Define your own role

By: Nicola Brown

I had the luxury of having an Agile Coach to guide me throughout the first few months of my journey as a Scrum Master. I distinctly recall that in one of our sessions he gave me this point to ponder - ‘Don’t be a Scrum Master named Nicki, rather be Nicki the Scrum Master’. 

Simple concept, isn’t it? But for me it was such a compelling statement that has helped to define how I approach my role. 

This by far is one of the most powerful lessons that I’ve learnt. Still, I had to define what that meant for me, and this is some of what I’ve come up with so far. 

⏩ It means having a keen understanding of what makes your team members excited, their pet peeves, and their anxieties. 

⏩ Understanding how to unlock their full potential and helping them to identify growth opportunities, to knowing when they are reverting to their comfort zone and not challenging themselves or each other.  

⏩ It’s about creating a safe space where everyone can be open and honest- a ‘judgement free zone’…a ‘BS’ free zone. 

⏩ It’s knowing when you don’t have the answers but can quickly devise a plan and execute to get those answers. 

⏩ It’s about understanding your wider support team, well enough, so that you can approach them in the best way that will get your desired result. 

⏩ It’s about acknowledging your weaknesses and making a conscious, somewhat visible, effort to improve. For me, not having a technical background, I realised early that in order to be able to efficiently help my team, I too had to climb that ‘technical competency curve’. Recognising this, I started with asking more questions; listening to understand the responses and researched many concepts, that felt very abstract at the time.  

⏩ It’s going above and beyond to give your team that sense of comfort, while at the same time empowering them to act on their own, to ‘self-manage’ and ‘self-organise’ to deliver quality solutions. 

⏩ It’s protecting them from the noise and distractions, in order to keep them focused, while at the same time, keeping them informed about the reasons for the ‘noise’ and allowing them to problem solve these issues, where they see fit.

⏩ It’s also about allowing them to feel all the feels when we are faced by many roadblocks and obstacles and having them refocus on how to keep moving forward.

All this really points to one simple definition – it’s about being your truest self and giving the people around you, the freedom to be their truest and best self, too. 

And of course, all this won’t occur in an instance and it may not be easy either, but that’s why it’s a journey, and not a short one either. That’s why it requires that you have some kind of intrinsic motivation, one that will enable you to relentlessly push to serve your team – to be their Scrum Master.