Culture Matters by Nono Donsa

Great Scrum Masters coach Agile teams to understand their biases, so they can use their differences to achieve high performance. Guest writer, Nono Donsa, shares the reasons why culture matters.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

One of the changes brought about by the global pandemic is access to people we otherwise would not have met. With the elimination of previous geographic and financial barriers, we have connected through online conferences, remote meetings, and virtual events.  This new virtual world brought us closer than ever before and exposed us to more people-groups, creeds, and cultures. Unfortunately, this influx in diversity has also highlighted the ingrained biases that affect how we consciously and subconsciously interact with one another in the workplace.

New ways of work

New ways of working have also shown that people can be productive, even if they are not physically on-site. This movement accelerated the transition to hybrid and remote teams. However, people who make up these hybrid and remote teams come with their own cultural nuances, customs and learned social behaviours’, which may be vastly different between people groups. Therefore, Scrum Masters need to anticipate these cultural differences. They need to coach their teams to develop a language that will assist them in calling out unhelpful patterns and behaviours and reinforce those in line with the teams’ values.

Using the Scrum Values

One of the tools which have worked well for me as a Scrum Master is the Scrum values. Courage, Respect, Commitment, Openness and Focus. These values guide the Scrum Team regarding their work, actions, and behaviours (Scrum Guide 2020). I used these values as part of a team lift-off – a facilitated workshop to help the team create and agree on their mission, values, and ways of work. The team first reviewed the 5 Scrum values and then defined and agreed on what each of these values would look like in practice.

The results were as follows:

• Courage in action would be that each team member would speak up when they perceived cultural tension; they would put in the effort to ensure they came from a place of curiosity and suspend any judgement.
• The team agreed that they would base their actions and interactions on respect.
• Committing to creating a work environment where all team members are equal, which would foster an environment of openness. Where everyone could be transparent with their feelings, thoughts, and reservations.
• The team intended to focus not only on the deliverables alone but also on an inclusive and adaptive team dynamic.

The interpretation and definition of these values for this team was reviewed regularly and updated as needed.

Understanding biases and cultural stereotypes

In conclusion, my experience has taught me:

• A Scrum Master must have some awareness of the cultural diversity that exists within a team. If this is outside of your experience, get curious to learn more.
• It is essential that a Scrum Master is self-aware and recognizes that they also see the world through their own biases, and in doing this, they can model a cultural awareness and lead by example.

A good Scrum Master should take the time to understand some of the obvious biases that could exist in their team and the impact these could have on the team’s interactions.

A great Scrum Master will get well-versed in the stereotypes projected on the different people groups and coach the team to recognize and deal with these.