From 2008 to 2010, I had the unique experience of working overseas in Sweden. It was a fantastic opportunity, and I learned a lot about how cultural norms can differ. Workplace norms are not the same everywhere in the world – and this was surprising to me.
I had assumed that working in IT would be nearly the same. Programming in Sweden was very similar to programming in USA- all of the programs were in a language I knew (English), and the technologies I used were familiar. My keyboard had some extra keys on it, and surprisingly, this threw me off for the first month or so. I kept accidentally pressing the wrong keys, and that led to slower coding.
The cultures in the various offices I worked in were vastly different. From the moment I entered my first interview, this was clear. Instead of focusing on my career highlights and my strengths and weaknesses, hiring managers wanted to know was I fully rounded individual? What did I like to do in my spare time?
The norm in USA of talking up your experience and skills was not acceptable in the humble company of Swedes either. This might have been the hardest adjustment for me. To me, finding a job and standing out against other candidates meant aggressively selling what I could do. To the Swedes, this seemed like the boasts of someone who liked themselves a little too much. I had never looked at myself as being someone who was full of themselves, but to survive in Sweden’s job market, I needed to tone it down.
Another thing that struck me, again and again, was the power of shared expectations. In Sweden you were expected to follow certain cultural norms, and everyone I met did things to help you know what was expected of you. On the bus, someone would helpfully remind a gentleman to give up his seat for the elderly, or else every occupant would turn an angry eye to the man who did not give up his seat for an elderly woman. That peer pressure was powerful.
People said what they meant. If a friend said let’s get coffee, they actually meant it. We better be getting coffee!
In one office, we had coffee break or fika, every day in the mid afternoon. I can verge on workaholism, so my teammates would subtly stop by my desk just before to encourage my attendance.
Even living in Sweden, the government encourages you to understand the country and fit in. I am a Swedish citizen, but I was not fluent enough in Swedish and was encouraged to attend a free class to learn the language and culture better. For this small nation, gentle cultural guidance helped those not used to the expectations to fit in.
In the same way, Agile teams can use their defined cultural norms to help new members onboard, and to encourage each other to be better team members. This can be done in many ways, but the retrospective is one of my go-tos.
I may not have posted about this here yet, but in my daily life, I say all the time that one should vary retrospective methods. It is truly the most powerful tool in the scrum master’s toolbox, and using the same method every time is like using a hammer for every job around the house. You might get some things nailed in, but you’re likely to get some dented walls and fixtures too.
One method I like using in retrospectives with new teams, or with teams in which it seems like discord appears to be growing, is to define our team’s working relationships with “That Guy, This Guy.”
With this method, after reminding the team about the Retrospective Prime Directive, the team works to define the kind of team member that is difficult to work with (Don’t Be That Guy) and the kind of team member they love to work with (This Guy Rocks!).
I did this retro with a team I worked with in the last year. The That Guy, This Guy artifact became their playbook for their team. Take a look at some of the qualities that That Guy has versus This Guy.
“That Guy” passes the buck, isn’t accountable and closes new ideas down. The phrase, Don’t Be That Guy takes on special meaning when we define the behaviors that make it hard to work with someone.
On the other hand, look at the qualities this team defined for the sort of person everyone enjoys working with – proactive, helpful, and willing to pitch in. Everyone wants to work with “This Guy.”
Agile is all about raising accountability for all team members and pushing the team, and the individuals in it, to be their best selves. As human beings we like examples of what that means. For each team, this may look a little different. It depends on your business, the products you work with, and your processes.
A similar retrospective method I’ve used is called Ground Rules, which is especially appropriate to use in the formation of a new team. The premise is similar – how do we work together best – what rules do we agree on and what new ones should we consider? These rules then can be passed on to any new team member to give an example of how the team expects members to behave.
In summary, these retrospective methods really boil down to the team defining how not to be a jerk. They arm the team with a way of calling out what their preferred behaviors are, and a playful way of saying, hey- This Guy Rocks!
This is super important in agile teams where the team dynamic has more potential than ever to slow down productivity if people don’t play by the rules, or conversely, produce more than ever as the team gets better at working together.
