Founder of ICQ Global, the global experts in measuring and optimising psychological safety, motivational drive and cognitive diversity.
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People have been practicing meditation for thousands of years in China and India as they knew it was beneficial, even if they did not know all the reasons why. Now that neuroscientists have managed to explain its benefits from a scientific standpoint, it has gained huge popularity in the West. Suddenly the exotic and mysterious art of meditation has turned into a scientific, proven approach. The activity itself has not changed, only the awareness about it and its packaging.
It has always been important to understand our own and others’ emotions, although it was not as widely popular of a topic until Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer coined the term "emotional intelligence" in 1990 and Dr. Daniel Goleman later argued that it can matter more than IQ.
The agile framework is very similar. There is nothing groundbreaking in acknowledging that the world is changing and, therefore, people and companies need to be able to adapt and find new solutions for new challenges. It is not revolutionary to realize that the quality of collaboration and people's values determine the quality of results or that processes on their own are not enough.
The reason why these approaches have gained a lot of attention and traction is that they managed to measure, visualize and optimize the steps leading to a desired outcome. It is hard to believe in something we cannot see or do not understand. It is difficult to value something if we do not have a word for it or our definition is more negative than empowering.
That is the foundation, but just like any good ideas that are pushed too far or diluted too much, sometimes “agile” is used too often or incorrectly in coaching, which might cause some confusion.
Agility is the ability to move your body quickly and easily and also the ability to think quickly and clearly, so it makes sense why project managers chose this term. The opposite of agile is fragile, rigid, clumsy, slow, etc. Not only are they not flattering adjectives, but they are also dangerous traits if they were descriptions of a team within an organization.
A Range Of Perspectives
The brain loves when we stay in our comfort zone and hang out with people who agree with us; however, that is rarely an option in real life, and it is also the enemy of innovation and agility. The ability to see the same situation from different perspectives allows teams to make better decisions. Most scientists agreed that Earth was the center of the universe until Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo proved otherwise—although opposing viewpoints are rarely welcome at first, even if they lead to better solutions.
Maximizing cognitive diversity is the foundation of agile teams, yet as I discussed in my previous article, "Cognitive Diversity: The Greatest Asset Or Liability," a team can be individually really smart and competent but also collectively blind due to low cognitive diversity. Maximizing cognitive diversity has the potential for success or disaster, depending on two factors: psychological safety and motivational drivers.
Psychological Safety
How many times have you been in a meeting and you have an idea or you disagree with what most participants agree on—but you don't say anything and you conform to the norms? Why don't you speak up?
In general, there might be two reasons for it. The most likely one is the lack of psychological safety, the feeling that your idea would be shut down or ignored. Perhaps you worried you would ruin team harmony, or maybe you quickly started doubting yourself. That is one of the guaranteed ways of preventing progress and limiting growth. Psychological safety is the number-one trait of high-performing teams, according to Google’s Aristotle research. It is the ability to speak up without fearing any negative consequences, combined with the willingness to contribute, which leads us to the third factor.
Motivational Drivers
Being able to do something does not mean we are willing to do it; it requires the drive to get things done, too. For example, there is always the opportunity to stay at work for an extra hour, but you won’t do that unless you really want to (or have to).
The highest level of growth happens in a psychologically safe environment where cognitively diverse people feel motivated and able to turn their differences into synergy in order to achieve a common goal.
According to my colleague Pedro Bernardo Juan Celis Caraballo, associate professor at Universidad Simón Bolívar, agile teams require a set of characteristics generated by the team, not the individual, and that is directly related to human interactions. At the base, there is trust and psychological safety to foster constructive conflicts that could generate value if they are resolved positively. This, in turn, generates commitment, accountability and, ultimately, results.
The challenge is that it doesn’t matter how much we reflect on something that we are not aware of or how much we use something that almost works; they won’t give us the outcome we pay and hope for. The ability to measure, visualize and optimize these invisible forces and master the blueprint of why people think and behave differently is the difference between a smart team that is agile or one that is fragile.
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