In our rapidly changing world, with no exception of agile teams, that happen to work in versatile and volatile environments, one thing that remains constant is people!

Several researches and blogs have been continuously reminding us, people who work in teams have the ability to make or break the products, particularly agile teams who are focusing on delivering value.
If they are the ones who are producing outstanding products useful to the customers, why are they so difficult and how can we help these people to repetitively perform as a great bunch of individuals?
Well to me, answer lies in basic human relations factors;

• Communication
• Motivation
• Responsibility
• Empathy

Communication
The core of agile team is how they communicate and collaborate while meeting their team commitments. This needs to be bi-directional from teams to the leaders and vice-versa to raise flags and impediments.

Motivation
Provide autonomy to people. If you think why autonomy is so important?
Well, because its motivating and motivated people build better products. It also enables to make decisions faster.
Please look at Daniel H. Pink‘s video on “The surprising truth about what motivates us“

Responsibility
Let people take the ownership of what they do and how they do, trust them and they will deliver being responsible for their creation.

Empathy
Learn and understand their perspective, No people are bad people (there are exceptions), its the circumstances make them behave in that manner. Learn them and be human.
Empathy is known to increase pro-social (helping) behaviours.

If you add all of the above to your skill-sets and be aware, you can manoeuvre the outcomes and understand why working with teams is a complex phenomenon. This will assist you to help them understand each other and prevail collaboration needed for any team or being cross-functional teams.

---

Shri is an pragmatic agilist, working as an coach and passionate about bringing people together for a purpose to work as one unit and create great outcomes. Focused to deliver customer eccentric business outcomes connected to strategy. Also a critical thinker to tailor solutions within given constraints and context. Sharing the goodies of agile way of doing things learnt from others and experiential learning. Lean thinker. Love the concept of learn fast and move forward towards working solutions. Also a believer in people being the most essential part of the whole equation, instilling trust and motivations help building great products and solutions.

To learn more about me or my blogs please visit https://freeagilist.com/

Follow me on twitter: @ShriTaralkar