The road to respect

Coaching others is a tricky business.  You need to listen and have empathy for others without forfeiting objectivity.  A coach must be responsive to the cultural and emotional differences of each person you work with.  I have had to change my mindset from a fixed position to a growth perspective.  I am fortunate there are plenty of people in the Agile community to provide inspiration and direction. One of these individuals is Kim Scott, the author of “Radical Candor.” The more I read about her suggestions on being a better boss, the more I think about the agile value of respect. 

I have blogged about respect numerous times.  It is one of the fundamental values of Scrum.  It is also something that is hard to quantify and explain.  The best definition of respect comes from the Kaizen Institute blog.  They say the following.

“Respect is ultimately about actions.  Do you really value the next person in your process to such an extent that you will go out of your way to satisfy the need of that person?”

So respect is not about creating an often false emotional bubble of niceness.  Instead, it is about acting in a way that shows others you are meeting their needs.  It can be attending meetings on time or authoring unit tests on new developments.  It also means saying something that needs to be said.  Kim Scott calls being friendly but not challenging others directly “ruinous empathy.”

If the phrase ruinous empathy sounds harsh, it should. I see teams with ruinous empathy in many corporate environments.  These people have meetings where everyone spends time complimenting each other.  Everyone gets along because challenging someone is seen as not being a “team” player.  In many cases, ruinous empathy resembles the worst moments of high school, where the favorite students are fawned over by their less popular peers.

Entrance into these social circles is the path to social advancement, but it requires the sacrifice of self-esteem and personal values.  It is “everything is awesome,” and everyone is above the average world.  No one works too hard, and there is no accountability.  Sooner or later, someone will point out a challenge, and they are ostracised.  The good feelings return, but the problem lingers.  If the members of that group respected each other, they would try to help one another address the challenge instead of putting up a false front of excellence and banishing the person who raised the problem.

When you care about and test others directly, things become challenging in a group, but they do not see it as radical candor but obnoxious aggression.  I am attempting to navigate this currently.  I pointed out to someone that the information they were posting on the company Slack channel needed to be more credible and that anecdotal evidence was not enough to justify sharing.  I received a hostile reply saying the link shared was from a security expert.  The individual also said they felt “shamed” by my public reaction and my coaching. 

I decided to de-escalate the situation and apologize.  Afterward, I thought about it and discussed it with someone I trust.  In hindsight, it is clear I should have taken these individual's concerns more seriously.  I did what is called “front-stabbing,” by Kim Scott.  I should have coached this individual in confidence.  I was obnoxiously aggressive when I thought I was radically candid.  I will not make that mistake again.  Returning to the Kaizen Institute’s blog, I was not meeting the needs of the person I was coaching; instead, I was publicly shaming them via the company's social media, which was a slack channel.  I engaged in the behavior which was the antithesis of respect. 

Respect is a delicate state to achieve. I learned a valuable lesson about it this week. Avoiding ruinous empathy and challenging people is not enough. A coach has to understand others and the context in which they work so they do not feel ashamed when you coach them. It is a hard lesson to learn, but just another step along my agile journey. I will earn more respect along the way. 

Until next time.