All about forgiveness

It is evident to me that 2017 is the year of messiness.  Software is a messy activity.  The clutter is caused by the human emotions, which are part of the creative process.  As a scrum master, you are the servant leader of messy people who write software.  You are supposed to live the agile manifesto and principles.  You set the example.  As a scrum master, you set the tone and help the team succeed.  It is rewarding work, but I have moments where I am not very proud of my example.  Continuous improvement means striving to get better.  It also means you need to be able to forgive others and yourself.

My training in journalism and engineering shaped my professional career.  The world of mass communications is very judgmental.  We criticize television anchors for hair color choices and how good their dentition looks on camera.  Radio disc jockeys are slaves to ratings and program managers who can crush your career. Ratings mean money; if you provide ratings, people will ignore some of your worst personal faults.

Engineers are also judgmental and willing to back up that judgment with the scientific method.  The code could run a few nanoseconds faster.  The class could better use the Liskov Substitution principle.  Finally, you could always tighten the code to make it less error-prone.  There is additional machismo, where team members compete to assert dominance using their intelligence or programming skills.  It is brutal, and these environments discourage vulnerability and innovation.

As a scrum master, you are encouraged to help remove these dysfunctional behaviors.  Sometimes, a scrum master gets caught up in these harmful practices.  When you do, you are going to hurt the team.  When you hurt the team, you undermine your credibility in the organization and with the people you should serve.  The first thing you should do when you hurt your team or someone on it is make amends and apologize.  Asking for forgiveness is hard, but it reinforces the agile values of respect and openness.  A team that can forgive each other when they make mistakes is going to be higher performing than one that is not.

Forgiving yourself is a much harder skill.  We know ourselves better than anyone else.  We are also the least forgiving of our mistakes.  We can feel like frauds to ourselves, and this is imposter syndrome.  Our emotional intelligence may be below average, and we find ourselves in situations that would puzzle others.  Finally, emotional control can be undermined by people who do not want to improve.  You become a tangled bundle of rubber bands, feeling like you can snap any minute.  You do snap, and you feel riddled with guilt and self-loathing.  Over my career, I have spent a few mornings thoroughly hating the person I see in the mirror.  These feelings are not rational or objective.  These feelings just are, and you cannot escape them.

I have been leaning on friends and family for the last few weeks to receive relief.  I am seeing a doctor to understand if the stress of the role is contributing to my emotional recriminations.  Finally, I have been avoiding alcohol and caffeine.  My brain chemistry is terrible enough, and I don’t need to make it worse with outside stimulants and depressants.  I am making a conscious effort to try and forgive myself for past mistakes.

From the outside, this process will not look beautiful, but I need to do it if I am going to improve as a scrum master.  Everyone deserves a dose of forgiveness now and then.

Until next time.