Scrum Teams are cross-functional. This is often perceived as “you should be able to do all the work of the others in the team”. Can you imagine how tough that must be? Luckily for us, this is a common misconception. But what DOES it mean? And what skills are Scrum Teams lacking? Daria Bagina is joining Sander to discuss her viewpoints.
What you’ll discover in this show:
– What cross-functionality means
– What part do Scrum Masters play in the cross-functionality of the Scrum Team
– How to resolve the lack of certain skills
Speakers:
Daria Bagina
PST, Author, Mentor
Helping teams and organizations get the most out of Agile since 2014. My passion is in teaching, coaching, mentoring, and facilitating. Contact me if your company is looking for an experienced agile practitioner to help them with their transformation.
My goal as a Scrum Master is to help teams succeed and to create an encouraging motivating organizational culture.
I have extensive experience working with a variety of teams and individuals always looking for the best way to approach new problems.
I’m a passionate Agile advocate. I believe old ways of working can no longer support emerging businesses and the only way to build products that will elevate the economy is through a new mindset of work.
Contact Daria:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dariabagina/
Sander Dur (host)
Scrum Master, Agile Coach, trainer, and podcast host for ‘Mastering Agility”
Sander Dur is a Professional Scrum Trainer at Scrum.org, podcast host of Mastering Agility, Professional Scrum Master and Lead Agile Consultant, and trainer at Xebia. Besides this, he’s an avid writer for predominantly Serious Scrum on Medium.com. Sander has a major passion for the human side in complex domains. Ensuring a high level of psychological safety, therefore, is a critical part of his work. Organizations in complex domains can only survive when innovating. Innovation can only take place with the right balance between low social friction and high intellectual friction. While most organizations now understand how to apply Agile frameworks, they struggle with the delivery of value. Psychological safety is the next step in this evolution and Sander has a huge drive to help organizations reach that step.
Sander is enthusiastic, open-minded, and ambitious. He finds interpersonal relationships and intrinsic motivations very important in team dynamics. Besides his work, Sander loves to spend time with his family, enjoys sports and eating healthy, barbecuing, riding his motorcycle, and traveling.
Let’s connect! Sander is always up for new connections and discussions!
Masteringagility.org
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanderdur/
https://xebia.com/academy/nl/trainers/sander-dur
https://sander-dur.medium.com/
Additional resources:
www.scrummastered.com
https://www.youtube.com/c/ScrumMastered
Pizzagility events: https://www.meetup.com/nlscrum/
Discord community: https://discord.gg/6YJamBJxUV
SPEAKERS
Sander Dur, Daria Bagina
Sander Dur 00:00
Hey guys, welcome back to mastering agility by now, you know, the whole purpose of this podcast of this platform is to connect you and inspire you with the best of the business as long as with other agilus. One way to do that is by our free events. Examples of those are the pizza agility sessions in Boston. So, September 28, and September 29. In Atlanta, pizza agility are free events free sessions, where we provide the pizza, you bring the energy, and we facilitate such as through liberating structures with teachings in the back of the room and we connect you and we learn from each other topics will vary the file and find the links for that in the show notes or go to the NL scrum Meetup group on meetup.com. Now, for this episode, we have Daria by getting a professional scrum trainer and we’re talking about the missing skills within your scrum team. If you want to know more, if you want to connect to others, join the mastering agility discord community. link also in the show notes, but for now, we’re going to join Undaria and discuss what she feels are the missing skills for Scrum Masters and for the scrum team. Hey Daria, my co-Professional scrum trainer. How are you doing?
Daria Bagina 01:30
Doing great. Thank you. How are you?
Sander Dur 01:32
I’m good. I’m really warm. It’s about 30 degrees Celsius. Think 95 degrees Fahrenheit days, somewhere around that.
Daria Bagina 01:40
Yeah, no, I don’t really understand Celsius myself.
Sander Dur 01:44
Same. I always have some difficulties trying to recalculate that anyway is really warm over here on this side of the world. As mentioned, you are a professional scrum trainer and you teach the professional scrum master courses and the other classes. What kind of skills do you feel the scrum master whether that’s an experienced or beginning Scrum Master? What skills do they need to have?
Daria Bagina 02:11
Well, I think when we when I was thinking about that, that scrum master role overall, and working with a lot of Scrum Masters, especially the ones who are still new trying to get into this role, and I was thinking about the skills in terms of what are the must have skills for Scrum Masters, and what ones are kind of an extension for when the scrum master is ready to move maybe to the next steps in their career. But I was thinking about the must have skills, what always comes up are things related. Well, first of all to the knowledge of Scrum, because the scrum master is the representation of Scrum in any organization, they have to know scrum they need to be able to explain it, right. But in order to be able to explain it, they need to be a good teacher. Because we have a lot of very complex concepts in Scrum and Agile overall. And being able to explain those concepts in such a way that people can easily understand and actually apply them. That definitely is a must for me. Now, of course, we look at skills, you know, like coaching, facilitation mentoring, and I think those are definitely needed. I look at them as core skills, but I feel like they’re not yet a must. You have to have that scrum knowledge, you have to be a good teacher. And then I feel what really helps a lot of Scrum Masters, the great Scrum Masters, I see people who are able to kind of get the job and start pretty quickly are the ones who are good learners. Like those are the Scrum Masters who will go along way because they are always in that professional learning. They are continuously improving with each continuous improvement to others. So we need to be able to do that ourselves.
Sander Dur 04:10
So they should have a growth mindset set instead of a fixed mindset. There’s also a difference between doing Scrum and doing professional Scrum, right? Everyone seems to be writing Scrum and the Agile hype train these days. So you see a wild growth of Scrum Masters popping up and all the related related accountabilities related roles. What do you feel is the difference between professional Scrum and just doing Scrum?
Daria Bagina 04:42
That’s I think a tricky topic. Right? A lot of people believe there are doing Scrum that they are doing Agile, highlighting the word doing but in reality is it is not true and I feel that professional Scrum is about principles and values and really being able to understand that those underlying reasons for using Scrum and Agile rather than processes or even just the framework itself, kind of when you know, both of us are trainers, we went through the whole process. And when I talk about this experience, I say, in order to really become a trainer, you need to kind of geek out on scrum as and go deeper in your understanding of what Scrum is. Right? And that what makes you a professional trainer, you need to understand all of those things that no one, I’d say initially thinks about when they’re taking the scrum framework and applying it. But we look at it in that way, right? daily scrum, how’s it going actually, to transparency, inspection, adaptation, right? How does it help us with Scrum values, the when you start seeing those connections, and really focus on those values, I think this is where you will get the highest benefits from Scrum and Agile in general. But also, this is what differentiates just doing Scrum and following the process. Versus professionals
Sander Dur 06:21
Exactly. stead of getting into the mechanical zombie Scrum, as you’re on the shirt dough gives the alphabet and body over them. Awesome. They wrote zombie Scrum is just going through the motions. And that’s very much different than what you mentioned, embracing the empirical approach the transparency, inspection adaptation, but it’s really challenging to get into that stage. Do you feel that organizations really understand what a scrum master what a scrum team is supposed to be doing to enable effective and professional Scrum?
Daria Bagina 06:57
Oh, well, I think some do. But, you know, recently, I’ve been going a bit more into systems thinking and models like reinventing organizations, holacracy, things like that. And what I understand is that the problem is not that people don’t understand, I feel like the problem sometimes and most of the time is that the structure is not built, really, for scrum to be fully successful. The current organizational structure. I mean, they’re how we set up hierarchies and who reports to who and then what the dynamic is between management, right, and the teams. And I feel this is often what does not allow organizations and teams to be really successful with Scrum because we have those old structures that keep getting in the way.
Sander Dur 07:55
How do should we break those structures down then?
Daria Bagina 08:01
Well, it was that easy, you know,
Sander Dur 08:04
looking for the million dollar job.
Daria Bagina 08:08
But I think one of the things that I see a lot is that when we look at developers and a team, right, they are specialists in what they do. They know exactly how to build a product, right? They know the technical side of that’s a technical product. One of the things that we ask of them more, anyone really on a scrum team, or whatever the role is, is that you need to be proactive, not reactive, that you need to self manage. Basically, each scrum team member technically, in a way needs to be acting as an interpreter. They are part of this small little startup group that is working on this big product. And each of them is accountable and should have ownership over that product over the success of that product. But traditionally, this is not the structures that we set in place in the organization. Right? I do my job. I am a specialist in this. And this is what I do. I this is kind of the expectations. We sat with people, you know, when we started working, and the dynamic between the manager and the team member never really asked for that proactiveness or self management before. So I don’t know if what you think about kind of that angle that I’m taking.
Sander Dur 09:41
I think it’s very much true. It’s very, very siloed thinking like these are the things that I am hired for, and that’s exactly what I’m gonna do and nothing else. While we rarely get hired for achievement of goals, but very strict lines like these are the activities that you’re supposed to be doing. And then you can say well Oh, I was supposed to do this, I’m not going to pick up that because it’s not in my contract. If you would take that into a different angle, like we’re here, as a as a scrum team, together with management leaders, stakeholders, and I think there should be a more of a common agreement, an outspoken transparent agreement, what we expect to have all these people together playing together, because it’s not just a scrum team, right, but how we’re going to move forward effectively and for the achievement of goals. And I think that’s something that we’re you, you were mentioned, being a teacher, I think that’s where scrum master also comes in teaching stakeholders how to engage and interact with the scrum team, because their voice is super important for the success of a product. And I think that’s what a lot of stakeholders and a lot of organizations still undervalue.
Daria Bagina 10:51
Yeah, I think, you know, when we say, Okay, we’re going to go Agile, and we’re going to implement Scrum, it always feels that it kind of adds at the level of the team, you know, the team is going to implement Scrum. And the team needs to do that, and the team needs to do this. But the reality is, in order for this to work, the whole system needs to be aligned. And this means that stakeholders, right management, and stakeholders also need to learn some new skills, such as letting go of control, being a good leader, giving good direction, creating great goals, all those things are necessary if they want Agile to really succeed, because this is what they need to do now, versus maybe what we traditionally used to do.
Sander Dur 11:44
Maybe we should create a course on how to unlearn stuff. We’ve gone through your education cool. Now we’re going to redo all that. And now you don’t know anything anymore. I think that’s the most effective way. Because it’s so easy to always think on. If you look at co active coaching on a level one style reflecting on based on your experience what it does to you and very inner monologue, I knew this thing. And I think that’s one of the first things that you would that you should drop off. They also do think that speaking of missing skills, that is one of those missing skills to engage with to teach people how to not listen with your experience, but keep an open mind. That’s very challenging, and it has a lot to do with culture in general as well. Yeah. Speaking of missing skills, what do you feel that a scrum team as a whole is lacking? On general level? Like you’re consulted as well, right, if I’m not mistaken, you have a lot of experience in these things. Do you see a common thread on skills and activities that typically lack in the scrum team?
Daria Bagina 13:00
Yeah, I feel like often the same questions come up. When I work with Scrum Masters. through mentorship programs, we often talk about different challenges are facing and they’re always the same things come up, which I actually believe are linked to that lack of skills. Those are inability to create sprint or protocols. That is a very common thing. And a lot of teams just say, well, we just can’t do it. It just doesn’t work for us. But I think this is really related to the skills of creating goals. Because, you know, personally, even when we work on our personal goals, or maybe our business goals as small business owners, it is difficult to really set up good goals. It is a skill that you need to develop. And I think this is one of the skills that a scrum team needs to have, right? Obviously a scrum master is there to help teach the team but they also need to be able to create goals themselves, right? There’s a lot of things that are related to backlog management, I think, yes, technically, we’d say Well, it’s the product owner who owns the product backlog. But the reality is, it’s the whole team who needs to be able to manage the product backlog understand it. And there are lots of things that are related to that, which is writing product backlog items in such a way that it is clear who the customer is why this item is important kind of looking into that more customer centric part of product backlog items, splitting them in in in a vertical way rather than in horizontal slices. So I think this is another skill that is required. And I feel that often because this is new. We’ve never done this. We’ve never been asked to do this before. I didn’t Our scrum team. And now we’re asked, okay, you need to create goals, you need to be able to write good product backlog items. It’s hard, because we don’t know how to do it. No one told us no one taught us this before, right? And, and we kind of say, well, you know, it just doesn’t work for us. And that’s not something that we need to do that just not aligns with what we are doing generally. But the reality is that these are just the new skills that you need to learn. If you want the framework to really bring you have any benefits,
Sander Dur 15:38
there’s, you end up in a gravity trap, if you will. Sorry, where, if you tried to do the run these experiments, you always you almost got retracted as if it were gravity, and all behavior and known behavior. So we’re not used to creating spring goals are great, broader goals and focusing on the connection between these two and how they relate to the vision and to the organizational vision. And it’s kind of like, well, we’ve tried it out two or three times, now we’re going to abandon it that you get retracted back to the back to Earth. And you’re done. Basically, you never tried to experiment ever again. Because you don’t try to escape that gravity level, what would be first steps to still be focusing on escaping that gravity trap?
Daria Bagina 16:34
The first step, I think like with anything you would want to succeed at is, continue pushing yourself, once you hit that kind of once you get to that uncomfortable level where like, I don’t know how to do that, oh, I don’t feel like I can. This is this is where you need to stay. And I feel this is where you grow, you know, kind of like when you exercise, right? When you’re doing the exercise, the real, the real growth of your muscle happens at the very last step when like the say you’re doing crunches, it’s the last five crunches that are giving you the most benefit, not the first one to five, right. And I think this is the same way if you’re building a new skill, so you need to go through that period of where you’re really not doing it that good, right? Your goals maybe are really terrible. But you’re trying, you know, you’re trying to build a skill. And then this is the last ones that will really be the best ones. But you need to get to that before you can actually see real progress, real growth. I feel like it’s kind of it’s not the first step. But I think that’s the way to go. In six months.
Sander Dur 17:59
Yeah. Is that something that, like what we were discussing before, like having a common agreement? Do you feel that mutual accountability of both stakeholders and leadership as well as the scrum team?
Daria Bagina 18:15
Yes, yes. Everyone’s involved in that process. So I think definitely everyone needs to be able to do that. And in the same way, as we say, well, the team is not used to being self managed, right? Being proactive in the same way. Leadership is not used to letting go of control. So it’s going to be uncomfortable. This is also a skill of being able to do that. And as we go back to obviously, the principles behind Scrum, and we see the need for trust and courage, right, that these are extremely important for the whole system to really work for the framework to to be beneficial. So in order to have that you, you need to at some points, push yourself into that zone of uncomfortability.
Sander Dur 19:13
This super challenging, especially because it’s so ingrained in the way that we work and you mentioned trust. I think that’s one of the hardest things to actually trust people. Some people say, well, trust is earned. Other C’s, it’s given I don’t want to bash too much. But my experience, especially with corporate, very soon, we’re conservative corporate America. Sorry, America. I don’t want to blame you. I’m pointing fingers, just my experience. But it feels like people are saying we have to trust people. Yet we still need to check up on their work. So it feels like there is no real trust. Yes, what’s your experience with that?
Daria Bagina 20:00
I think I’ve seen it not only in America, I’ve seen people being very scared, to be honest by that word, trust. What do you mean I need to trust. It’s obviously a lot of people and I personally have lived through professional challenges that are related to trust, where infirm, some information is used against you, right? And you feel that your trust has been broken. And it is really hard to, to put your trust again, in others, especially if you have lived through something like that right in there in a professional setting. I think a lot of people happen to at least once experience something like that. So generally, I see people having having general problem with that, I think, because I am very big on transparency, for example, I believe that transparency, that radical candor, that need for very transparent information, doesn’t matter who it who it is, whether it’s just the team members, the leadership, whatever it is, if it’s related to what we’re doing needs to be transparent. And that requires trust, right? And often, I get a lot of pushback from people saying, well, wait a minute, well, do they really need to know this? Or do we really need to tell this information to these people? And I feel this is kind of ingrained? And we always question, Is it really necessary, and that definitely doesn’t help building trust and transparency?
Sander Dur 21:46
What’s the what’s the most harmful thing that can happen when you don’t have drops within your team? Why is it so important?
Daria Bagina 22:00
Well, what the worst thing that can happen is that everything that you do is really not bringing you benefit, or even actually actively damaging what you’re trying to achieve, if you don’t have that trust. So when you don’t have trust, what often happens is, you don’t have trust, so you feel that the other person might be untruthful, right. So you’re trying to protect yourself, right, so it kind of goes into the circle of Well, I’m just trying to protect myself. So here’s what I’m going to do. Because I’m just trying to make sure that my trust isn’t broken, right. And usually actions like that lead to suboptimal decisions, or maybe very important information that is not known until it’s too late. And so and that creates a lot of damage long term, for the for the product, and for the team, overall.
Sander Dur 23:07
Exactly. Like building a house without a solid having a solid foundation. A good device always refers to scrum as the house of Scrum. And same as the house of lien, if you don’t have a solid foundation, if you don’t have trust at the right levels of leadership, you’re gonna build a house on quicksand. And you’re gonna build your, your perceived value and something that’s not there. And ultimately, you won’t be working as a team, but as a collective of individuals happening to work at the same time, Simon thing is the sort of collaborating. I think that’s, that’s super damaging, also to the morale of people. I mean, do you trust everyone that you work with?
Daria Bagina 23:49
Ah, well, right now I’m kind of focusing on my business. So it’s just me. So I do trust myself, trust yourself. And most of this most of the time,
Sander Dur 23:59
depends on what time of day Friday night might be less.
Daria Bagina 24:02
Yeah, maybe.
Sander Dur 24:06
That’s the thing, but how would you make these kinds of things transparent and ensure that this becomes one of the x x x activities that people focus on? It’s the same as work right? Trust is less tangible as as work itself is these specific user stories that we’re working on or other product backlog items that’s really easy to grasp and understand like, these are the activities that we’re supposed to be doing? Trust is way less tangible than the work itself is? How to move forward with that and how do these accountabilities within an scrum team come to play?
Daria Bagina 24:46
I draw a lot of parallels was the relationships I have in life. And I think that you can use the same approaches to when you’re trying to build trust with Team Ames. And this is what I call kind of over communication, not oversharing over communication, where when you have a concern or a thought, maybe you have a concern that someone isn’t holding information, right? Or whatever that is. Or maybe you just feel frustrated because someone did something that you were not, didn’t agree with, right? The best way to approach it is to communicate it right away. Because if you don’t write this is when we go into the cycle of resentment, well, why didn’t this person do the task they were supposed to do? Well, they don’t know. That is actually there is a frustration associated with this, right? Or maybe you’re saying, talking about the foundation, you made a mistake, right? Or something like that happened. You need to communicate it. And I think like that over communication is so essential. Even if you have communicated it already. I feel it’s important to always come back to that and say, hey, just just so that everybody knows, here’s what happened. Here’s the information. And I’m just being honest, transparent. There is a cycle between trust and transparency, like you need trust to have transparency, but you also need transparency to have trust. So you need to kind of enter the cycle from some angle, right. And I feel that, that communication and depth is definitely essential. And just looking personally, I feel this is really what helped me build stronger relationships with people overall. And I think this is what can build really strong teams.
Sander Dur 26:55
But it’s really easy to point fingers, Dario, you need to be transparent, you need to dress me while and this is The annoying thing, my therapist always says, If you want someone else to change, you got to start with yourself. And a good question would be, how can I help this situation? What can I do to wreck my keyboard? What can I do to ensure more transparency and to support this change? And I think that’s, it’s really easy to look at what other people are supposed to be doing and what they need to change. But having a real good look at yourself, I think that’s one of the most demanding as well as challenging yet rewarding things that someone can do. Yeah, what do you feel that the product owner in that sense, could help to support these, this gradual change in the organization?
Daria Bagina 27:47
As the product owner works, or has kind of the closest, closest path to stakeholders, now you do represent their views, if they have a lot of that part stakeholder management happening. And I feel this is their connection to that other layers of the organization where they can build the that foundation for trust. The same way, as you say, well, we first need to look at yourself, and that’s where we’re coming back to the courage topic. Well, you need to be courageous, right and, and I feel like the whole scrum team really needs to work together on it. Because yes, the product owner is has the closest connection to stakeholders or to leadership for that matter. But I feel that the whole scrum team needs to support it, right? The scrum master in the same way needs to be there to support the product owner in in tough conversations, or maybe tough decisions they need to make. And they feel this definitely helps through. Same using sprint reviews. Right? That’s a perfect opportunity for the whole scrum team to come together and help everyone to start building that trust, not just the product owner, so I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t single out one person of the scrum team. So I think that it is important for kind of everyone to be on the same page. And what I’m thinking kind of coming into into my mind as you say, well, I need you need to look at yourself, right? And that applies to every single person in the scrum team. And the way I do it as a scrum master is and being very upfront with the team, where I say, Hey, I don’t know everything. I definitely don’t know your expertise. And so I put my trust in you. I know that you’re doing a great job. You’re professionals. But I don’t know, because I’m going to be asking some stupid questions, right? And if I say we are facing a challenge, and I don’t really know what the right solution is, I’m going to say, Okay, actually, I actually have no idea how to approach it. Let’s figure it out together. And I feel that every single member of the scrum team, obviously, in coding the product owner, need to be able to do exactly the same thing. So when the team comes together, for example, in a sprint review, if one person says, Hey, I don’t know or I made a mistake, everybody else is there to back them up and not say, well, actually, I knew exactly what happened. Right? So
Sander Dur 30:45
you did make a mistake, you messed up victim man. That’s a core fundamental of, as they call vulnerable leadership, or creating that psychological safe environment. things as easy as saying, Hey, I don’t know, or I made a mistake, please help me, or I’m struggling with this. What do you think I think those kinds of questions open up a new area for other people to pitch in as well to feel more comfortable and putting themselves out there as well and discussing their personal challenges. And in that way, you create more trust in the organization instead of leaning on someone else and waiting for them to pick your work up. Or try to cover up your blame. What is it that made you so eager and inspired by professional Scrum and these digging for these missing skills?
Daria Bagina 31:45
So you mean like how I went into the Scrum Master? Yeah, sure. Role and then, yeah, professional scrum trainer. Yeah. Um, I guess I can say that it happened kind of by accident at the very beginning. And I’m very happy to did. I used to be a Content Manager. So not nothing technical at all. But the organization I was working with, was going through an Agile transformation. And I heard there, there is a scrum master role. And I started to research it and look into it. And it sounded nice, I feel felt like okay, this sounds like a good progression for me from where I am right now. And honestly, I think especially after a couple of years in the role, when I started to be a real Scrum Master, I just could see, I really started to enjoy the role. Because I was able to create great connections with my team members, I could see the results of my work through the results of their work. Just being able to see teams, you know, enjoying their work, coming to work and joy in working together, having fun and what it led me to think and we spend so much time at work. We can’t waste it on being constantly unhappy or unsatisfied at work. So how can we create environments where we actually enjoy what we do. And I feel that scrum master role professional Scrum, actually helps me achieve that purpose helps me create environments where people thrive.
Sander Dur 33:39
That’s beautiful. Then why the link with professional scrum trainers that the same to continuing down that path?
Daria Bagina 33:49
I think Oh, well. I had a couple of while a few years, obviously as a scrum master at the time. And I just felt that I want to reach more Scrum Masters and help other SCRUM masters to kind of get to the same understanding of the role and enjoyment of the role as me. It was a tough path for me for the first couple of years. And then after that, when I really understood the role, I really was getting some great results from my work. And I could, I had a chance to work with a few very new Scrum Masters and to mentor them. And I think through that mentorship, I saw that I really want to reach more people more Scrum Masters and going for the trainer path for example. That was I felt that this is exactly what will help me get there. What will help me at touch more SCRUM masters to help them be more successful through training mentorship. And just being there in the organizations in, in consulting or coaching roles as well,
Sander Dur 35:08
becoming a professional scrum trainer is a pretty challenging path. It takes quite a long while you have to really understand scrum through and through. I think you can do that really alone just by yourself. Do you feel trusted? Or do you feel inspired and that there has been that vulnerable leadership in that sense as well, while you’re being guided through becoming a professional scrum trainer?
Daria Bagina 35:44
I think the Yes, I agree. The past is very, very hard. I think even though we, we see what the steps are at the beginning before applying. No one really prepares us for for the past still. And I got very lucky because I had a few people around me who were scrum trainers already. And they definitely supported me for during this this path. So here in Canada, and that definitely helped me. And as you say, that vulnerable leadership, I feel that this is more of being open, being there and building willing to help. Instead of saying, Well, I’m, I don’t have time, right, or I am doing this, you’re way too far behind me. Talk to me when you’re here. Right. And I feel that that definitely helps just the community allows people just to connect with each other. I reached out to so many trainers, and most of them reply to me. And that definitely helped. And I feel that gentleman generally what the community is about is, is that community aspect, right? We’re in it together, let’s work together, let’s help each other. And that I think kind of comes from that sense of vulnerability as well.
Sander Dur 37:17
Would you have been able to achieve such a professional level, if you will fit in if there was a perceived lack of trust and courage, and it’s vulnerable leadership?
Daria Bagina 37:32
And on the trainer side? Huh, hard question. I don’t know. Maybe not. I don’t know,
Sander Dur 37:47
I think that this already implies or demonstrates why trust and that level of leadership is so important, whether that’s becoming a professional scrum trainer, or in the profession that you’re working on as a scrum master, as a developer, or whatever work that you’re doing in any complex domain, trust is super important. If you have the right levels of support just guards, that leadership that you’re supposed to be having, or that would do good. There will be more effective growth for your organization for your team and for your personal development as when compared to when you wouldn’t have that level of trust. So I don’t want to go too much into the path of becoming a professional scrum trainer. It’s more about, if you will, are stimulated in with the right people and with the right mindset, with the right activities and levels of trust, you will be able to achieve great things. And I think that’s so undermined in most organizations still, because of whatever reason.
Daria Bagina 38:53
Yeah. Well, yeah, without going into details of as the past to the scrum trainer, is I think what definitely helped during that path is that we go through that path, we try things. We go for different assessments or peer reviews and whatnot. And we, even though we don’t expect it, we hope it’s not going to happen, but we fail. Yep. All right. We need to do it again. And if we’ll say in a traditional organization, we would look at that failure like Okay, that’s it that’s anyway, you’re not good enough for that. Just forget it, right? You’re just you’ve failed. And I feel that that path instead when you’re going for becoming a scrum trainer is that that failure is looked at as a great opportunity to learn is just as Okay, is just a little stop on your pass by That’s just an opportunity for you to learn. And we are waiting for you to come back and show us what you learned. Right. And I think that definitely helped me to accept failures as well, more just because you’re going through that path and you’re going to fail. And the generally, the community looks at it as that’s okay. That’s normal. We all did this. Just come back when you’re ready.
Sander Dur 40:29
Can you imagine what levels developers and organizations would be able to achieve? If this would be the mindset behind that, of course, there’s a there’s the capitalist approach to it as well. Money is supposed to be made still your your work work for an organization. But if you have this mindset, how much you can unlock an intrinsic motivation, therefore more knowledge, innovation, future proof, this, these kinds of things will be unlocked when you have the mentality that you’ve just described. And I think that’s when we speak about missing skills. I think that’s something that a lot of organizations and professional SCRUM masters can still learn about a lot about.
Daria Bagina 41:10
Yeah, definitely.
Sander Dur 41:11
We’re slowly nearing the end of this episode.
Daria Bagina 41:17
Where that was fast,
Sander Dur 41:19
it goes fast, doesn’t it? We can do this again, quickly. Where can people find you? Where can people interact with you? Where can people find your courses?
Daria Bagina 41:29
Yeah, so I I have my online presence on the scrum mastered.com. So, so my website where I share videos and blog posts, of course, but I also work on lots of guides and very practical insights for Scrum Masters. My focus is really on helping Scrum Masters become more successful, not through just traditional training, but actually by giving practically action plans and improvement plans for them to use and to help them take those first steps with less stress and say, so I met scrum master.com. You can find me Of course on LinkedIn Daria bargainer. So yeah, and I’d love to see people on my website in the comment section or on my YouTube channel.
Sander Dur 42:30
The links will be included in the show notes. As always, Dario, thank you very much for being here.
Daria Bagina 42:37
Thank you so much for having me.
Sander Dur 42:40
Thanks, Dario. Thank you guys for tuning in for this episode of the mastering agility podcast. Remember to check out our free events in Boston and in Atlanta. You’ll find them on the NFL scrum meetup.com group. I’ll leave the link in the show notes, as well as link to the discord community where you can find even more information then hundreds of other inspiring analysts. If you’d like this platform, please leave us a good review. Leave a five star review or thumbs up or whatever you want to do. Sign up to you to whatever platform that you’re listening this episodes to hope that you’re tuning us and tuning in next episode again. Take care yourself, take care of each other. See you guys later.