For several weeks, due to a lack of desk space, it was not possible to sit with the team in the same workspace. The only way to detect stuff on my radar was to get up and physically walk across the office to the team's bullpen and try to glean from their body language, facial expressions and conversations what was going on. It's easy to miss out on the opportunity to contribute, guide or support situations that could empower the team. So once space became available last week I was glad to move across and join the team. The experience got me thinking about the power of observation and about raising ones awareness and using it to empower the team in a constructive and insightful way.
The power of observation has huge benefits. Your ability to see and hear many different things becomes more vivid and intuitive and as your awareness begins to grow so does your ability to connect with the team and its dynamics. To achieve something of higher value it is imperative that you increase your value through what you know and overstand.
"Higher values - improved results, are always the expression of a higher degree of conscious awareness." - Bob Proctor.
In the Kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king. It's generally one of those popular sayings that is universally accepted for its truth, and perhaps equally ignored. It's true that most people have two fully functioning eyes however it's not about whether you have one or two good ones - it's really down to how well you use them.
It never ceases to fascinate me how often we tend to unconsciously ignore most of the information available to our senses. I guess for most of us if we don't we may end up having information overload and burn out. So perhaps our ability to be blind and deaf to most of what we see and hear helps to cope with our many daily survival challenges. Unfortunately there is a flip side to ignoring most of what we see and hear, because invariably we miss out on a lot of important stuff - team dynamics, interactions between people. Additionally our offices are becoming increasingly complex working environments riddled with politics and competing interests.
Whatever our role we tend to get so bogged down with being "busy" that we fail to notice and not see what is really going on, so perhaps in this Kingdom of the blind we may as well be blind. Those that have taken time to notice what is really going on around them and can easily pick up and filter stuff on their radar have a tremendous advantage. Improving your observation ability and the skill to respond creatively can offer huge benefits to you and your team:
Greater overstanding of your team members (overstanding is a Rasta term they believe that it conveys a higher way of reasoning)
Enhance your decision making ability
Recognising and modelling 'Success behaviour' (you define what success means for you)
Improve the way you help people
Improve and help you identify the best way to positively influence people
Discover new ways of resolving niggling and persistent issues
Able to 'See' problems and opportunities early
Such benefits contribute immensely to increasing my agility as a ScrumMaster and the team's energy to deliver. It's great to be with the team in the bullpen and be able to contribute meaningfully to everyday issues as they arise.
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