Gain Inner Peace, Make Better Decisions and Become More Productive By Knowing Your Inner Scrum Team.
What it is and how to use it.
Here is the Problem:
Most of your life you are not really present!
What do I mean by that?
Let’s take work. You leave a part of you at home. Some behaviours are just not acceptable in the workplace. You are not really fully present.
Or maybe it’s just your fondness of cheesy music, but you’re too much of an intellectual to let that play out. You might even hide that from yourself.
That’s all pretty normal for a while - but in the long run it might become an issue.
Do this over a couple of years, a decade - or even a lifetime - and you might loose touch with some parts of your personality. Especially if there is no other space in your life to express those parts.
The consequence?
You’re feeling inauthentic.
Because this is not who you really are.
You might find yourself behaving weirdly on weekends when there is finally time and space. Or you’re just slightly depressed. Maybe you numb yourself with alcohol, drugs, social media, gaming. Because you just need to keep that side quiet.
Does that sound at all familiar?
Here’s a tool that might help. It can give you more inner balance, make you more productive, help you to make better decisions. And is a lot of fun to use.
The Inner Scrum Team.
The Inner Scrum Team is a central part of the Go Scrum Yourself framework.
It is based on Friedemann Schulz von Thun’s work.
He introduced the Inner Team in his 1998 book “Miteinander reden 3 – Das ‘innere Team’ und situationsgerechte Kommunikation” as a tool for coaching and therapeutic settings. Each team member represents a different voice inside yourself. This way it helps you to understand internal conflicts and to create more internal alignment.
The Inner Team has quickly become a part of the standard toolkit for systemic coaches.
Scrum on the other hand is a product development framework.
Originally introduced in 1986 by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka, it was later popularised by Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber. It helps small teams to create valuable products fast. By regularly, inspecting and adapting. To do this it introduces regular events for the team to regularly align, plan together, inspect their progress and improve their processes and cooperation.
And it empowers the team to become self-managing trusting each member to be a professional with all required skills.
It is by now the standard framework for small teams in modern product development.
Combing both of them: the Inner Scrum Team.
What would your life look like, if all of your inner team members were valued professionals that you trust to manage themselves? If you were to use all of your personality in the best way possible to achieve your goals?
Well, here’s how you can help them to get there:
By becoming your own Scrum Master.
Learn how to use the Scrum events to consider all of them in every day decisions.
Check in daily. Consider each of them when you plan your week. Or look back at the last week. To adapt your habits and regular behaviours - so all of them can be happy and productive parts of your life. Give a voice to the parts of yourself that were neglected.
Creating the basis for truly effective inner teamwork.
The consequences?
More Inner Peace.
No part of yourself is permanently neglected. You ideally create some space for them every day. And with the right moderation they can learn to collaborate. Instead of working against each other.
Better Decisions.
Because you consciously heard all of them before you made a decision. You might find that one makes most decisions - behaving as your Product Owner so far. And now you have the opportunity to decide, if they should remain with that role.
More Productivity:
By involving all of your inner scrum team mates you find better solutions that use more of your strengths. And you consider more of your weaknesses before you start. It's just logical that all of them together are more productive.
More Authenticity.
It can even make you a more inspiring and authentic person - because that is what happens, when you are truly aligned internally. People will start to find you inspiring.
Let me summarise
The Inner Team is a great tool to understand yourself better - looking at different aspects of yourself as individual team members. Scrum on the other hand is a framework that helps small teams to collaborate effectively and create valuable products fast.
Combing both of these frameworks, gives you the toolset to manage yourself better.
And not only improve your decision making abilities and increase your productivity - but also to find more inner balance and more authenticity.
Getting to know your Inner Scrum Team and learning how to facilitate their interactions is part of the first 3 weeks of the Go Scrum Yourself journey - a period I call Defining Sessions. At the time of writing I'm in the beta test phase of the whole journey - and offer the Defining Sessions at a massively discounted rate of 169 Euros. Check it out here.