Do not dare to start as a Scrum Master without knowing these secrets!
I don’t want you to start working as a Scrum Master, without knowing these little secrets. This video is so powerfull, I can promise you that.
It’s really interesting the surge in interest from individuals hoping to fill Scrum Master positions who are coming from outside of the tech industry.
Now, if you are interested in this career and you come from a non-technical background, I would recommend starting sharpening your SOFT skills first. Some of those skills you are already familiar with, and you know how to put them in practice, and of course in your resume.
Later in this article, I will share a free eBook: Soft Skills for Workplace, with lots of great stuff, included, like activities for communication, teamwork, and problem-solving… you can download and use it as you wish.
Now, let’s start with…
6 Powerfull Soft Skills required to become a great Scrum Master:
· Teaching and coaching skills: The main role of a scrum master is to coach and work with the team to adopt the scrum framework.
· Communication skills: communication skills are one of the main characteristics to separate the good from the average Scrum Master.
· Facilitator skills: Being a great facilitator means making something easier and possible.
· Servant leadership: Servant leadership means helping your team to use their best skills and knowledge.
· Problem-solving skills: As a Scrum Master, your responsibility is to develop healthy connections and increase collaboration while keeping motivation and happiness
· Empathy: Developing empathy involves developing a depth relationship with each team member.
Soft skills such as compassion and empathy drive hard skills such as programming, operations, design, and so on.
How?
Soft skills link hard skills to operational productivity, organizational synergy, and commercial relevance because all require sound human commitment.
Does the hard-skilled Scrum Master who sits in lofty obscurity lording over his reports trump the hard-skilled Scrum Master who walks among his people, who are known, seen, and respected by his people?
While the former might win some success by forcing his hand for a time, his influence is fatally flawed because his power is not bestowed on him by his people. His influence is only a glaze of leverage with a short shelf life.
Every downfall was triggered by the Scrum Master’s inability to connect with employees on a tangible, meaningful level.
Hard skills can be tested, taught, and transferred.
We can pinpoint hard skill progress — individually and corporately — with charts, metrics, and reports.
Not so for soft skills. They can be difficult to reduce into steps. They are often messy and only crudely quantifiable through better responses and improved relationships.
Scrum Masters and companies insensitive to soft skill success miss the mark today.
When we behave in ways that befriend and positively influence others, we tap a deeper well of inspiration, meaning, and resourcefulness.
Hardwired into all of us is the desire for honest communication — to understand and be understood.
Become meaningful in your interactions and the path to success in any endeavor is simpler and far more sustainable.
Why?
Because people notice. People remember. People are moved when their interactions with you always leave them a little better.
All these skills mentioned above are non-technical, meaning that anyone from any background could be capable of employing these skills successfully. But, does this mean that there are no technical skills required for becoming a great Scrum Master?
Not exactly.
Truly effective Scrum Masters also possess a deep understanding of how their organization delivers software. However, this is not the same thing as being a skilled software developer. Great Scrum Masters have a clear mental picture of all of the steps their organization takes to deliver an increment of product to market and how each of those steps fits together.
This doesn’t mean that the Scrum Master understands every line of code used to bring a product to life or the specific nuances of each step of the product’s deployment pipeline, but they do understand how each step of that process fits together and how changes to one step can affect other steps.
Does this make sense?
The goal of understanding these processes is to better position them to spot impediments that could be affecting their team, especially those impediments that their team may not even see themselves. And another goal is to help them TO SPOT OPPORTUNITIES to improve and optimize that process so their team can deliver software more effectively.
So while some level of technical understanding is necessary, the good news is that this level of understanding can be learned by anyone willing to invest the effort to do so.
One more important thing if you are just getting started as a Scrum Master.
How to become confident in yourself as a Scrum Master?
Momentum is a sense of certainty.
This is for all of you who are implementing the Scrum Master role and responsibilities, and you are not sure if it’s gonna work, because you have some fear.
And so what do you think about how much of your potential you will put in when you’re unsure and you think you might fail?
You’re not gonna tap your full potential, you tap a little potential and when you think you’re going to fail, or you’re not sure it is going to work, are you going to take massive action and give your all in, the back of your mind thinking it may not work out?
No, you’re going to reserve some, to protect your mind, protect your ego, protect your emotions.
And so when you have little certainty and you tap a little potential, you take little action, and what do you get? You get shitty little results.
What does that do to your own belief?
SEE, I told you it wouldn’t work, I told you is a waste of time, I told you what will happen…
And if you do attempt it again, you’re even more uncertain, have less potential, you will put even less action, and you will get even worse results.
This is why some of you will never become great Scrum Masters. Just because of your beliefs.
The idea of this lecture is to move you away from your comfort zone and to get you to do the work and practice. And then repeat it until you are certain.
If you do this regularly, you will become more certain every day, you will start to believe in yourself, and then you will take much bigger potential to take massive action. And only then, you will succeed.
OK, NOW, it doesn’t matter if you are from an IT background or not, get your free ebook, and start building your Scrum career from soft skills.
✅ Free access to Soft Skills for Workplace eBook. Send an email to agileandscrummasterclass (at) gmail.com (SUBJECT: Soft Skills for Workplace), and I will send it to you immediately.
