Our first conference of the season is the fantastic Lean Agile London 2024!
As we round off our TalkInTen series, we have a special treat: Avipaul Bhandari, an Agile veteran with over 20 years of experience, dives into the often-overlooked power of empathy within Agile frameworks.
In this engaging talk, Avipaul sheds light on the pivotal role of empathy as a driving force behind meaningful change within Agile frameworks.
Through personal anecdotes and practical insights, he reveals how embracing empathy can catalyse transformation, foster stronger collaboration, and cohesive team dynamics, and enhance value delivery. Join us as we explore the profound impact of empathy - an essential ingredient for Agile success.
Episode Highlights:
- Empathy in Agile: Discover how to implement empathy-driven strategies to enhance team dynamics and value delivery
- Practical Insights: Gain practical tips and real-world examples from Avipaul’s extensive experience
- Transformational Strategies: Learn how to use empathy to navigate organisational complexities and improve your product strategy
If you enjoy the show, please leave a review!
Use code PRODAGILITY24 for 50% off interactive slides at AhaSlides.
Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.
Our first conference of the season is the fantastic Lean Agile London 2024!
As we round off our TalkInTen series, we have a special treat: Avipaul Bhandari, an Agile veteran with over 20 years of experience, dives into the often-overlooked power of empathy within Agile frameworks.
In this engaging talk, Avipaul sheds light on the pivotal role of empathy as a driving force behind meaningful change within Agile frameworks.
Through personal anecdotes and practical insights, he reveals how embracing empathy can catalyse transformation, foster stronger collaboration, and cohesive team dynamics, and enhance value delivery. Join us as we explore the profound impact of empathy - an essential ingredient for Agile success.
Episode Highlights:
- Empathy in Agile: Discover how to implement empathy-driven strategies to enhance team dynamics and value delivery
- Practical Insights: Gain practical tips and real-world examples from Avipaul’s extensive experience
- Transformational Strategies: Learn how to use empathy to navigate organisational complexities and improve your product strategy
If you enjoy the show, please leave a review!
Use code PRODAGILITY24 for 50% off interactive slides at AhaSlides.
Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.
This is a first for the Productivity Podcast. Well, I say first. The Lean Agile London 2024 Talks in 10 series. There's actually been a little run of firsts. It was the first conference we went to where we recorded Talks in 10 after the event. It was also the first conference that we partnered with where I was interviewed for a talk that I gave. I was interviewed for my own Talk in 10, which was a joy. And to round off our little trio of firsts, this is the first time we're going to interview someone for a talk in 10 who didn't actually get to give their talk. Sounds a bit strange, I know, but please bear with me. Because listeners, Avi Paul, who I'm joined by today, was unable to make the last day of the conference. So what everybody got instead of his excellent talk was my rather average talk, which was a consolation prize. And I thought, you know, it would be just so nice to give everyone the opportunity to hear what Avi Paul had to say in a little summary and also make me feel better because I felt a bit awkward like stepping into your shoes. I did apologize when I started giving my talk because I'm sorry I'm not Avi Paul and everyone, you know, some people left when they realized it. When they realized like I wasn't you. Not true. But Avi Paul, thank you so much for spending this time. on a Friday afternoon. I really appreciate it. Would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners and giving a bit of an overview of the talk that you are going to give? Sure, thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here. And I'm sure you won a consolation prize. I heard your talk was amazing. Yeah, my name's Avi Paul Bindari. Been doing this agile thing for about 20 odd years now. Had lots of titles, including Agile Coach, Scrum Master, Technical Program Manager, Engineering Manager, lots of different titles. Lots of different companies, big, small, start -ups, scale -ups, all over the place. But Agile has been core to what I've been doing for a long time. And the talk I was going to give was called Cultivating Empathy, the Secret Source for Agile Success. and so it's all very saucy. No, so in this talk I was going to discuss my personal experience where using empathy has led to improved agility. So when we hear about agile transformations, with any transformation there are people who are very keen to jump on this and say, yes, let's do this. I believe in this. And there are people who are less keen. I know over my dead body, I'm working the way I am and that's how I can, when I continue to work for infinity, you know, you know what I'm saying? And I've found that empathy and applying empathy in this scenario, in different scales has led to helping those people who may not see the benefit of what you're doing and how it might help them to actually embrace the change and understand your perspective while you understand theirs. And it's led to all the good things that we associate with Agile, to improve transparency, collaboration, team dynamics, value delivery, and psychological safety. I know we hear that term thrown around a lot, but. it's led to that. So that's all the nice things and positive things and ultimately business value delivery. Nice, I feel even kind of a bit weird now because my talk was also a similar topic. It was about empathy, but from a product vision perspective. But yeah, now I'm just kind of smiling inside because it's nice, at least I delivered on part of what you promised to deliver. So given that, your talk, was it? stories? Was it practical advice? Was it a mixture? What did you want people to leave with after the talk? Yeah, so it was a series of stories of real life experiences. There were different scenarios. I set up the talk by talking about the four attributes of empathy as defined by Dr. Theresa Wiseman, the nurse. Is that correct? Sorry, pause. I said Dr. Theresa Wiseman, who's a nurse. I think she was a nurse, but she's called Dr. Theresa Wiseman. If we could just kind of... I'll start that again. Sorry. her it. So I framed the talk by kicking it off by covering the four attributes of empathy defined by Dr. Theresa Wiseman. The first one being being able to take on someone else's perspectives and recognizing the truth in their perspective. Second is being non -judgmental because judging discounts their experience and their opinions and requires you to put away your own thoughts, opinions, assumptions, leave your ego at the door. Third being recognizing another's emotion and understand their feelings. Sometimes that requires you to be in touch with your own feelings in order to understand theirs, overcoming your own to understand theirs and also recognizing the traits, nonverbal traits, what they're saying, the content of what they're saying. And the fourth is being able to communicate your understanding of their feelings. And there's a neuroscience to that where if people are, reacting in the fight or flight state, they're in the amygdala but if you're able to label their emotions in that moment it takes it from the amygdala to more rational parts of the brain and that's just an example of how that can help you're communicating your understanding their feelings and labeling their emotions as such it can help someone process what you're saying which is quite interesting there is neuroscience to this and I'm not going to pretend to be expert in that space but it is really interesting what happens in the brain and how these techniques help people in general. Yeah. different scenarios, sorry, Karen. The different scenarios I covered ranged from, you know, meeting someone for the first time and then them telling me, I hate agile. It's like, okay, you know, I'm an agile coach. Where do we go from here? And then, you know, angry team members and overbearing product owners and teams that are cynical and just a... a few different scenarios and where I talked about my own judgment because we're all human. So, you know, when you're met with, I hate Agile. So obviously I want to be, you know, be judgmental towards that. And then, yeah, and the four attributes and applying them to all these scenarios. are you going to be giving this talk anywhere else? Sounds like a good idea. I'd like to come along, purely selfish reasons, because I'm just, I mean, I know we haven't got a huge amount of time today, but I'm really intrigued by these four attributes. I must admit, it's not something that I've come across before, so I'll be looking that up. And I'd love to hear about your application of it. So yeah, are you intending to do this at any meetups or conferences in the foreseeable? I would like to. Yeah, it's not something I've actively planned at the moment, but I will be in touch with meetups and let them know that I have this talk available. I'm also considering potentially turning this into a video series, just upload onto LinkedIn, for example, where I have a few examples for the talk, but potentially there are other examples I can talk through as well. Awesome, awesome. So yeah, so everyone follow Avi Paul on LinkedIn. You don't mind people stalking like that, do you? Yes, that's okay to kind of get people to follow. Yeah, yeah, stalk him because I think you'll want to see that video series. See, I know we're running out of time rapidly. Time is annoying like that. But what I'd love to know is from your experience, what has been the one greatest success that you've had in your career from cultivating MP? I think back to a very specific example where I was a program lead. I think the group was about 30 people. So there was a few teams and the teams had different challenges. But so for example, one team was quite apathetic. The other another team was quite aggressive and resistant. And, you know, they had written me off before I even started. And so I turned up in an environment which was quite toxic. And you could see how this was actually manifesting in terms of the process. So for example, there were tickets on the board that had been there for weeks and stakeholders adding more and more to the backlog without there being any kind of process in place to ensure that wasn't going to happen. So there was plenty of scope for improvement in terms of agility. And I'd been asked to improve. introduce agile practices. But there wasn't that acceptance when I joined because, hey, who are you and how, why are you going to tell us what to do? And so it was only through taking an empathetic approach, understanding what their concerns were, understanding what their problems were and then having these conversations. So putting this judgment aside, whilst I knew I was kind of public enemy number one at the time, was actually meeting with people saying, hey, What is going wrong? How can we help them? What are your ideas? And that turned that group from being highly toxic and resistant to any help to actually embracing it and being a very nice place to work. People were laughing, smiling, psychological safety was in place. They were sharing things with each other. When I turned up, we had, it was a case of the loudest people were heard and the quietest people probably got a word in edge ways. By the time I left, the quietest people were actually facilitating meetings as well as contributing to key conversations. And ideas were coming from everywhere. So that's an example. And it all starts from empathy. I mean, what a marvelous story. And I think a lesson for us all, I think there's not enough empathy in the world. So yeah, thank you very much for sharing that story. And yeah, we're at time. I love a talking 10, but you know, I'm the worst because my talking 10 ended up being a talking 20, because I wouldn't shut up. Right? And poor old Shelby and Henrietta, you know, I just talked and talked and talked and talked and they didn't know what to do because it's Ben's podcast, but yeah, I wasn't the host at that point. So. It saddens me to say that our time is up. I mean, Paul, thank you so much for coming on, man. I really appreciate it. I know it kind of is a weird setup because you didn't get to do the talk, but as soon as you have a meetup or something lined up, do let me know and we'll make sure that we put it out on the podcast channel so that everyone is made aware of what it is and if they can come along, then I really urge people to because it sounds like a wonderful talk. I take it LinkedIn is the best place for people to find you should they want to. Yeah, that's right. Or Spotify, you type my first name and you get some music back, which is mine. Yeah. I know what I'm doing in a minute. Okay. Yeah, no, do it. Do it. I will put the link to it linked in and chuck a Spotify link in there as well, perhaps to some of your music if you like. singing about Agile though, so apologies. that case, no, in that case. Products? Are you talking about product development, product management or anything? No. no. I'm still going to put it in there. As long as it's not like some something really awful. Like it turns out you're like a really right wing. Like, this is not, this is not what people want to hear. I didn't know. Okay. Maybe not that. I'm sure it's not that. I mean, Paul, thank you so much, my friend. Everyone, thank you very much for listening. This concludes our Talks in 10 for Lean Edge of London 2024. Do do make sure that you are hitting bells and stuff on podcast platforms because we will be back with an episode with a Probably this week with Dan North and Jeff got health Which is gonna just it's a brilliant episode to two people that I admire massively and I just get to like spend an hour Chatting to it is wonderful. And then the following week we're at scrum day, London We're gonna be doing more talks in 10 with more brilliant speakers. So yeah, you don't want to miss that So thank you very much for listening. Avi, Paul, thank you very much for coming on. This has been the Product Addidity Podcast and I am Ben Maynard. Thank you very much.
