask that question or you know, so forth. But I want people to know that it’s okay. You know, you can ask a question that you think everyone knows, but for some reason you don’t know. Now of course, getting back to the kind of victim thing. Yeah. You don’t want to, it shouldn’t be the same question all the time. You know, you should elevate beyond that. But even within transformations I, sometimes will coach leaders to share certain things or like share to a certain degree, in front of their areas in front of their departments, in front of their program so that they can see that level of vulnerability. I mean, you have to model the behavior. If you don’t model the behavior, how are you going to expect for it to ever happen? So for me that’s been one technique is to intentionally model those things, like I’ll look for an opportunity to do so. I mean, it’s genuine, but I will leverage it so that other people can see that it’s safe to be vulnerable.

Dan Neumann: [25:33]

What about you Alba what comes to mind?

Alba Uribe: [25:35]

Yeah. So one of the things I’ve done as a scrum master is when I start with a team is to share my personal map. So I have areas of personal area, phone area, social and professional. So I show, my map and I ask the team, so you have any questions, would you like to find out more about me? So opening myself more so people, first of all, get to know me and second of all, see that I’m being transparent. This is who I am. I’m here. You can ask me anything you want within the map. So I’ve done that. I’ve done also safety what is called psychological safety checks to see where the team is overall and how they feel regarding their interactions. So that’s also a technique I have used in the past.

Dan Neumann: [26:41]

Sure. So a couple techniques and Quincy, what you described was kind of modeling the ability to have uncertainty or to point out knowledge gaps, and then Alba you were describing ones where kind of self-disclosure in a way, like building some familiarity with you as a person in your background, building some safety there as well. Justin, anything to add there?

Justin Thatil: [27:02]

As I was listening to Quincy, you know, one of the things, the words that you said is, you know, establishing what’s okay. Right. So essentially modeling behavior or conversations, you know, within a team setting that may be perceived from somebody on the team that, Hey, this is an okay conversation. You’re okay to have. This was a genuine mistake that, you know, we’re owning up to for example. And then just establishing and team agreements essentially come to mind. So team norms, as time goes by on a team, you have these implicit agreements that someone is like tribal knowledge, right? And as you interact with your team members and your team on a day to day setting, the vulnerability, like the moments of vulnerability that may have been, that might have occurred, right, whatever situation may have been, someone failed to deliver, for example, it’s to what we touched on, then error was made, you know, any event, if you will, that required folks to be aware that Hey, this happened, we may have fallen from it, but here’s an opportunity for us to recover and you actually have a genuine conversation as a team and you establish that it’s okay. So whenever something like that happens again, you know, what’s the team going to do at that point. There’s a lot to establishing what’s okay. And, being vulnerable in the process as you do.

Dan Neumann: [28:43]

Thank you for sharing. Well, I’m my looking at our topic here and it’s big, vulnerability is a very large topic. And what we’re going to do is have one or two more sessions, maybe three, we’ll see we’ll inspect and adapt, we’ll iterate and all that good stuff Agileists like to do. But we got a chance here to scratch the surface on vulnerability. The why of it, what it looks like, why it’s important for a team. And I’ll ask you to maybe for some closing thoughts here and we’ll start with Alba and then Justin then Quincy. So what final thoughts do you have on this little foray into vulnerability?

Alba Uribe: [29:23]

Yeah. So for me is the teams working as a collective and be vulnerable in terms of if there are challenges just work together and bring any issues to the team so you can work as a collective to achieve your goal.

Justin Thatil: [29:51]

Yeah, for me, I mean, as you mentioned, Dan, we barely scratch the surface. There’s numerous techniques on the role that you hold on a team, the things that impact a team member, their own individuality within a team, that person’s vulnerability, techniques that they can use that we could touch on. So yeah, we’ve just merely scratched the surface. So I’m looking forward to us to continue this conversation for our listeners.

Quincy Jordan: [30:30]

Yeah. And for me, I would probably say that much of the reason people are not comfortable being vulnerable. and I say this within proper context of being vulnerable is out of fear. And generally, you’re not going to make really good decisions when they’re fear based decisions. It’s going to be very difficult to think about what’s good for the team. What’s good for the whole. It’s going to be very difficult to think about those things in a fear-based mindset. so when people are thinking about being vulnerable or not being vulnerable, then I would just say, you know, kind of maybe having in your mind, am I not wanting to be vulnerable because I’m afraid of something and if so, what am I afraid of and why? And what’s the worst that probably can happen? And more often than not, the worst is actually usually not that bad, you know? And if the worst happens, I’ve learned to go to sleep, to wake up, keep doing that. And that worse seems to go away. So, yeah, that would be my final thoughts on vulnerability for this session.

Dan Neumann: [32:00]

Perfect. And what do you describe the difference between fear and danger, it might be scary, but often there is very little actual danger to you and it’s moving forward, even though there is some level of discomfort or fear of doing that. So thank you for reminding us that there’s often very little danger in some of the stuff that we find to be kind of fear inducing. Thank you again. And like I said, it might not be the next episode immediately after this and the one after that, but there will be a couple follow-ons as we peel this vulnerability onion just a little bit more. Let’s talk about what’s on your continuous learning journey and we’ll go the reverse order. Quincy, we’ll put you up on deck first and then Justin and Alba we’ll just kind of unwind the rubber band here.

Quincy Jordan: [32:47]

All right. So I will be vulnerable. So I continuously read the Bible on a regular basis. It is, you know, I’m looking for wisdom. I read Proverbs, I read different parts of proverb. I know it’s not always considered the professional, you know, thing, per se, but there’s so much value that I personally get from doing so, and no matter how many other books or how other things that I get exposed to those things, which are valuable and helpful, I can always go back and point to where I can find it there and where that principle resides there. So my reading list is iterative on much of the same list over and over.

Dan Neumann: [33:45]

That’s good. Well, you got like 69 books there. So I think that kind of thing, something like that. Perfect. Perfect. Thank you.

Justin Thatil: [33:56]

I can’t beat that Quincy. I totally a hundred percent agree with Quincy there. Go back to versus in the Bible it’ll point back to whatever challenge I’m having to this day, a hundred percent. Another book, you know, Dan did mention that we’re together going through a positive intelligence training altogether. So that is the book I have in mind to read by Shahrzad on positive Intelligence and a lot of good things coming out of that to learn about, you know, myself, the judges and, some really good topics that were together diving into. Alba Uribe: [34:59

Outro: [37:04]

This has been the Agile Coaches’ Corner podcast brought to you by AgileThought. The views, opinions and information expressed in this podcast are solely those of the host and the guests, and do not necessarily represent those of AgileThought. Get the show notes and other helpful tips for this episode and other episodes at agilethought.com/podcast.

Agile Podcast: Agile Coaches' Corner