 We're on. We're live. It's just live now. People can see us. Look at that. Hello. Hello. Are we recording as well? Wonderful. Is anyone watching us? Who knows? Nobody at the moment knows. Does that send a tweet? I think I'll send a notification to all my subscribers that we're live. And people will be there. And send a bit more of me here now. There we go. There we go. Hello everybody. Cheers. What have you got? It's almost chewy. It's a little bit thicker than I expected. It's called Jail Ale. I think it's a Dartmoor. Dartmoor? I think it was? Dartmoor Ale. I think it was. My neck of the woods. People can see now. Red Ale colour. Nice warm room temperature. Nice head on that. A bit of toffee in there. Nutty. Nutty nice. And you've got... I've got thatcher. It's thatcher's cider. It's called Stan's. Stan's cider. Which is lovely. How is that different to the other country's ciders? It's cloudy, yeah? OK. Not as cloudy as Hayes, presumably? No, it's not... It's quite sweet. It's actually quite... I don't know if it's supposed to be, but it's not very cold, whether it's supposed to be a room temperature cider. It's alright. It hits the spot. Yeah, alright. We're at the Bell in Sherdington. It's a little bit... almost like a trip down memory lane. I lived a few houses down from this pub many years ago when I was a teenager. It's kind of Cheltenham area. Cheltenham post codes. The outskirts of Cheltenham. It's got a nice, old English pub. It's got a cricket square just out the back, where I played both cricket and football in my past. So, yeah, it's had a nice chef's special. A bit of a meal. Very nice. This is our first time since the summer break. We have a viewer. Hello viewer. Hello. Cheers. Do they send us messages? I don't know. I've no idea. We've got a like. There you go. This is the technology. No idea whether it works or not. But, yeah, this is the reward for YouTube subscribers. Exclusive. Maybe we'll try it again next time. So, there it goes. What could possibly go wrong? So, how's your summer been? Busy. Quick catch up. I've had a nice long break over the summer. A lot of family time. Lot of not a lot of work. Good. So, the benefit of being self-employed is that I can take a lot of time off when I need to. Oh, it's Tony Richards. Hello, Tony. Is it cold in that pub? Yeah. It's... It is cold. It's autumnal. You look very... I could wear this to work. I could really wear that to work. Yeah, so back to me. Took some time off. Went to Canada. I think it was pronounced. And that was... So, yeah, we took a long summer holiday with the kids. Four weeks total. Just under four weeks. Three of those weeks in a camper van. Which was good. Good fun. Proper outdoorsy holiday. Kids loved it. And different place more or less every day. And it's just nice to, you know, kind of clear my calendar, basically. Try not to look at too many emails. You weren't able to switch it completely? No, I couldn't. Unfortunately not. My wife wouldn't let me. She keeps... She tells me to check in. Every few days or so just to... To the world was a burden. Yeah, to keep checking on things, emails and stuff. But no, it was nice to... I like the outdoors. It was nice just to be able to be outdoors pretty much all day, every day. You like the outdoors, don't you? Yeah, so one of the things I miss most about having the type of job that I do have is that unfortunately, I spend a lot of time indoors. So it's nice just to get outside and walk around and walk up hills, walk down hills. My kids hated that. Kids hated the hills. Hated walking. Generally, so... But we forced them, we forced them. The walks got shorter as the holiday went on because the kids moaned more. Did they get better? They enjoyed more. They got, it's amazing how as the holiday went on, when they didn't have access to things that they would at home, like phones, some iPads, TVs. They just forgot about them. They just completely forgot that they had what was on television. They just made they'd go outside the camera and just make dens. You've got a beautiful forest all the way around you. You've got a lake, you can swim in for nothing. Just go and enjoy the outdoors. It must have been my time on the island. Yeah, it probably wasn't quite as basic as what you would do on the island. But it was... No flush toilets, Geoff. So... I'll let you come to your own conclusions there if you're listening in. It seems like I've seen you for a while. What's happened? Holiday. Yeah, holiday. And breaking news. The Watts family is expanding. Yeah. Go on. Huge age gap. Being back into the parenting game. You're going to have another baby? Yeah, we're going to have another baby. T-shirts printed, 16, 12. Yes, it is a big age gap. Yeah, underneath. Not an accident. Yeah, quite scary. There's a lot of hashtags in there. When's the due? February. 2019 is going to be an interesting year. Busy year. Not a lot of sleep for you though. There's nothing new there really. I'm really got a sleeping habit to be broken so that's a good thing or not. We suppose to say congratulations mate. Cheers. See that's taken up most of the summer really. Trying to keep that secret and do a little bit of planning without planning too much. It's just a long time since you've done all that stuff really. I'm sure you don't forget. Hopefully it's like riding your bike. You don't forget. You've brought up two kids successfully. Third might be a problem. That was mostly the summer and back to work for the last couple of weeks. Yeah, back to it's been a while since we've done one of these, isn't it? Yeah, we did say we were going to have a little break over the summer, which we did. Some time apart. I'd like to say that everybody's been clamouring for us to start again, but we haven't really had much. No. There we go. We'll carry on. Maybe they didn't know what they were missing until it's back. Tony's here. Tony's listening. Love you Tony. We could have a topic. I got a Twitter message yesterday from somebody saying this would be a good topic for a pubcast. So maybe we tackle that. Go for it. I need to remember what it is and of course now my phone is recording so I can't access the memory banks here. It's from Rich Birch who is actually one of our loyal followers. We have a lot of listeners. And he was asking a question I may get the words wrong but I hope that I get a sentiment right in how likeable should you be as a scrum master? How easy to get on with should you be as a scrum master? Should you push? How far should you push? There were a few responses some people were quite adamant in saying you should really be a troublemaker be really provocative if you're not kicking up a stick you're not doing a good job some people saying you can only push as far as otherwise everything can backfire and he asked me for my opinion my opinion was I'm quite a big fan of scrum masters provoking change but a dead scrum master is a useless scrum master so I talk a lot about how in my book about scrum masters being tactful and diplomatic and respectful but never settling for things just because that's the way they are part of your responsibility I believe is to keep the ball moving even if it's just slowly just keep it moving what are your thoughts? I'm trying to think of I'm trying to think of how how I used to do it how I've seen myself as a scrum master I think scrum master or not I like to at least think that people like me that's a big part of my personality what drives me and on the whole I do make an effort to try and get on with people try and enjoy the work environment that's a lot harder if you're if you're deliberately or accidentally upsetting people or disagreeing with people so I think that's a general personality trait and that's probably my natural stance is to try and not be nice I wouldn't say be nice but be civil and be pleasant to be around I think there does come times where you have to you have to dig your heels into a degree I think at times in Nokia looking back at the time when I did things based on principle that I thought I was being nice to my team but I wasn't being then backfired on other people outside that team such as in a situation where I wanted my team to leave work at a reasonable hour on a Friday afternoon I allowed them and said we're all going to leave I've got a young family I want to go home I don't see why you should stay here and wait for me let's go home that put a lot of people view that quite negatively I've got a lot of funny looks when I came back in the office on Monday put a few noses out of the joint on the Monday morning and my boss had words with me about it saying you're not setting a good example here because other people did have to stay late coming on Saturday where your team didn't so I think it can backfire if you're being too nice that can have consequences but I think generally I tried just purely for my own job satisfaction I tried to be you can be respected without being liked I think it's more important to be respected than to be liked you were saying a little bit about being civil I think you can be civil and still challenge you can be civil and still be provocative you can still stir things for me I think authenticity is important so integrity if you're staying true to yourself who you are then you can challenge because that's the kind of challenge that's expected at you I think expectations are important as well so if I'm working with a team and the team expects the Scrum Master to be a bit of a provocateur someone who will challenge them then that's obviously easily accepted it can take time to build up the rapport the relationship to the level that you can do that in an effective way but if I'm not naturally someone who challenges at some point out of the blue I come to work and I start being really provocative that's not authentic and it will seem authentic it will just jar with the people that I'm working with I think that's something that puts people's nose at that but equally I suppose the fact that it's got to a stage where I feel I have to outside of my normal state would increase that sense of this is important this is urgent aren't you also more likely to reflect the attitudes and personalities of the people around you isn't this there's a the longer you're embedded in that team are you more likely if you're for instance surrounded by a group of very nice people very polite wouldn't say wouldn't want to upset anyone in any way will you assume a lot of those personality traits what would you think it wouldn't become culturally accepted to be different I suppose there is a risk of that conversely I found my role was kind of fluid in that I would try and adopt the stance that the team needed of me then it takes quite a bit of self-awareness to realise that you're going native as the term might be I certainly suffer from that in BT where you became part of the part of the institution there was a question coming from I don't know how to access it I'll find it but certainly in BT you felt I was aware and maybe sometimes it was people that had left that told me you don't want to become part of the system you suddenly start to check yourself saying am I seeing the right things am I not seeing what I should be seeing am I not saying what I should be seeing because I've just accepted the way that things go here I'll link that to something that I think I brought up before it's something outside of the realm of scrum itself for something that I think has been a big part of what I've been pushing for a while which is to bring more of the professional coaching world into the agile coaching world and that is quite hard to notice that yourself it can also be quite hard for the team to notice it because you're in the middle of it so having someone neutral, a supervisor a buddy, a pair, a peer mentor whatever you want to call it who can keep you honest who you can reflect objectively with on situations of am I being a bit too nice here and that professional coaching coaching the coach could actually help you understand what is going on for you when you say being liked is important to you and at what point is that helping you and at what point is that not helping you when you do have a conflict you do challenge somebody when you do pull somebody up on something and the feeling you get name it and analyse it and figure out whether that's valuable Tony can you ask that question again and we'll read it this time it's typing away practically trying to think of another situation more recently that I've been coaching and training another organisation another team I picked up on my instinctive benchmark it was very nice there was a situation that they came to me with we've got this situation as problem and nobody's dealing with it because nobody wants to offend nobody wants to and I kind of asked them the question what do you think a different Scrum Master how would a textbook Scrum Master approach this and they gave me a very different answer to what they would do so it's kind of like I think people do try much sometimes if everyone else is being nice it's harder to be cruel this is more thing into giving effective feedback there could be I'm at risk of that filtering my view because I know I've got a workshop coming out with a team next week on that topic this team haven't had a lot of experience and practice at giving receiving feedback as a team they want to develop that as a skill and having the language tools and having the communication tools to help them do that I did a workshop yesterday and part of that was about creating a vision yeah a group of product owners working with different products I gave them some tools and techniques for creating visions and they had to then share that with other people and get some feedback it was interesting that the feedback aspect of it was the biggest IOC in that I haven't really felt comfortable giving feedback to each other but the fact that I've given them a structure in this case it was the perfection they felt then they had permission to give balanced feedback and it didn't feel as personal I think sometimes that can be a big thing for in these situations in an organisation if I try something if I push the boundaries are the people whose boundaries I'm pushing doing that as me doing that as my role or something else yeah it's why sometimes it's hard to be that scrum master in many respects embedding yourself as a scrum master is a vital part of the role but other times it can be a hindrance because you can't be as neutral it's so easy for me to go in as an external agile coach to say I've noticed that just from what I've seen here that probably needs addressing it's much harder to do that when you are part of that system when you are part of that team I know in BT and in Nokia we used to rotate people around like you suggest buddy up or just literally just shift the scrum masters around one team each not do it all the time but one sprint in three just keep it fresh you would all just facilitate someone else's retro just to give you a more neutral and to give you a different perspective on how other teams are doing that's become quite common a lot of organisations have scrum masters communities to coach and support each other and challenge each other and that's the place to get started I think if you can't challenge yourself as a group of scrum masters how can you expect to challenge other people who should be able to understand and empathise with the difficulties so that's practising really I think a lot of it is down to fear fear of consequences are people going to judge me, how are people going to react again we tend to perhaps over over analyse over dramatise the potential of consequences often it's the reaction is nowhere near as severe or as bad as we think so just thinking it through that way can help yeah Tony did send you a message on whatsapp can't get the question back I think it was something rich birch followed up with where is the line how do you know where the line is and I think that line moves it's context dependent so it depends on the maturity of the team the maturity of the organisation I think the strength of the relationships the amount of respect that you've built up as a scrum master our old boss Den used to talk about money in the bank how much good will have you built up with people because every now and again you might need to cash that in either because you've made a mistake or you need a favour, you need help or perhaps in this case you need to just be quite provocative I know I've certainly found it easier to be provocative when I first started at Nokia because I felt I don't know whether you feel untouchable or whether it's just a false level of security but when I joined the company I had enthusiasm and I also had a different experience and a comparison to make so I felt as empowered as I ever had to just say I don't think we should do it so this sense of invulnerability when I joined is probably when I'm at my most vulnerable is actually when I just start because I can just say you're not cut out for this the better but you don't really feel that vulnerable it's always a bit of a strange analogy maybe I shouldn't use it but at the start of a sports match the referee is less likely to book you and you have almost that grace period and also you have that kind of magical appearance you're someone who's come from outside and the team are kind of expecting things from you the organisation has hired you for a reason they obviously hired you because you can add some things show me what you've got you're willing to so there's that sort of grace honeymoon period at the start and also perhaps a little bit towards the end of your time there where you think well what's the worst that can happen I'm probably going to leave anyway and go down in flames if nothing else and rather than an interesting question of course is one of your coaching questions if this was your last day in the office what would you say now that you wouldn't say before and just trying to give that just that artificial if you like that mask of saying if you did have permission to do anything here can't plunge what would you do and then work back from that to say okay so is there any elements of that actually that's not true or possible or we could work towards I do like that one if this was your last day in the company what would you do then or if you knew there would be absolutely no consequences to your actions what would you do then similar kind of vein other questions like if there was going to be a report written up about the decision you make right now what would you like them to highlight what would you like that report to say I think those are good hypothetical questions to help people think through what they would actually like to do when the question pops up on the screen I heard I saw what is the role there was a lot of other words in there as well so I'm going to guess the rest of that question I think it was something along the lines of so then what is the true role of the scrum master is it to provoke change or is it to create a sense of safety is it consolidation that's what I'm going to understand I think it's I think it's probably double sided here I think firstly I think a scrum master from my point of view has to if I was being hired as a scrum master my primary concern is the team my primary responsibility is the team growing is the team as productive as it can be so I'd work internally first of all and to do that I probably would develop a rapport because if you want people to go with you on a new way of working you need a sense of rapport a sense of respect probably but I think it changes that I think once you've developed that and you've established relationships and you've established a way of working you can kind of you don't change your personality slightly but you would just approach different challenges in different ways and you probably are going to then come back across people that you haven't worked with very often that you do have to perhaps be a bit more firm with that may that probably would challenge you in a different way and then I think you do have to subtly work back to perhaps more of an educational stance by saying look okay you're not hearing me right now we should do it this way this is going to be a good thing to do I can think of an example in Nokia when I had a fairly well established or I was fairly well established as a scrum master by then with one team and I wanted to go back to my boss to suggest that we merge two teams together to make a feature team and I just had to convince really my boss that this is the right thing to try even though it was completely new it would mean tearing two teams up and starting again and I didn't want to be too nice about it I was trying to be a bit more authoritative about it Did your team want that? No, okay, not really So I was prepared to go out on a bit of a limb saying I fundamentally believe that this is a good thing to do What pushed you then if you think the team wasn't going to be happy about it what pushed you to the point where you were prepared to do it even though your team didn't like it I suppose just I believe, I just firmly believe that it couldn't be any worse in terms of I don't see how this can be any worse off by trying this at least trying this out So it's a passion for when you introduce the word passion because sometimes passion can create animosity and people think it's so passionate about it kind of evangelistic about it and that's when I think sometimes even coaches get a bad name because they are you being too evangelical about this but is that always a bad thing? Sometimes that might be what's absolutely required to try something new Yeah, yeah So there was you saw things getting worse and you thought the way things are at the moment aren't good or they might be better but they couldn't get worse and you also said about trying it proof of concept removing the extremity removing the scale of the situation we only have to try it rather than do it which can make it a little bit easier to do something and equally a little bit easier for other people to go along with it but would you be willing to try this for a fixed period of time with the hope that this will happen but if it doesn't happen then we can always go back Yeah I think it's a pretty good pretty good strategy It comes back to humility as well I think you can again try not to you don't have to be liked by them but you've got to be prepared to be wrong and not to be so belligerent that your words can still be direct and you can still be you know, quite passionate about it but equally there's a chance that you know what I could be wrong about this I could be prepared to be proved wrong I think that's an important thing to pick apart a little bit more actually so in terms of where that line is on the one hand if you can see something that's probably for the team's benefit but if you cannot be open to it right now that could be perceived as a little bit of arrogance I can see something you want to see or my idea is better than your current status quo which can be quite difficult for some people to actually step up and say but equally you want so you need to be a little bit confident in your own assessment without being arrogant but equally humble enough to not make people think you were wrong and be so confident people want you to fail even at their expense that makes sense so someone one of the responses on Twitter like I said was very much quite happy and frowned and very confident that actually their approach of deliberately being provocative, getting people's backs up if I'm not making a fuss then I'm not doing my job properly and there's a big part of me that really leans towards that a bit of a trouble making background myself but I can see how that could end a disaster so it requires a lot of either a lot of security or a lot of support and so my general response was as long as you can challenge with empathy with respect, with acting diplomacy with positive intent then generally people will be receptive to it and listen to you so just to pick up on where Rich is going with this some of the responses you've had something I'm perhaps a bit conscious of and wary of I don't like the idea that a scrum master necessarily and I think this could well be the case in some organisations where scrum masters become a feared entity feared by who? feared by teams like you mentioned the word troubleshooter but they could quite easily be perceived as people that you don't want to cross you don't want necessarily to be too well acquainted with possibly if they've developed a reputation in the company we can think of people in BT that would be parachuted in to fix and they were seen though as bullies as kind of dominating kind of these characters that you would never cross you'd never question what they say but as a scrum master you do want people to question you you do want to grow that sense of learning within a team and there's a danger that if you become that character that people do fear that troubleshooter that firefighter whatever you want to call it this kind of go to troubleshooter what was the Harvey Keisar character in Paul? the Mr Wolf he was the fixer exactly but there's this air of do you really want to be that persona that everyone what are you I wouldn't even say anything to you directly no I think that's authenticity again isn't it that just wouldn't come naturally to me do this because I say so and so if I was that charisma that goes with it do you think you need charisma? I think charisma is a separate thing it's definitely part of it but I think that if I were to I think there are people that that comes naturally too and you can kind of respect that in a way and you can almost tolerate it in a way because you think well that's too much for them it becomes less effective over time and it's probably not a good long-term strategy in terms of developing resilience and self-management without equally that could get you respect as you see results really good if I'm a team and someone's come in who's a little bit more proactive than me and you who have just met and make friends and be nice it could get you respect from different people from different parts of the organisation it could get you recognition and one of the things I used to say if you want respect from a team as you solve their biggest impediment you solve the biggest problem they're currently having that can get you respect on an organisational level you solve the organisation's biggest impediment that can get you respect from the organisation so that can help but I can see how it also could create a fear around how how nasty you could Mr. Nasty you could be yeah because your desire to be nice and be liked by your teams ever caused that particular team any problems well yeah I can I can't say give you evidence but I can hypothesise it like with our holiday of leaving early you see five members of a team walk out of the office together they meet up with someone two hours later who's been in the office for extra two hours surely they would how come you could have managed to leave at five today we were all kept in late so that's affected the people that didn't leave but surely that's made them feel bad about that they were prepared if the socially accepted way of working was to stay late and they left early they'd feel uncomfortable about that maybe yeah so I'm thinking of some of the teams that I've worked in past where they've made some progress they've developed but actually they're in a sort of comfort zone now so they've kind of got their process pretty good things are going quite well but you know it can still improve quite a bit do you then rock the boat do you risk or creating a bit of tension a bit of upset a bit of friction a bit of stress because you know that team can get even better you just bubble along quite nicely not being someone who challenges the team and that situation is selling that team short but they won't see it that way probably to begin with and that's that challenge of I guess humility belief in the team good question I guess in the way that I would typically tackle that now is I would genuinely ask the team where they think they were in terms of the best teams that they've seen the best teams that they've been part of would they say that they were at the top or maybe a 5 out of 10 a 6 out of 10 a 7 out of 10 how much would they like to get people better than they are right now I think there has to be a desire from that team because by that usually my experience by the time you've got the team or the team themselves have got to that point they are generally one of the better teams in the organization so I would rightly spend a lot more time focused on the the lower performing teams the less functional teams I don't know can be too nice a scrum master is not out there nice and effective if they are worried about being liked too much they are prepared to be disliked and I think you can be disliked while still being respected and respectful and maintain your integrity it's about we've said this before about labelling people and you can still I'm guilty there is some time with my kids of saying you're not Jocelyn you're naughty so you can be you can be nice but I'm a nice person but sometimes I'm just being not nice the phrase being cruel to be kind is there for a reason sometimes people need to hear the message actually one of the responses to that twitter thread was if someone doesn't like what they see in the mirror they can't blame the mirror so if you're a scrum master simply holding the mirror and saying this is what I'm seeing I'm not judging it just playing and reflecting about what I can see are you happy with that if not what help do you need to change it then they can't really I suppose when you let judgement leak into it that's where it can become that's something we've always said is make observations not judgement make powerful observations no one could criticise you for making an observation well they can but they have nothing right they can't deny the objective data they can deny your subjective interpretation but at time as you get more respect and you build that relationship actually some people will be looking for your judgement they will be looking for your interpretation and some degree to an unhealthy level I don't want to do this in case Paul disapproves sorry but screw pause interpretation if you know that it's the right thing to do actually maybe they need to do something that would upset you in order to become the better team we're back good chat I've got to re-engage my brain after a few weeks so I guess I'll get a head start I guess I'll jet lag them worst jet lag I've had I've had them across three times three times is that all? three times I changed my clock twice when I was away flew back from Vancouver so that's just a big time 8 hours difference it's an absolute killer west to east is a beast you've done that a lot more than I did yeah it was the worst jet lag I've had terrible anyway on that note thanks to our live stream viewers well done for turning out all of you and yeah we'll see how it went get some feedback on that cheers everyone how do you stop this thing