 Welcome to day three of Agile India and welcome specifically to Retrospect Yourself. We're really glad and delighted to welcome Christina Lovelock this morning. Christina's joining us from gosh in the Midlands and the the UK without further delay. Over to you Christina. Thank you so much everyone for making the time to join this session. I hope it's going to be a really good investment in your own development. So you're making time this week for learning, for increasing your own skills and knowledge. In this session we're going to have the chance to think about what's working and what how we might be able to do things a little bit differently in future. I'm Christina Lovelock. I'm a qualified coach, published author in relation to digital delivery. My specialism is business analysis and I've been working in IT enabled change for 17 years. This is what we're going to talk about today. We're going to address these three areas, retrospectives, self-awareness and reflection. Because whether projects succeed or fail and whether organisations succeed or fail is far less about the technology, much more about the people and the relationships between them. And I became interested in self-awareness a few years ago and after several years and a lot of research and a lot of personal development, I realised there's really two key things that help us to become more self-aware. The first is getting feedback from others. And the second is understanding how we appear to others by improving our self-awareness and reflection skills. So we are going to start today by introducing the concept of retrospectives. I know many of you will have heard that term and be involved in retrospectives. I want to make sure we're all on the same page and talking about the same thing. And secondly, we're going to talk briefly about self-awareness and why it is so important in agile and in teams. And then the real work starts. We're going to use some of the retrospective techniques individually. And I know it is so tempting and easy to be multitasking while attending a virtual conference but this is really not a good session for multitasking because you're going to be tuning in, applying the techniques and most importantly, thinking. So if you haven't got it with you already, I'm going to ask you, invite you to look around for a pen and paper because we're going to be applying the techniques together as we hear about them. I might need a few sheets of paper and I'm going to be giving you the time to apply the techniques. I'm going to ask questions and get you thinking about some things. You won't have to share anything that you write down. But I really encourage you to use this thinking and reflection time that we have here today. So there is going to be some thinking time and that means there's going to be some questions from me but also some silence while we think about the answers and apply the techniques to our own individual situations. You might be familiar with the concept of a guided meditation. Well, you can think of this section, this session as a guided reflection. So first of all, let's talk about retrospectives. So the purpose of a retrospective is to commit to specific actions. We have probably all been in sessions where everyone is able to identify things that have not gone well and even things that could be improved. But this long list of things becomes very daunting and is frankly unachievable. It can really be demotivating for a team. So the key step in the retrospective is really to commit to one or a small number of things that we really want to do and hold ourselves accountable for improving them. And if we look at the Prime Directive for Retros, we find that it's all about our attitude and approach. So the Prime Directive says, regardless of what we discover, we understand and we truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills, abilities, and the resources available, and the situation at hands. So this is not an opportunity to blame others or make anyone feel bad, including ourselves. It's a learning exercise underpinned by both empathy and kindness. So we're not trying to become overwhelmed with a massive list and we're not using the items on the list to point the finger. We're trying to identify a small number of commitments to be able to change something and the purpose of the retro is what we do and the Prime Directive is about how we do it. So there are two main aspects of our work, what we do, our capabilities, whether we have the skills and knowledge to do our job or not. And the second is how we do the work, our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. We can plot these two things against each other under two by two grid. So that gives us four categories of people. I'm going to have to excuse the slightly American language here. You'll see what I mean in just a moment. Now the first person, they know how to do their job well. They have great relationships and they do their work with a good attitude. We might call them a lovable star, that's where we all hope to be. But we also have people in our teams that don't really know how to do the job. Perhaps they're new or their job has changed around them, but they still have a good attitude. This person is the lovable fool. Then we have the person who knows how to do the job but does it with a bad attitude, causes conflict and makes everyone's life more difficult. The competent jerk. And finally we have someone who's awful to be around and to make matters worse they have no idea how to do their job. They are the incompetent jerk. Now these labels which do come from research are extremes, but every one of us is somewhere on this axis. And without self-awareness we have really no idea and we all just walk around thinking that we're lovable stars. So thinking about ourselves how we do our jobs and what we do is really important. So we're going to keep our full box grid and we're going to use the jihari window to consider reflection. Here we think about the parts of ourselves that we share the world and the parts that we keep private. So the first quadrant is our open self. The things that people can see just from looking at us, even with a very short time of meeting us, things that we're very happy to share. So for me like the fact that I wear glasses or I'm happy to share if you wanted to know that I wear glasses because I'm short-sighted. Things that are open and we don't mind sharing with others. The next is our hidden selves, things that you probably wouldn't know about someone unless they decided to tell you. The process of getting to know someone is all about moving things from this hidden section to the open section. Then we all have a blind spot, which is things that our friends and family and probably colleagues can see about us, but that we don't know. This can be strengths and weaknesses we only find them out through feedback and self-reflection. And finally, there is an unknown area and this can't be known to you or to others until we're tested. For example, no one knew how we would react and feel when we suddenly had to work from home for an extended period of time. Now many of us know how we reacted to that situation. The aim here is to be more aware of ourselves, certainly to decrease the blind spot, but also to consider what of the hidden self we're willing to share to be more authentic in our work and our relationships with others. So this is where real work begins. We're going to use four retrospective techniques, some of them might be familiar to you, to decrease our blind spot and to look at different aspects of our own personal performance. We're going to start with our relationships and for that we're going to use the weather report. We're also going to consider our work and the outputs that we create using the 4L technique. We're going to talk about our emotional response to work using the mad, sad and glad technique. And finally, we're going to use the sailboat to look at our own behaviors. These visual analogies actually help our brains think more widely and more creatively about the questions that I'm going to pose and the answers that are true for you. Now all of these techniques can be used by teams to consider our group performance such as the end of a sprint or a major deliverable or at the start of a new year or new financial period to reflect on the previous one. But today we're going to be applying them to our own relationships, behaviors, emotions and outputs. So we're going to be asking these key questions around our relationships, outputs, emotions and behaviors. And we're going to start with our relationships. I'm going to pose some questions. I'm going to give you just a moment. You might want to draw these four different weather types. I'm going to pose some questions. You can note down your answers to them. As I mentioned, there's going to be some silence and thinking time. Make good use of that time. Time to think is so rare in our working lives. I hope this is a good opportunity for you. So we're going to start at the stormy end of the weather. What relationships could be better? The way that we view the work part of being at work is usually driven by the quality of our interactions and relationships. So getting better at your work means actually investing and improving in our relationships. Actually I've changed my mind. We're going to start with the sunshine. We're going to start with the sunny end. Who are you always pleased to see? Who comes to mind? You know that you work well with. It's easy to neglect the people that we worked well with. So what's an action you could take? Or what could you do to maintain your best relationships at work? See this person or these people regularly, people that you work well with? We need to remember to make time, to meet the people, the close colleagues that we want to catch up with, to exchange ideas. This can provide a much needed energy boost. If we're not bumping into each other as much in the virtual world, how could you create an opportunity? Who haven't you seen for a while that you really want to catch up with? Can you show your appreciation or acknowledge the value of one of your relationships? Who do you need to say thank you to? What opportunities might there be if you to work closely with one of those people or to support each other? Important to consider our good relationships and colleagues that we work well with when we're thinking about developing and maintaining our best relationships. Moving on now to the partial sum. Which relationships are emerging? Who would you like to know better within the team that you're in? You had a better relationship with in the past. Perhaps someone you've lost touch with perhaps someone who's moved to a different team or different organization. How could you invest in that relationship again? We do our best work when we're energised by those around us. So who's someone who you used to work with had a great working relationship? You could reinvest in that relationship. Is the grey cloud? Who do you coexist with? Is there someone whose name is really all you know about them? Is there a new member of the team? Someone that you could make feel welcome? Is there someone who often works alone or is on the outside of the team that you could reach out to to build a new relationship? Good example here is to think outside of the direct delivery team. So like HR business partners, members of the finance team, finance business partners, their people too. Could you build your relationship with those colleagues? And finally the stormy relationship. Which relationships contain conflict? I know someone has come to mind straight away. Who do you avoid? Whose emails make your heart sink? It's really easy to want to avoid this person, this conflict. But finding a way to build these relationships may have the most drastic impact on your working life. But this is likely to need the most courage and the most commitment to address. If you had a better relationship with this person, what improvement would that be for you? I'm just going to give you a moment to think about those four areas. I'm going to move on now to think about our outputs. So if you have a piece of paper, you might want to split it into these four areas. You might want to draw our four little icons to remind you which each section refers to. This is the 4L technique where we look at what we liked, lacked, learned and long for in our work. So I'd like you to think about a piece of work that you've done recently. Not a five-minute job, but a big chunk of work. It might be a report or a project, a product you've delivered. I'm going to ask you some questions, starting with what you liked. So what did you enjoy about this piece of work? Was it the people? Was it the outputs? Why did you enjoy this piece of work? In future, do you need to tell someone that that was something that you enjoyed? When did you feel pride in your work? What made you feel proud of what you'd done? Do you know what your personal strengths are? And did you have the opportunity to use them on this piece of work? What are your strengths? And what type of work do you enjoy? You move on to what we lacked on this piece of work. What information did you need access to that you couldn't find that would have been really helpful on this piece of work? Whose time and input did you need that you couldn't get? What resources would have been useful for you? This might be software you didn't have a licence for or another tester in the team. What would have helped you deliver this piece of work? Was there something that seemed particularly difficult to accomplish and why? What did you struggle with on this piece of work? What skills do you need to develop to do something similar better next time? And this could be about using a piece of software. It could be about technical skills and abilities. Could be interpersonal skills, improving our confidence, improving our negotiation skills. What skills do you need to develop piece of work even better and even easier in future? Next we're going to reflect on what we learned. What did you learn about yourself or your organisation or your stakeholders? From this piece of work. Did you learn about how you do and don't want to work? Who you do and don't want to work with? Do you learn about your organisation's priorities? What's really important to the organisation? Do you learn about stakeholders? How they want to be communicated with and engaged? Life of information they want to have shared with them? When they want to be left alone, what did you learn about yourself? You might have learned that you work better if given a deadline, if you're given an example. What helps you work better? How will you store, share, or reuse that knowledge that you've gained from this project about yourself, about your stakeholders, about the skills that you've developed? Could you help someone who's just a couple of steps behind you on that journey or hasn't worked on that environment or with those stakeholders before? Now what we longed for. What ideas do you really want to put into practice? What's something you've been wanting to try? What skills do you particularly want to develop? I really want to get better at. Who would you like the opportunity to work with? Perhaps it's a senior leader that you respect and would like to have the opportunity to learn from? Perhaps it's a more junior member of the team that you'd like to share your skills with. Who would you really like to work with in future? What have made this piece of work even better? Thank you. So that's our outputs. I hope that's got your mind thinking. We're going to move on now to our emotions. Our emotions at work are so important. We often expect ourselves to be professional at work to the point that emotions aren't relevant at work. Forgetting that we're human and emotions are relevant all of the time. So we're going to talk about these three feelings. Mad, sad and glad. You might want to put these three little faces on your paper. And we're going to think about what made you feel that way and why. And we're going to start with this little mad face here. This is the easy one. What makes you feel frustrated at work? What makes you feel frustrated? This might be a project, a person or a process. What makes you feel frustrated? What angry? What feelings of anger or resentment are you holding? Someone in the team about the organisation? What's making you angry? What mistake did you make that made you mad with yourself? Anger impacting your effectiveness? Was that anger justified? Would you have got so angry at someone else? What made you feel sad? What opportunities were missed on a project or piece of work? I wish we'd had the opportunity to did anything make you feel disappointed? Did the project not go ahead that you wanted to be involved in or you'd worked hard on? Do you have any feelings of loss associated with something ending or someone leaving? There's a lot of change in our organisations, a lot of new people, a lot of old colleagues leaving that can make us feel sad. You see old mistakes being remade, that makes me feel sad. It makes me feel like we're not learning. There's no excuse for that. Sad when colleagues that I've enjoyed working with leave the team. It's important to recognise that. And finally, this happy face. What's brought you feelings of enjoyment recently at work? Enjoyment, happiness and pride. Who do you feel grateful towards? Is it a leader who's given you an opportunity? Is it a peer who has included you in something? Or someone who said thank you to you? What's made you feel happy? Have you celebrated something? A milestone or achievement as a team? Something you've worked hard for? What's made you feel happy? What's made you feel glad that you work in that team and that organisation? Our final technique is the sailboat. Some of you might be familiar with this one. You might want to defy your paper in half top and bottom and put a little boat sailing on the waves, blowing in the wind. This technique is about understanding what moves us forward and what holds us back. It's about thinking about how we behave at work and how our behaviours impact our relationships and effectiveness. So we're going to start with the anchors. What behaviours are holding you back and dragging you down? What's something that you think, yeah, I know I do that. I feel like I can't help it. Might be a tendency towards perfectionism, not sharing your work for fear of criticism. Might be getting cross with others, saying exactly what you think and not thinking about the impact on them. What's holding you back? What might be damaging your relationships? What's preventing you from learning? You thought about feeling frustrated earlier. Sometimes we feel like we can lack influence in the team. How does that look like in your behaviour? And how does that affect how others see you? We might think that we're being honest and pragmatic. Do other people think that looks like complaining? Or being negative? Is that holding you back? Do you say yes to everything? Is that stopping you from being involved in the things that you want to? Stopping you from doing your job to the best of your ability because you're juggling too many things? What's holding you back? But what puts wind in your sails? What do people compliment you on? What behaviours do you display when you're having a good day? How do you keep going even when it feels difficult? What do you do to energise or motivate yourself? And what activities move you forward? Might be working with a particular person. How do you behave when you're with that person? What gives you that energy? What's different about you when you work with them? Do you smile more? Do you have more ideas? Are you able to listen more attentively? What are those behaviours that pushed you forward? Do you want a good day? You know when you're being your best self at work, what does that look like? So we've considered these four areas and you've probably had lots of potential actions. I'm going to talk about those in just a moment. But I want you to think about all these different avenues that you've thought of by giving yourself just a few minutes and asking the right questions. We're not going to look at this model in detail, but I want to mention it because first area we looked at was relationships. This really is the route to having more enjoyable and successful career. This adapted empathy model allows us to explore our relationship with a particular person in depth and it's especially useful for what we might consider difficult relationships or difficult stakeholders. Relationships not working well, but these are the people that we thought about with the storm cloud. We can think about what the other person sees and hears from us and what other people might be saying about us. Are they getting different messages? What that person says and does? Trying to understand their priorities? How they think and feel? What's going on for them and pain and gain? What are they trying to achieve? And how might we be helping or hindering that? So if there's a relationship that you identified that was a bit stormy, could use a bit of investment, I recommend using this technique to really think about it at the next level, how you could approach that relationship differently, how you could understand that person a bit better. So well done, everyone. That's been a lot of thinking, a lot of hard work. And I started our time together today by saying that retrospectives are about learning and committing to something as a result of this new information. So I hope that our time together has given you the opportunity to reflect and realize there are some things that we could do better. We all can do better. And now it's time to look at all of those things that you've identified and decide which action you'll commit to to actually achieve that improvement. It doesn't have to be the biggest thing, it doesn't have to be the most difficult thing. Just one thing, you owe it to yourself as a result of this time to make that commitment. So now it's the time to take action. And I want to offer this simple model which is called 4A, which gives us the framework to say what are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to avoid? And therefore what action will we take? I have a little example here. If I said I want to build better relationships with the test team, that's going to make my life easier. They're going to understand more about me. I'm going to understand more about them. It's a large team. I want to avoid showing any favoritism and I haven't got time to meet everybody for a coffee or a one-to-one meeting. So that option's not going to be suitable. So that might lead me to take the action of asking to attend their team meeting or their chapter meeting and talk a little bit about my role. And that's not going to be the entirety of the action. That might lead to new actions to help build better relationships. But that's a great first step. So I invite you to use that little framework to help plan out actions that you might take. There is going to be just a couple of minutes for questions. And I'm also going to be in the hangout directly after this session. But if you've enjoyed our time together useful, I'd be delighted to connect on LinkedIn. You can also read more from me in the articles that I write for The BA Times, which is a free online magazine and the book that I wrote called Delivering Business Analysis. I so hope you've enjoyed our time together and that you enjoy the rest of the conference. Thank you, Christina, for sharing your experience with us today. A very different perspective, I think, for most attendees in terms of how to take advantage of retrospectives. And I hope you all found that most useful. I see there's something that's popped up in the chat. So let's have a little look at what that is. Wonderful, Christina. So some, Christina, obviously people have enjoyed. Goodbye, everyone. Bye-bye.