It’s stunning how much human capital is invested in keeping others down, at the expense of learning, propagating knowledge, and creating generative cultures that produce more with less.
Many, many people believe that a scrum master / agile coach should have a strong technical background. I agree with them now, but it’s too late for me. I did it anyway, I’m here now, and I have found my niche.
What is a “technical background” anyway?
When I first started, my gaps as a new Scrum Master felt MASSIVE. I rarely told anyone about my creative background in small companies (see my last post, link below). Nor did I tell most people that I had studied psychology, animal behavior, literature, history, and music, or that I had managed multiple small teams and published scientific research. The tech-bro culture is filled with subtle posturing and dominance plays, and I felt every little zing.
For years, I was deeply insecure that my only tech experience amounted to some statistical analysis in R and Excel, command line work with a cheat sheet, and decent Dreamweaver skills that I used to build dynamic pages and clean up the CSS, PHP, and Javascript created by 20 years of oppositional research scientists. Oh, and I used to program Flash animations and hand-code HTML around the turn of the century. In-line CSS and all.
Doesn’t that sound fancy, all you non-techies? Trust me, it’s not. It’s a couple of steps off advanced skills in Microsoft Office.
Don’t be blinded by all the jargon — mine or anyone else’s
My tech-lite experience did give me just enough background to understand the difference between a staging environment and production, and how stuff moves between them. I knew what it was like to try to debug someone else’s scripting. And I knew the pain of trying to fix the styling across more than 10k files. That’s all useful for empathizing with technical teams.
It also gave me the feelers to get a general sense of code quality based on team conversations. (Yes, folks, it’s more obvious than you think.) Above all, my life experience gave me lots and lots of tools for creating team safety. It felt like I did it just by walking in the room, but it was based on decades of studying interpersonal behavior, leading people with as little authority as possible, and shaping teams into collaborative units.
But the bottom line is that, to succeed and progress professionally, I had to push through 1) tech bro microaggressions, 2) my own imposter syndrome, and 3) being divergent in the culture I was trying to shape. This is hard (and I kind of like the challenge). Many people don’t make that journey because they value their mental health.
Out of this came two important realizations, which have taken years to solidify:
1.
Someone’s skill level is a matter of perspective, even if you have established measures.
2.
Feeling not-good-enough is a great motivator, but it keeps you from being creative.
And the corollary….
3.
If you neglect empathy, it’s likely you are creating an environment that wastes human potential.
Do these seem obvious? I wonder. If so, why does it keep happening? It seems like my entire personal and career life — in publishing, in biology, in education, in swing dance, in love — has been filled with people who don’t get this. Teams dismiss new hires, business folks dismiss the techies, sensitive people get neglected, creatives defer to architects, agilists pontificate instead of listening.
It’s stunning how much human capital is invested in keeping others down, at the expense of learning, propagating knowledge, and creating generative cultures that produce more with less.
Fellow revolutionaries, before you cheer me on, consider this: If it keeps happening, it’s probably part of human nature. Really take that in. Our attempts to make the workplace “more human” are up against basic human wiring. I mean really, who do we think we are?
I would love to hear your thoughts. If you visit this post on Substack, you will be able to join the conversation!