The Agile Within

One on Ones: Conversations that Count with Avipaul Bhandari

Mark Metze Episode 90

Unlock the secrets to building stronger team relationships through the art of one-on-one meetings with our esteemed guest, Avipaul Bhandari, affectionately known as Avi. With two decades of Agile experience across the media and finance sectors, Avi offers a wealth of insights on how personalized interactions can transform team dynamics. Explore the fundamental role of one-on-ones beyond Scrum Masters, extending their value to managers and leaders. Discover how adopting a coaching mindset can enhance communication and establish a more cohesive organizational environment.

Join us as we navigate the challenges of addressing those with an overly positive outlook, using empathy to foster meaningful connections. Avi shares practical strategies for creating psychological safety and encouraging continuous learning. From utilizing powerful questions like "And what else?" to embracing the silence that allows for deeper reflection, this episode is packed with actionable insights. This is your chance to reimagine leadership and team interactions for more effective and empathetic outcomes.

Connect with Avi on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/avipaulbhandari/

Check out Avi's Music Channel on YouTube:
https://youtube.com/@avipaul

"The Coaching Habit" by Michael Bungay Stanier:
https://a.co/d/0qHjcZ8

"Four Attributes of Empathy" by Dr. Teresa Wiseman:
https://www.bamementalhealth.org/post/four-attributes-of-empathy-dr-teresa-wiseman

GROW Model in Action:
https://youtu.be/6f3X2PEsV-Q?si=4NMfZed9yjQ_hga_

Support the show


Follow us on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-within

Mark:

Welcome to the Agile Within. I am your host, mark Metz. My mission for this podcast is to provide Agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections. My guests and I will share real-life stories from our Agile journeys, triumphs, blunders and everything in between, as well as the lessons that we have learned. So get pumped, get rocking.

Mark:

The Agile Within starts now. Before we get started, I want to share some exciting news with you. The Agile Online Summit is just around the corner. This year's summit, running from October 22nd through the 24th, features thought leaders like Juergen Apello, known for revolutionizing the approach to Agile frameworks. You can expect live sessions, including Juergen's session on solving wicked, complex problems in organizations. Get your free ticket and join the discussion at agileonlinesummitcom. And now on to the show. Well, I hope all of you are having a fantastic day out there. This is Mark Metz with the Agile Within. I have a friend who's going to be on the podcast today as a guest, and his name is Avipal Bandari. Avipal, welcome to the Agile Within. Thanks for having me. I'm going to consider myself a friend of you and call you Avi going forward. Is that okay? Yeah, sure.

Avipaul:

Of course Can I just say I really like your intro music.

Mark:

It's really cool. So, Avi, you are from the London, England area. Is that correct? That's correct, Yep. So, as is tradition here at the Agile Within, always start off and say, if I were to come to London for a day and never been there which I have been to London and I could only pick one thing to do what would Avi say? That one thing is that I can't miss doing.

Avipaul:

Oh, wow, okay, so I'm not going to talk about the big sites. You know, the tourist attractions, of course. Yeah, something that's fairly local to me and I'm in South London. It's a little restaurant in this place called epsom and again, it's not something you could drive past it, right, it's on a dual carriageway, right. It's not your typical kind of like wow, you've got to.

Avipaul:

You know, this is a famous restaurant it's. It's this little. On the outside it's kind of like an unassuming restaurant. It's in this row of shops, I think, you know, probably dry cleaner, next to it or something. Um, it's kind of like an unassuming restaurant. It's in this row of shops, I think, you know, probably dry clean, a neck to it or something. Um, it's called dastan. It's an indian restaurant, but the chef is actually from an. Uh, he's, he used to be at a michelin style restaurant in london and he, he left there and he just opened this restaurant himself and it's in south london, I think there's one up in leeds maybe, but yeah, and you know, the decor is okay, it's, you know, nothing too fancy, but the food is incredible and he kind of brings that kind of it's authentic enough, it's very authentic indian, but it's kind of got like a contemporary twist to it and, um, yes, it's a very special place and me and my wife went there recently and planning to go back very soon sounds wonderful.

Mark:

Now the location in leeds is the one that you go to in in south london. Is that better than the one in leeds, or are they both comparable?

Avipaul:

I have never been there okay, it's a bit far, yeah, it's quite far, quite far.

Mark:

How far is Leeds from London? Like four hours, five hours.

Avipaul:

Yeah, around that much yeah.

Mark:

Avi started out as a software developer and he's been involved with Agile for around 20 years now. He's worked with many different companies, both startups and with large organizations, and he's worked across many different industries, from media to finance, and I want to say a special thanks to one of our listeners, kevin Swartwood. He actually made the recommendation to bring Avi on the show. So, kevin, thank you very much for participating and recommending Avi. I think this is going to be an absolutely fantastic episode, as we talk about one-on-ones, and the title for our episode today is One-on-ones Conversations that Count. I know that's something that has been very important and is a timely topic that you are passionate about, so I want to ask you, before we get started, who is the target audience for this episode talking about one-on-ones?

Avipaul:

started. Who is the target audience for this episode? Talking about one-on-ones, I would say initially I would obviously say scrum masters, but it's also for management, uh, leadership, and honestly, uh, the way that this is developed, it's for everyone. And before I go into the format, what actually happened with this and is that other people were actually having peer one-on-ones with each other using this format and so it kind of spread naturally. And there's been a lot of research that says if companies take a coaching approach in general, so if management and leadership take a coaching approach, then the entire company benefits. Primarily for scrum masters and managers, but essentially it's for everyone.

Mark:

Let me ask you, Avi, when we talk about one-on-ones, what are the goals? Why should we be having these one-on-ones?

Avipaul:

What I would say is, when I first started this, I had no agenda. I just wanted to meet everyone as a scrum master in my team, but the results were fantastic. I'll talk to the results as reasons for having these one-on-ones. First, one's obvious it's just to improve your relationships with people in your team. So, with these one-on-ones, improve rapport and relationships. What also happens? It surfaces information that wouldn't otherwise be surfaced, and that's a selfish goal for myself.

Avipaul:

But another result is improved performance for individuals and, as a result, for the wider team. Essentially, what you want to do is you want to help your team improve performance. Right, and one great way of doing this is one person at a time and you're really focusing on that individual and what makes them tick and what can help them move to that next level, and they really appreciate it as well. I've had a lot of people thank me for these conversations, and other results have also included improved psychological safety, and we can talk about that more when we talk about the format and also improving trust. And when I say improving psychological safety and trust, yes, at individual level, but also, as a byproduct, across the group as well how do you balance the goal of improving performance with improving trust and psychological safety?

Mark:

because some people could come in and if you're focusing on improving performance, they may could take that as very impersonal. And this person is really just trying to push me to 125 percent to be able to get 100 percent out of me, if that makes any sense it.

Avipaul:

It became a byproduct of the conversation. If we take a coaching approach, essentially what you're doing is you're putting them first. When they see that they really appreciate that. If I could just kind of clarify the difference between coaching and mentoring. So coaching is where you're asking exploratory questions. You don't have the answers yourself, you're just giving them kind of little directions as to hey, what about this and what about that, without giving them any answers, whereas mentoring is where you've got more experience than them and they're coming to you for advice, and so it's pretty much you're kind of telling them what to do. It's directive. It's like okay, this is what you want to do, I've been through that, here's what I did, this is what you should do. So it's very different.

Mark:

Coaching is you're helping them reach their own conclusions and their own solutions, and mentoring is you've experienced something and you're just helping them and by telling them, this is what to do so you said something that's really interesting there and it's something that I'm I'm passionate about, because I believe that many people they say that they're coaching, but in reality they're actually mentoring, and I want to delineate a little bit even further, and that's between coaching, mentoring and advising, because those are three different stances that a coach could take, different stances that a coach could take. What's the difference? What would you say the difference is between mentoring and advising in the way that you explained that. Sure.

Avipaul:

Well, with the mentoring, it's more a case of you're going through a certain situation. This is how I navigate the situation. These are the steps. Now go do that, whereas advising is more a case of hey well, I've got some feedback for you. You could work to maybe change your tone in meetings going forward, that kind of a thing.

Mark:

Tell us about how to conduct a successful one-on-one, because, like you talked about, we can just schedule a one-on-one and just meet with somebody and say do you have anything to talk about?

Avipaul:

Yeah, so I tend to schedule regular one-to-one, so they're recurring. And if I'm a scrum master, depending on the size of the team or how many teams I have, it's either fortnightly or monthly, sometimes depending on the person or their preferences or the type of conversation I'm going to have. Either it be within the office or it might be in a cafe or maybe walking the street. So really it does depend on the individual and also the weather In London. I think you probably know how it is. But, yeah, the opening question I usually ask and this is a classic coaching question is what would you like to talk about? And so, if you think about traditional one-to-ones with a manager or someone, they will have their agenda. It's like well, okay, this is what I'm going to talk about. You did great here. How's that going Well? You didn't do so well here. Okay, this is what you can do next. Hey, great, chat, nice. That's kind of like a typical kind of hierarchical managerial one-to-one, whereas this it's like you have the agenda.

Avipaul:

And in that instance where someone may not have anything to talk about, then I kind of like to ask a couple of retro type questions, like, hey, what's been going well the last couple of weeks, what are the highlights? And they will have something to talk about. An even more triggering question is a what, what hasn't been going well? And they'll definitely have something there. And if it's like, if you know what they've been working on or you've you've kind of observed certain situations or scenarios, um, because, hey, hey, what happened? Uh, with that retrospective, you know, something seemed to occur there. Oh yeah, now that you mention it, boom, boom, boom. And so it just takes that initial trigger. So I've had lots of people saying, hey, now I'm good, and then we've ended up talking for ages. Um, so just some trigger questions I have up your sleeve just to kind of say, you know, just to get them to open up.

Mark:

What about small talk? Because you know I've heard some people say that especially so. I'm from the southeastern part of the United States where we're very cordial, we like to talk and small talk fits in really well. But in other parts of the country or other cultures that's really frowned upon. And you know I've had some people tell me can we just get down to business? I'm done talking about kids and weather. When can we start talking about important things?

Avipaul:

Yeah, I mean that one you've got to gauge really, and again, that's by the individual and I think in a lot of companies the workforce is becoming increasingly diverse. There'll be a number of companies the workforce is becoming increasingly diverse. There'll be a number of different cultures you'll be interacting with every day and I think you know, in that scenario it is just understand the individual that you're talking to. I tend to naturally want to engage in some level of small talk just to kind of break the ice a bit. You know, if they don't look like they are engaging or if they want to get down to business, then you know what to do, right.

Mark:

So it's a good point that you made, because we are dealing with people. People have different cultures and people have even within cultures. People have different personalities. So I don't think you can have like this magic format that you're always going to go through. What about in the case where you've got somebody that the term sounds negative and I guess it is but you've got somebody that has a toxically positive outlook? Everything's great, I'm great, the team is great, we're the best ever. I really don't have anything to improve upon. I really don't have any problems because we're so great. How do you coach around to be able to redirect, to be able to be introspective, to see, because everybody has things that they need to improve on?

Avipaul:

right as as someone from the uk I could say that's quite rare to have in the uk.

Mark:

We don't have many of those people.

Avipaul:

That's, that's yeah I'd love to meet someone like that. Um, I would say that in that, in that kind of an instance, um, yeah, uh, you, you would have observed certain things, because you work with these people every day, uh, as a scrum master and you will have seen that not everything is great, and so, um, sometimes just asking some exploratory questions, uh, about certain things, like, oh well, how'd you feel this went? Oh, I went great. And you know, I guess it's almost like peeling down the layers of the onions and asking questions with increased specificity where they realize actually that didn't go so great. There was a certain star wars movie where someone was like, hey, that was great, and I was like, was it? And then I started asking questions like, well, they completely trashed the storyline from the one previous to that. And then, and this guy, just, you know, her parents were nobodies and it was like, oh well, actually, now that you mentioned it, yeah, it wasn't, wasn't that great, was it?

Mark:

That's a good example. So you mentioned that that probably is rare, where somebody's just like the world is good, everything is good, but you do have a certain number of people who are like I'm doing great, it's everybody else.

Avipaul:

That's the problem, yeah, and I think I've definitely had to give feedback to people who they were unaware of that they didn't have much self-awareness and they didn't realize the impact that they've had on the teams and they didn't really see anything wrong with what they were doing. I think with that, with the feedback approach, you really want to show that you understand their perspective and have empathy. It could be a good time to talk about empathy and the four attributes of empathy. So there's this nurse called Dr Teresa Wiseman. I know Brené Brown likes to reference her. She talks about four attributes of empathy. The first one is taking on someone else's perspective, so actually putting yourself in their shoes. What are they seeing? Why are they seeing that? How are they seeing that?

Avipaul:

Second, and this is the most important, is being non-judgmental. We tend to judge everyone around us. To a certain extent, we do it without thinking. We'll look at someone and we'll just make a judgment. We'll listen to them and say, well, yeah, they don't know what we're talking about.

Avipaul:

So if their values don't align with yours, you're being judgmental. If their opinion is different to yours, you're being judgmental if their opinion is different to yours, of being judgmental. And so in these one-on-one conversations it's really important to put that judgment aside and really try and these these things from their perspective. The third attribute is to recognize their emotion and understand their feelings. Again, it's that putting yourself in their shoes, but it's also being very specific in terms of understanding what they're feeling at that time. And the fourth is communicating your understanding of their feelings. So I can see you're frustrated by that incident or I can see you're very happy with how things are going right now. If this person's very positive, it's important to create that connection with them before you hit them with a perspective that they might not be open to otherwise.

Mark:

My curiosity kind of led us down a whole nother road I've been. I've been known for that being very curious and getting getting sidetracked. But let's, let's kind of straighten back up and get back focused again. So you talked about the format of a one-on-one that that you give, and so you talked about asking the other person what would you like to discuss so that they're forming the agenda for the meeting? What's the next question that you'd like to ask, or what's the next part of the format that you'd like to use?

Avipaul:

Sure, just before I move on, just wanted to make a point which I think is quite important. Sometimes you will have something to discuss, but the likelihood is they will cover it, and that's often happened. So something to bear in mind. And if they don't, you can always bring it up. Once they've covered everything that they want to, they're still the ones driving right. They've had their say, they've covered what they wanted to, even if they didn't know that's what they wanted to cover when the conversation began. It's an excellent point, sorry. Just one more point.

Avipaul:

Some people, when they get used to this, they just come prepared with a massive list, and so that's something to be aware of. The next question is um, is there anything I can do to help? Now I say this is a question, but it can. Actually, it's more of a theme, right, you probably wouldn't ask this specifically. It's like if you know what they, you probably wouldn't ask this specifically. It's like if you know what they're going through, if you know there's a specific project or if there's something they're struggling with, the idea is we're there to help them. So, within the context of this one-to-one, it is for them and you're giving them the time and you're also saying hey look, is there anything I can do to help you? And what that does is it shows support and if you're a scrum master, it helps to.

Avipaul:

I know sometimes there's a little resistance to scrum masters, but I think they know you're on their side. I mean a lot of the time. They appreciate the fact that you're taking time out of your busy calendar to sit with them and make them the focus of the conversation. But also if you're offering to help, then they realize, hey, you're there for them. Shall I carry on with the, uh, the format, or did you want to? Yeah?

Mark:

go on. So I'll just say, if you do ask if there's anything that I can do to help and they do offer something, it is vitally important that you follow up and you gain trust with that and don't just make a. You know it's. It's easy to make a, a, a, a blind request like that Is there anything I can do to help and then just kind of yeah, yeah, yeah.

Avipaul:

And if we ask it like that, oh no, no, it's all fine. But if there's something specific, if you make it specific like oh, I noticed this was happening with this, would you like any help with that, then you're more likely to get a response. I like that, which kind of leads me on to the next question, which it's also relevant for the next question. So when I presented on this, I've said the question is what feedback do you have for me? But the thing is, if you ask, hey, have you got you have for me? But the thing is, if you ask, hey, have you got any feedback for me? The likelihood is they're gonna say, no, no, it's all good.

Avipaul:

So, um, again, you want to be specific and I think that you have an idea yourself when you've done well and when you haven't done well, and and you know, then you can ask hey, when I facilitated that, that retrospective, I noticed not everyone was speaking up. Do you have any ideas as to why that is? So it's asking very specific questions. When you bring up specific examples, then they will respond to those. And oh, yeah, actually, now that you've mentioned it, yeah, I thought you know you could have been a bit quicker with this, or you know you made a comment which blocked someone, someone out, that kind of a thing.

Avipaul:

And the the thing is, as a manager or a leader, scrum master, if you're there saying, hey, I want your help and you know, and if they, if they come in and they give you feedback and they say, hey, you could have done this better, then we thank them for it. Right, and that shows humility. This leads to psychological safety, as per amy edmondson's definition, where leaders should show humility and show that they're learning from their mistakes, which normalizes failure and just make leading by example. So we should all be learning from our failure and people surfacing their mistakes, and I think this is such a key thing for all leaders and managers to show that humility. It makes such a big difference.

Mark:

Through being transparent. When you're asking for feedback, be genuine but say, hey, I really messed up when I ran this retrospective and it really didn't engage, didn't engage the team, and I want to improve in that area because I feel like that's been going on for two, three, four sprints and I feel like I'm failing the team. Can you help me? How can you help me right the ship so that I can be more effective in these, in these retrospectives? By you being vulnerable like that? I'm not going to say it always happens, but you do plant the seed so that the other person can be vulnerable and really, truly, I guess, bring up the hard topics that they're struggling with, yeah, and not just swallow them exactly.

Avipaul:

It encourages them to be honest as well and vulnerable.

Mark:

All right. So the format. You've given us some questions. What would you like to discuss? Is there anything I can do to help, and what feedback do you have for me? There's one more question and one more.

Avipaul:

Okay, he says this is the most powerful coaching question in the world. It's. And what else? And what that does is you ask a question and you can pause and just be comfortable with the silence and I should. That's probably a very good tip, sorry, um, we tend to want to jump in, like, if we ask a question, in this silence, the awkward silence, we want to jump in with the answer, but with a coaching habit, it's like no leave, leave it to them. They will surf. They're thinking, they're deep in thought and if the, if the silence is uncomfortable, then they'll be like oh wait, they actually want me to answer this. Okay, uh, let me, let me think of something. Um, and then they'll surprise themselves with, they'll go a layer deeper and and they'll think oh, this is a solution.

Avipaul:

And hey here's an idea and, yeah, there's some. There's some great videos online actually, uh, with some coaching examples, and there's this great example for the grow format and, um, you see these maybe I can send you the url I think it'd be a great thing to link to, actually, where there's two women and the coach says she does this really well, where the coachee comes to her with a problem and by the end of the video she's got four or five solutions and they've all come from this and what else? What else could you do? And, oh, I think I could try this. Okay, great, let's write that down. Um, so, yeah, this, this actually does go quite deep.

Mark:

I've used that and seen it very successfully used. I'm not going to say I have a hundred percent success rate, but by asking that magic question of and what? And you can phrase it different ways, but many times we have a problem and the first solution that comes to mind is the one that we choose to implement. And by asking, and what else? All of a sudden you start having options. It's like, well, I could do this, but I also have these other options that I could do this, this, but I also have these other options that I could do this, this or this. And now that I think about it, maybe I have a combination of all four that I could implement. So the depth that you get, but just by asking that and what?

Avipaul:

else actually whilst coaching a team, so actually facilitating a session and I've asked an open-ended question just for opinions and I've sat comfortably in the silence. It was an interesting situation. The team is usually quite forthcoming, but on this day they were quite quiet for some reason. I think a couple of key individuals were missing and therefore the people who usually got the conversation started were not there. I asked a what else? Type question and I said I was comfortable in the silence. I made it very obvious I don't want to be patronizing, obviously and eventually someone did speak up and they had a very valid opinion and it was great that they did speak up. Because they spoke up, other people spoke up as well. So it is. It is a powerful technique to use, not only in one-to-ones but also potentially with your teams as well tell us about one of your more insightful one-on-ones that you've, that you've held and maybe what you learned not too long ago.

Avipaul:

Uh, I was working with someone who was quite early in their career and I noticed during stand-ups or maybe planning meetings, they were quite quiet and they had great ideas, but they just had a bit of trouble communicating them, and I recognized that behavior because I behaved like that early in my career. So when I had my one-to-one with this person, I wanted to make sure I brought that up. What's interesting is one-on-one, they were quite confident and animated and their body language, their nonverbal communication, was quite different one-on-one, the volume at which they spoke was louder, the arm movements were wider and bigger. Their facial expressions were more varied, their eyebrows raised and they were smiling. Eyebrows raised and they were smiling, um, but if you saw them in the in the team meetings, they were. Their body language was a lot more closed and their voice was much quieter, uh, maybe less forward sounding and more to the back of the mouth and a higher pitch as well and, um, some of the language that they were using as well.

Avipaul:

It just showed a. It was being apologetic in nature, and so this is something to to look out for, also in the one-to-ones. So, when you're interacting with someone, to watch out for these signs and these signals. But so I I was speaking with with this person and I um was able to give this feedback to them. I asked some exploratory questions and I asked why they thought that was Because I'd been in that situation before and I'd been that person. Essentially, I realized this came from a place of self-doubt and that holds a lot of us back, right, you know the whole kind of imposter syndrome that many of us suffer from I know it well, I think we all do.

Avipaul:

I've spoken with those ctos who've admitted yep, I still have imposter syndrome, so it never leaves, uh, but it does, you know, really manifest early career and just sharing my observations with him and also just relating my own experience and sharing my own experience with him, and he was very thankful and you know I provided advice as to things he could do and, you know, just actual verbal exercises that can help him project more. And also, you know, this is actually I know some people say this is quite cheesy apparently there's a neuroscience behind affirmations. So actually saying positive things and rather than listening to that negative voice in your head which will put you down, it's actually changing the inner narrative and saying actually, no, I am good and this is a valid idea.

Avipaul:

And you know I am going to speak in this meeting, so just providing with some of those tools and um, just seeing him over the next kind of few iterations and he became a lot more confident in his communication and was really surfacing a lot more ideas which are of value to the team as well.

Mark:

So that that was great and as a coach that really has to light your fire, right, oh yeah completely yes that's a great story thank you for sharing.

Mark:

Oh, no, worries pleasure well obvi, as we start to wrap up, I feel like we need more time here, but to stay within our, within our budget of time, um, some of the things we talked about is we talked about different improvements that you go into and you would like to see in a one-on-one being relationships, performance and psychological safety or trust. Give us a recap of the format that you use, the questions that you use going into a one-on-one Sure um, I would say the first, the first question and the last question are definitely questions.

Avipaul:

The the middle two are themes, right? So first question being what would you like to discuss? Second one is anything I can do to help. So that's more of a theme, um, so the question itself might not get response, but you ask questions around the theme of you being helpful to them, genuinely helpful. And the third question is what feedback do you have? For me, again, that's a theme, uh, where you are providing scenarios or giving them the opportunity to give you feedback, and it shows vulnerability and humility, which leads to psychological safety. And the last question is and what else?

Mark:

all right, avi. Well, our listeners want to get in touch with you. What's the best way for them to do that?

Avipaul:

sure?

Mark:

yeah, you can find me on linkedin okay, great, we'll put the link to your profile in the show notes. That would be great. You have some quite interesting music endeavors, so where can we go to follow you there?

Avipaul:

yeah, sure, it's on all streaming platforms. So uh yeah, spotify, apple music, amazon, even um yeah, it's kind of a a mix between um kind of uh, funk and with some some Indian melodies and percussion and these type of things. But it's a number of different genres, but that's the general theme.

Mark:

Well, really interesting. I'll put some links in the show notes for the listeners so they can go out and catch that as well. Well, avi, it's been great talking to you. About one-on-ones conversations that count. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us and let's do this again soon.

Avipaul:

Yeah, that'd be great. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks for having me on, it's been great.

Mark:

All right, great. Okay, everyone. That brings an end to another episode of the Agile Within. We'll see everybody next time. Then we'll see everybody next time. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the agile within. If you haven't already, please join our LinkedIn page to stay in touch. Just search for the agile within and please spread the word with your friends and colleagues until next next time. This has been your host, mark Metz.

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