I think the phrase "communication skills" is vague and ambiguous. I often hear "we need to communicate better", but I rarely hear what that means, specifically. Yelling louder? Repeating things over and over to people who are tired of hearing things? Using Slack more? Using email instead of Slack? Calling on the phone rather than using IM's? Or any one of a myriad of other possibilities?
I agree that it's ambiguous. I do think you could have picked a more accurate set of options though in making your point. For example, none of those sprang to my mind when I thought about communication skills. One that did was more effective storytelling.
Increasing your ability to weave together events, to connect with your audience, and to connect the events with their goals and strategies. There are examples of this ability in business contexts and example videos in TedX talks.
So, putting aside the things you mentioned and given your incredible experience, what do you think it implies?
I love the idea of good storytelling! I would like to not guess at what the authors of those reports or the respondents meant/implied. But for me it means using RESTful communication (yes, I know that's something from the technical realm, and I think it can be translated to human communication) or active listening, or the principles from Nonviolent Communication, Clean Language, Crucial Conversations, or The Core Protocols. Almost anything that closes "the loop" of feedback well, leaving all parties satisfied that they've been understood well enough to move on.
I'm torn on the #1 Functional Skill for Scrum Masters being Technical Skills. While I will agree that it is a big benefit to be able to understand the technology the team is working on, there is no shortage of people who can do the technical work. There is a huge deficit of people who want to serve others and are able to help people and teams work effectively. If you are able to contribute to technical work, there is a lot of incentive to then ask you to contribute to the output. This would remove the only role caring for the team.
Much of our workforce today emphasizes specialization, and in this instance, my preference is to retain the specialization of humanist for the scrum master role. At this point in time, maybe Educator is the most valuable functional skill of the role.
We discussed this recently on the Moose Herd - perhaps it is time to find a new name for the Scrum Master role. This is one area where I do prefer SAFe's change to Team Coach. It still carries the burden of the word coach, but it doesn't tie the work to Scrum or even to Agile. It's just an emphasis on a role focused on helping the team be their best.
As always, there are exceptions. I just have not seen, nor heard of an organization that has been able to maintain stable, engaged and well-led teams for the long-haul. There is so much flux in life that I believe there will always be a need for someone to be able to focus on the team and their success and not get called into contributing to the output. Removing the temptation seems like the simplest solution.
The one notion I would add, Dave, is a very broad definition of technical skills. I would include product development domain skills, IT skills, product skills, and software engineering skills (BA, development, QA/Test, DevOps, etc.), and leadership skills.
Another way of looking at it as having some experience / skills in the area where your team will be executing.
I think the phrase "communication skills" is vague and ambiguous. I often hear "we need to communicate better", but I rarely hear what that means, specifically. Yelling louder? Repeating things over and over to people who are tired of hearing things? Using Slack more? Using email instead of Slack? Calling on the phone rather than using IM's? Or any one of a myriad of other possibilities?
I agree that it's ambiguous. I do think you could have picked a more accurate set of options though in making your point. For example, none of those sprang to my mind when I thought about communication skills. One that did was more effective storytelling.
Increasing your ability to weave together events, to connect with your audience, and to connect the events with their goals and strategies. There are examples of this ability in business contexts and example videos in TedX talks.
So, putting aside the things you mentioned and given your incredible experience, what do you think it implies?
Again, I know it's ambiguous.
I love the idea of good storytelling! I would like to not guess at what the authors of those reports or the respondents meant/implied. But for me it means using RESTful communication (yes, I know that's something from the technical realm, and I think it can be translated to human communication) or active listening, or the principles from Nonviolent Communication, Clean Language, Crucial Conversations, or The Core Protocols. Almost anything that closes "the loop" of feedback well, leaving all parties satisfied that they've been understood well enough to move on.
I'm torn on the #1 Functional Skill for Scrum Masters being Technical Skills. While I will agree that it is a big benefit to be able to understand the technology the team is working on, there is no shortage of people who can do the technical work. There is a huge deficit of people who want to serve others and are able to help people and teams work effectively. If you are able to contribute to technical work, there is a lot of incentive to then ask you to contribute to the output. This would remove the only role caring for the team.
Much of our workforce today emphasizes specialization, and in this instance, my preference is to retain the specialization of humanist for the scrum master role. At this point in time, maybe Educator is the most valuable functional skill of the role.
We discussed this recently on the Moose Herd - perhaps it is time to find a new name for the Scrum Master role. This is one area where I do prefer SAFe's change to Team Coach. It still carries the burden of the word coach, but it doesn't tie the work to Scrum or even to Agile. It's just an emphasis on a role focused on helping the team be their best.
As always, there are exceptions. I just have not seen, nor heard of an organization that has been able to maintain stable, engaged and well-led teams for the long-haul. There is so much flux in life that I believe there will always be a need for someone to be able to focus on the team and their success and not get called into contributing to the output. Removing the temptation seems like the simplest solution.
The one notion I would add, Dave, is a very broad definition of technical skills. I would include product development domain skills, IT skills, product skills, and software engineering skills (BA, development, QA/Test, DevOps, etc.), and leadership skills.
Another way of looking at it as having some experience / skills in the area where your team will be executing.