Elevating sense of ‘Support’ amongst Software Engineers using LEGO®
We hold all the teams we serve close to our hearts, but we have this special affection for software engineers. Why that is, I’m not sure.
Maybe it has something to do with their steadfast commitment to agile practices, which helps in setting the pace of the learning loop. Which, over time, keeps the flywheel in motion. Whatever the exact reasons might be, software engineers can pick up an amazing pace when it comes to improving well-being and team performance.
Let’s explore how:
Reflect:
We notice several software engineers underestimate the importance of people skills at first, shown in how low they prioritize teamwork during reflections. Some fit the old-school software engineer profile. They learned programming, living by the assumption they could just code all day, headphones on, not going to be any need to talk with anyone. Reflections over time show they quickly learn reality is different. Engineering is one of the most collaborative fields out there. It’s all about good collaboration, alignment, teamwork, and helping each other.
Focus:
Once the conviction is there that people skills are a good thing to have, the next question is: how to acquire them? Given the multi-dimensional complexities of this discipline, some teams find it hard to get started or, after a while, come up with something completely new. To facilitate this, we offer focus by suggesting a specific topic to improve on, based on the team's reflections, which we know is impactful but -equally important- relatively easy to start experimenting with. One of those topics is:
Focus topic: Support → develop support skills, support team more effectively
Act:
I mentioned ‘relatively easy’, the easy part being: starting an experiment. The bad news: it takes teams practice to familiarise themselves with these kinds of skills, and some can't truly familiarise themselves with them at all. The good news: a lot of people skills can be learned and practice makes (almost) perfect. That’s probably why we love software engineers so much, once they have their eyes on the price, they just keep practicing.
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We like to share hacks that worked, accompanied by some anecdotal evidence of teams who use them. This time we focus on LEGO®!
Support → develop support skills, together with your team -> use LEGO®
Participating in team games helps a lot to be reminded of the importance of offering team support and to experiment with offering support effectively. You can’t win the game without great collaboration, right? Building objects with LEGO® during retrospectives helped teams practice support skills just by building together and discussing what they had built and why. Btw, ‘support’ wasn’t the only topic positively affected by this exercise, also sense of ‘respect’ and ‘openness’ was positively reflected on during evaluations.
During a recent conversation I had with agile consultant Emile de Nijs Bik, Emile shared his learnings using LEGO® during retro’s: “There’s something intuitive about the combination of building structures together and, at the same time, talking about preferred ways of structuring work. When teams create structures they come up with themselves, we noticed it gives people access to a vocabulary they otherwise don’t use, which leads to greater understanding and better collaboration. Impressive to listen to and fun to watch at the same time.”
A growing body of evidence shows that applying playful work design is helpful to team dynamics in many ways. If you like to learn more about the theories behind Playful Work Design, follow Arnold Bakker, Professor at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and Tom Junker, Assistant Professor in Human Resource Studies, Tilburg University. Their research focuses on proactive and collaborative approaches to improving well-being and performance at work (e.g., agile practices, job crafting).
Share!
When we talk about actions publicly, we attach a little disclaimer: hacks worked for some teams, welcome to use them as inspiration, but we do not recommend copy-pasting them. Rather integrate reflecting into your team dynamics first to land on hacks that fit your specific team strengths and challenges.
That said: if you have best practices to share about how you and your team implemented hacks, shoot me a DM. If you are on the lookout for fresh hacks or a platform that integrates reflections, focus-, and improvements, into everyday team worklife, have a look at our Noon website.
Don’t worry, Play.
Resources to do some digging yourself:
SeriousplayPro: Retrospective with LEGO®
Playful Work Design: Introduction of a New Concept
