Coaching For Flow

In my experience, there are two characteristics to a successful team reflection session:

1. The team learns something new about themselves
2. The team did not expect to learn that thing.

In their most recent retrospective, a software development team I coach was interrogating their reflection that they are communicating well, and what factors might be influencing this. The team switches between the Scrum and Kanban frameworks depending on what is required of them. Their current use of Kanban means there is not a prescription for a dedicated time set aside for planning, and it’s for the team to work out the best way to collaborate according to the work they are doing. When asked, they described their system as ‘short, frequent and focussed’ conversations.

As an aside, this appears to be discouraged by the Scrum Guide, which offers planning, review, retrospectives, and daily scrums as all of the meetings a team needs:

“Events are used in Scrum to create regularity and to minimize the need for meetings not defined in Scrum. Optimally, all events are held at the same time and place to reduce complexity.”

There are many assumptions in this. Most notably, team members using their time to talk directly to their stakeholders is inherently negative. It’s a great example of where the directions of a framework, methodology, or dogma are no substitute for the decisions made by a team with autonomy.

What fluency means

When probed on why this kind of meeting cadence was working for them, they identified

The shortness of the meetings meant that each team member could comfortably fit them in their schedule.

The focus of the meetings meant that there was a tangible and usable output from each discussion, and

The frequency of the meetings meant they felt the benefit of rapid feedback loops, allowing course correction and learning by experience.

One team member described the quality this gave the team: fluency.

And I thought, “Hang on. This is flow.”

I got very excited about this because it feels like flow states are a characteristic of a high-capability team. I had to resist my instinct to derail the conversation and start designing experiments on creating flow states in teams. And it was fortunate I did because that kind of intervention is a barrier to those states emerging. Flow in the workplace as described by Mihály Csikszentmihályi needs three conditions to emerge -

Goals are clear

Feedback is immediate

A balance exists between opportunity and capacity

When these conditions exist, teams and individuals flourish as their achievements grow. The challenge for the coach becomes working out how to coach the team to create these conditions.

Facing Outward

Clear goals seem straightforward. The coach communicates what is expected of the team, and lets the team know of any change to that expectation on time. Where there is work to do to clarify an expectation, it is the coach’s responsibility to do so to serve the team.

Immediate feedback is also achievable. Encourage openness and transparency in progress and communication. Ensure praise and criticism are delivered constructively and received objectively. Ensuring processes and mechanisms exist for feedback to be given inside and outside of the team.

But the real challenge for the coach comes in balancing opportunity and capacity. Ideally, the expectation of a team, and an individual within it, should be just slightly out of reach of current knowledge and ability. In turn, the team is encouraged to learn and develop to meet the topical need but is not under so much pressure that they are forced to deliver and then repair sub-optimal work. These circumstances rarely arrive naturally: work may be repetitive and unrewarding, or wholly unrealistic. Timescales might be so tight they are unachievable, or so loose the team feels undervalued.

The work of the coach facing out from the team is as important as the work facing in. Only when expectations are agreed upon and realistic can teams develop true autonomy. And autonomy is the necessary state for a team to achieve flow.

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These notes are taken from my weekly newsletter The Week In Pieces -thoughts and links on ways of working, personal and team coaching, balancing work with life and more. Subscribers get a set of curated links and resources straight into their inbox every week — you can take a look and subscribe here.