The Art and the Real Option of Doing Nothing and Trusting People

Steve Holyer and Olaf Lewitz

Workshop: 90 minutes

Summary

Learn to sit around doing nothing and trusting people. You will be surprised, and delighted, by what emerges.

One of the very best things you can do as an agile leader, coach or Scrum Master is to sit there doing nothing and trusting people. Doing nothing allows a team to trust itself, and trust enables you and the team to discover more emerging options.

Trust is the basis of establishing a learning culture, which is necessary for real collaboration and high performance. And, doing nothing is harder than it seems. It means being certain the team has the experience and knowledge and knows the constraints it needs.

Trusting people means really believing that they can do it… and continue to do it (learn/grow/deliver) better.

Because, experience shows, they can! When Agile teams “smell” trust, they can accomplish just about anything. But beware, developers are really good at smelling fake-trust. Merely saying “I trust you” is only the imitation scent of faux-trust. In this session we will explore real trust.

AS AN Agile Leader I WANT to trust People SO THAT they can trust themselves to find better ways of developing software.

Short Bios

Steve Holyer coaches organisations and teams finding their path to truly transformative agile fluency. He creates containers of trust helping communities and healing to emerge.

Co Speaker: Olaf Lewitz is an independent agile coach and linchpin. He inspires people to improve the way they work. He inspires managers to make their organisations more effective. His motto is that of Nanny McPhee: “When you need me, but do not want me, I must stay. When you want me, but no longer need me, then I have to go.” You can find him on Twitter as @OlafLewitz.