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How do you help teams make a decision that maybe isn't perfect and that you have to pivot, you know, or giving people the permission to try something and fail. And I feel like that's a scary step and that, like, that's part of the agile coaching too, is, and, and part of handing over the, the, um, the baton so to speak, is empowering the team to feel like they can freefall, um, and.
Comfort one another, you know, rather than needing to lean on the coach. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so like, I feel like that was something I was trying to articulate today in our team meeting was the power of like, if it doesn't work, the worst case scenario is that we know it doesn't work and we pivot. And the best case scenario is it, it works.
Like that's the worst thing that can happen. No one's dying.
Yeah, because things feel really big and scary when you're talking about it. People the permission to try takes is, is a very powerful thing. Here's the fine line to walk though, when.
When you're an agile coach,
if you have that dynamic on the team where you're stepping in and sharing perspective, you gotta be really careful where you don't get to the point where the team starts relying on your perspective to a point of. Not being able to decide without it.
If you're there, to me, the two words, ownership and permission Rachel, I'm not like criticizing anything that you're saying. I totally agree with you, but I just wanna talk about the difference between ownership and permission. In the intention, the permission is having a position of power. Like I give you, I grant you permission because you wouldn't have it otherwise if I didn't permit you to do it.
But if I'm inspiring you,
Through psychological safety and giving, fostering an environment, it's not giving, it's not providing, it's not permission. Because those words have a connotation of power. Do you see what I'm saying? All of you. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So if I, if I come at it from the angle of I as a person on this team and wearing the hat where I'm collaborating to inspire you to grow your agile maturity as a team, I'll share perspectives of saying there's no right or wrong answer.
What do we wanna do? Let's decide together, and thank you so much for speaking up, like reiterating when people speak up about concerns. Those are the, those are the actions that show that you don't need to ask for permission in the first place. And they, they like act in support of ownership transferring.
So that you can quickly step away from that role. That's, that's really what your intention should be. As an agile coach, you should be putting everything in a position where you've inspired the team and encouraged the team so much to self-organize and build psychological safety with each other. That if they have a foundation of psychological safety, your work is done.
You know they're gonna grow from that. You know, they're gonna ebb and flow. That's what you all as agile coaches should be aiming for. Do you see what I'm saying? I, again, I'm not saying that you said anything wrong, Rachel. I, I really appreciate that perspective and there is a, like a really huge nuance to, it's something that is like.
Very advanced, and it takes years as an agile coach to get really great at the nuance of permission versus inspiration. I, I'm, I love your perspective on this because I feel like the reason I use the word permission is because when there's, um, fear, the fallback ends up being waterfall because that's what people know.
And so. Sometimes the permission allows to the step to get back to psychological, because you can't have psychological safety when there's fear, right? Mm-hmm. It's, or it's hard. And so in those situations of fear of failure or like, um, fear of, of missing deadlines or whatever it is, or fear of speaking up, it's very.
And that's why I use the word permission. 'cause sometimes you still need that person to stand up and say, you can do it yourselves. You don't need us. You can do it. You know, I give you like, that's a really great point. Yeah. That, that type of permission I think is so powerful. It that I would call encouragement, like scaffolding, you know what I mean?
But to, to like say that perspective early is so important in the, in the very beginning you have to say that and you have to constantly repeat it every single moment that they find themselves in where they're scared, you are the person who's saying, this is an environment where you can be scared and you can fail.
And it's not about the right decision. It's not about perfection like you're saying. Yeah. Clinton, what do you think?