R.E.S.U.L.T. model for team development

r.e.s.u.l.t. model

The R.E.S.U.L.T. model

In today’s fast-paced and dynamic business environment, fostering effective teamwork is critical for achieving sustainable success. Our R.E.S.U.L.T. model is a means of support as well as a checklist for daily team development. This model includes tools and interventions that turn teams into winning teams.

R – Recognize Achievements

The proverb “Do good and talk about it” holds valuable wisdom that often goes unnoticed. Acknowledging accomplishments boosts self-confidence, motivation, and recognition, paving the way for even more success. Yet, society tends to focus on problems, anger, and challenges—a habit rooted in early experiences, such as the red marks teachers use to correct mistakes in school. This pattern teaches us to prioritize what’s wrong over what’s right, overshadowing the importance of celebrating success.

Practical Tips:

  • Begin every meeting by sharing positive news or team achievements.
  • Show appreciation for colleagues’ contributions spontaneously.
  • Ask questions to highlight what’s working well, reinforcing a solutions-focused mindset.

E – Encourage in Case of Setbacks

In today’s rapidly evolving business environment, change is constant. Progress, improvement, and speed are often hailed as critical for success, creating pressure that permeates every level of an organization. As a result, obstacles are frequently viewed as threats that hinder progress, leading to resistance and frustration.

An alternative perspective is to view challenges as valuable signals – like a warning to slow down when approaching a sharp turn. These obstacles can serve as opportunities to reassess your path, recalibrate your approach, and realign with your overarching goals. By embracing this mindset, teams can adapt to new conditions and discover better solutions, echoing the agile principle of “inspect and adapt.”

Practical Tips:

  • Listen actively to complaints about unexpected changes, validating concerns rather than dismissing them.
  • Focus on the end goal, identify new approaches, and work collaboratively on solutions.

S – Support Learning

Failure, especially from new attempts, is inevitable but often misunderstood. Many teams respond by blaming or criticizing, rooted in a culture where mistakes are seen as negative. However, failures are opportunities for learning and progress. By reframing mistakes as starting points for improvement, teams can foster innovation and confidence, encouraging members to experiment and achieve together.

Events like “fuck-up nights“, where employees share lessons from their mistakes, help shift team culture, and normalize failure as a stepping stone toward success and growth.

Practical Tips:

  • Use growth-oriented language that emphasizes progress rather than fixed attributes.
  • Celebrate lessons learned from mistakes, such as organizing “failure celebrations” like fuck-up nights, to normalize learning through experimentation.

U – Uphold Meaningful Rules

Meaningful rules provide a balance of structure and flexibility. A non-negotiable framework establishes clear, unchangeable principles, such as respecting company values, that guide behaviour and ensure accountability. Institutional rules, while offering a flexible foundation for collaboration, must be regularly reviewed and adjusted to avoid rigidity and stagnation.

Team-specific rules, developed collaboratively, should remain adaptable to evolving needs. For example, allowing coffee during meetings if punctuality is maintained or committing to help teammates on request. This dynamic approach fosters cooperation, creativity, and a sense of ownership within the team.

Practical Tips:

  • Define a concise, non-negotiable framework (e.g., company values).
  • Regularly revisit institutional and team-specific rules, adjusting them to suit evolving needs.
  • Keep rules lean and focused to avoid unnecessary rigidity.

L – Let Them Solve It

When is a manager, coach, or Scrum Master truly helpful? This question has evolved in recent years. Traditionally, leaders were expected to quickly solve problems so teams could continue working smoothly. This led to the common practice of promoting experts into management roles, even if they lacked leadership skills. The result: teams lost valuable expertise and gained a manager who struggled to offer support.

Today, leadership is about empowering others and fostering growth, not being the top expert. Leaders create an environment where teams can collaborate effectively and solve problems on their own. By making key decisions and guiding the team, they build confidence and support overall team development.

Practical Tips:

  • Encourage team members to leverage their expertise while taking responsibility for problem-solving.
  • Be transparent about your knowledge gaps, emphasizing collaboration over individual heroics.

T – Trust Your People

Mutual trust is key to successful teamwork, but it cannot be built overnight. Trust grows through experience, developed by knowing that you can rely on others—especially during tough times. This is where focus comes in. If you believe you can’t trust anyone, you’ll always find evidence to confirm that belief, often unconsciously. However, if you focus on finding reasons to trust others, you’ll uncover enough proof to reinforce it, and your trust will grow.

Whether trust or mistrust develops within a team depends on the basic assumptions of its members. While a positive attitude can’t be forced, you can set a strong example by expecting the best from your colleagues and customers, thus demonstrating trust in them. One thing is certain: trust is contagious.

Practical Tips:

  • Model trust by expecting positive contributions from colleagues and demonstrating reliability.
  • Foster an environment of gratitude and recognition, encouraging team members to express appreciation publicly.

Conclusion

The R.E.S.U.L.T. model provides a structured yet flexible approach to team development, emphasizing positivity, adaptability, and mutual respect. By integrating these principles into daily practices, teams can become resilient, innovative, and self-sufficient, ensuring sustained success in any environment.

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Coaching – A panic virus is spreading

Coaching – OOP Conference 2016

A great event. Like every year. This year we were even able to appear three times, met lots of interesting people and attended all kinds of exciting (and less exciting) presentations.

However, I would like to get one thing off my chest here, because it became clear once again at OOP2016: A kind of panic virus is spreading in the agile software community, something like a coaching phobia. It is becoming increasingly dangerous to announce loudly and proudly that I am a coach and that I like being one. Coaching is increasingly becoming a dirty word and some conference organizers are even considering removing this topic from the track list altogether.

Why is that? In recent years, coaching has been over-hyped as a panacea for problems in software development. If a consultant did any training, a high percentage of it was in coaching. ScrumMasters are being developed in this area and even retrospectives seem to be increasingly becoming a place for self-revelation by individual team members rather than a way to find ways to improve collaboration on the common goal. At the beginning of meetings, the sensitivities of those present are scrutinized with a deep gaze and a soft, gentle voice, as if we were in an anonymous self-help group. Words are chosen carefully so as not to offend anyone. If you can’t do that, it’s better to keep your mouth shut.

Many technicians can do nothing with these developments. They shake their heads silently, roll their eyes and avoid conference rooms where interpersonal communication topics are discussed. Unfortunately.

What it is and should be about is finding a good balance between technical expertise and communication skills. Only the interaction of all these skills can ultimately lead to the desired result, namely TO DEVELOP AND DELIVER GOOD AND FUNCTIONAL SOFTWARE.

Technical skills, the “knowing how” is of course a decisive factor here. System luminaries are mentally challenged. They work highly creatively, systematically and logically at the same time. The slightest lapse in concentration can have major, unpleasant consequences. So if there are difficulties in the team, this is a distraction. If a developer feels over- or underchallenged, unfairly treated or misunderstood, they cannot give their full performance. Coaching provides valuable help here. In discussions with the customer, knowledge of coaching techniques can help to obtain important information about requirements that would otherwise never have been given. Reflection and further development of team performance can be supported by tools from professional coaching and accompanied in a targeted manner.

Nobody has to change their voice, shake hands or dance around a candle. We promise.

Agile software development – as I understand it so far – is neither about coaching nor about technically sophisticated gimmicks. It’s about software. Technical skills and communication skills are important tools that help teams deliver good results together.

I am proud to be able to make a contribution as a coach and trainer by supporting teams and managers in difficult situations and passing on my knowledge in training sessions. Also at conferences. Please and thank you.

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Recruiter – If you’re serious, search for yourself

Recruiter

Hard-working people, we think. They’re also very kind, friendly and courteous. Talking to them on the phone is usually a positive experience. They typically take a lot of time for the person they are talking to, ask questions and give answers – if they have them.

The unpleasant part is that these nice phone calls don’t bring much apart from a good atmosphere. The reason for this – especially for agilists – is obvious on closer inspection: Recruiters are not end-customers!

They have neither a deep insight into the company nor the position for which they are looking for a suitable candidate. The data they are provided with are the position, requirements profile, duration of employment and budget per working day. This may sometimes work quite well for permanent positions – but when it comes to finding the right coach for an agile transformation?

Between you and me: A company wants to change the way it works and wants the support of a professional. And it then outsources THAT to a recruiter? Courageous.

If the steps that need to be taken for a company transformation are known, why do they need an agile coach? And if the steps are not known, how can the duration and frequency of the work and the allocation of the available budget be specified?

As experienced agile coaches, we then explain the higher daily rates and the lower time expenditure in the company. We skilfully explain that the aim is for employees to quickly become independent in the new work situation and that the constant presence of a coach counteracts this. We argue according to all the rules of the art – but unfortunately to the wrong listener. There, at the other end of the line, is a recruiter whose job is to find the coach who is prepared to accept the given framework conditions and act accordingly.

What is this about? A successful transformation? Or is it more about sending out a signal that we have ‘tried everything – but this stuff doesn’t work’?

Our conclusion is this: Dear agile coaches! Be sceptical if you are invited to an agile transformation by a recruiter. The chances of being successful there are usually rather slim. Protect your good name – it deserves it!

Dear entrepreneurs! If you are serious about using agile working in your company to contribute to the success and satisfaction of your employees and customers, then take the time to talk to agile coaches in person. We can do more than just explain the basics of Scrum. And we are happy to work extensively on the success of your company. If you’re serious about it.

We gave a Pecha Kucha on the topic at the OOP Conference 2016. The German video is available here (many thanks to Fabian Schiller for the recording).

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Sensational greed satisfaction

Sensational greed satisfaction in the media

Oh yes! I am sensationalist! Very much so! Just perhaps a little differently than the Austrian media landscape expects of me. I’m greedy for positive sensational news. This morning on the ‘Frühstück bei mir’ programme, Manfred Deix actually says that he has been happy with his wife for 50 years (!). In the interview with Mrs Stöckl, he describes how he is still interested in every sentence his wife says and that he is still in love with her ‘like a young capercaillie’. Isn’t that marvellous?

And what does Mrs Stöckl do? She follows up with the question: “And what was the biggest crisis in your relationship?” Wow – I thought to myself. What a break. Someone dared to report something positive publicly on the radio. Of course, you can’t leave it like that – after all, the public is hungry for sensationalism.

I am firmly convinced that our world is much better than the media would have us believe. There are far more beautiful and impressive human things that should be reported.

Barbara Fredrickson, a proponent of positive psychology, has proven in several studies that focussing on the positive things in life not only makes us happier and more satisfied but also healthier. Imagine what it would mean for Austria’s economy in the long term if only positive messages were broadcast. My children would no longer have to cover their ears at breakfast, as they do now when the news once again reports in great detail exactly how a man killed his wife and three children. Is that really what interests Mr and Mrs Austria?

Admittedly: Perhaps it is boring in the long run to hear how yet another kitten was rescued from a tree in Simmering. Stories about signs of humanity and willingness to help in war zones, about positive educational measures – which, by the way, exist in abundance in our schools, but nobody reports on them – or about people who have regained their courage after suffering severe blows of fate would be sensational news of a different kind.

They would encourage us, remind us of what makes our world worth living in and give us ideas on how we can contribute to a healthy and happy society. In my mind’s eye, I can see people smiling as they leave the house in the morning, greeting each other on the street and walking with vigour. Robert Kratki would proclaim “Monday – Monday – taramtatatatam! At last, it’s that time again. A new week has begun and with it a new chance to do good and be happy! Call us right now, my dear listeners, and tell us what you are most looking forward to this working week!”

This is what my dream looks like. I’m sure I’m not dreaming it alone. And I would like to start publicizing my dream in the hope that many others will do the same. Perhaps the media will take notice at some point and recognize their opportunity to help make Austria healthier, happier and more successful. And maybe – yes, maybe – we could even become a role model for our neighbouring countries and then for Europe and then…

Let’s start looking for the positive small and large sensations in ourselves and our circle of friends and tell others about them. The rest will follow…

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