Obligation vs. Opportunity

A Coaching Power Tool By Lynn Winterboer, Agile Teams and Widows, UNITED STATES

What’s the Difference Between Obligation vs. Opportunity?

Early in my ICA journey, “Obligation vs. Opportunity” popped into my head when thinking about the experience many professionals have when going through an organizational change to an Agile way of working. Sometimes, the individuals going through the change are imposing it on themselves – they want to change from a traditional way of delivering value to an Agile approach, and they see it from the beginning as an opportunity for increased relevance, happiness, and professional satisfaction.

Often, however, the organizational leaders decide that being “agile” is the only way to survive in a fast-changing and often unpredictable world, incenting this change from the top-down as an organizational imperative. While having leadership buy-in to a change of this magnitude is important, it can be hard on the workers who need to change the way they have done their jobs for many years. They might fear losing their hard-won status, not earning their annual raises, or possibly losing their jobs. Until each individual can find the opportunities in Agile for themselves, they see this change as an obligation they must comply with rather than a shift to a healthier and more productive way of working.

Obligation vs. Opportunity Explanation

An obligation is “an act or course of action to which a person is morally or legally bound; a duty or commitment.”⁽¹⁾ One does not necessarily dislike an obligation, but one does not need to thoroughly appreciate an obligation in order to fulfill it. The case of leaders in an organization asking those that work for them to make a change falls into a “legally binding” scenario – they have an employment contract where the organization pays the worker in exchange for the worker doing what the organization requests.

Marla had worked her way up in her company over many years to the position of Senior Project Manager and had become quite comfortable with her ability to do a good job, get promoted, and earn her annual raise and bonus. When the CIO of her company decided to move the company from traditional project management practices to the agile framework of Scrum, Marla was caught off-guard by the lack of a “project manager” role in Scrum, and by the vastly different approach, Scrum teams take to delivering IT capabilities. Suddenly all her hard-won expertise and skill in project management seemed to be not only unnecessary but even discouraged in Scrum. In conversations with other project managers, she learned many of them shared her fear over the uncertainty of whether they had a place in this new approach or even a place in the organization overall. However, Marla wanted to keep her well-paying job with this company she’d been at for many years, so when her manager asked her to go to “Scrum Master” training, she begrudgingly put it on her calendar. She saw this new role as an obligation she had to comply with in order to stay employed at this company.

In contrast, Sharon, who came from a similar background as Marla, had mastered the role of “Project Manager” and was looking for something new to focus on. She had already worked for the company for many years and knew there will always be a different challenge in her future, whenever she wanted it. She jumped at the opportunity to move into the Scrum Master role, and eagerly put the training on her calendar. Sharon saw this new role as an opportunity to learn something new and apply her expertise to a new way of working.

According to Dictionary. com,⁽²⁾ an opportunity is:

• an appropriate or favorable time or occasion.
• a situation or condition favorable for the attainment of a goal.
• a good position, chance, or prospect, as for advancement or success.

In Marla’s case, she was so focused on what she was losing that she couldn’t give energy to what the opportunity might bring for her. Sharon, on the other hand, saw this change as a great opportunity to learn something new and take the next step in her career.

David Rock’s SCARF model ⁽³⁾provides a framework for assessing various threats and proposes counter-balancing them with reward-focused perspectives. This tool can be used to shift a client from a perspective of obligation to one of opportunity. Rock points out that“the ‘minimize danger and maximize reward’ principle is an overarching, organizing principle of the brain (Gordon, 2000).” He then makes the connection between the survival aspects of danger and reward and how our brains use similar circuitry in response to social stimuli. It turns out, that responding to threats can significantly and negatively impact our perceptions, problem-solving, decision-making, stress-management, collaboration, and motivation.

Knowing that social situations can trigger threats for people experiencing them can help leaders prepare to respond to those threats… possibly by providing balancing rewards that reduce the threats.

Shifting the Client’s Perspective From the Obligation vs. Opportunity:

Ways a coach can help balance the employee’s SCARF threats when moving from a Project Manager to a Scrum Master role, thereby shifting the client’s perspective from the obligation to opportunity:

Threat	Description	What is the employee experiencing?	Coaching questions
Status	The relative importance to others; Less than or better than	Lost a title with “Manager” in it Went from managing $20m projects with 100 team members, to serve a team of 10.	What makes you a good candidate for this new role? What about being invited to take this role feels good to you? What about the title of “manager” or being responsible for a large budget is important to you? (The coach might want to ask more questions to get to the true importance to the individual). Where else in your life has status played an important role? What values does your status support? What can you get from this new role that also meets those needs? How can this new role expand to further meet those needs?
Certainty	Ability to predict the future; Perception of familiarity	Not sure if I can learn this new approach No proof this new approach will deliver as well as the prior approach Unsure of how to influence change instead of command it Unclear career path	What resources could you use to become more knowledgeable about this new approach and your role in it? What about this new approach do you already know works well? What else could you do to understand how this new approach delivers successfully? How have you influenced change in the past, regardless of your official title? What future career opportunities are important to you? What skills can you strengthen in this role that will prepare you for the next step in your career? What do you know about the Scrum Master’s role in creating certainty for the team?
Autonomy	Sense of control over events; Perception of choice	Didn’t choose this new role Didn’t choose this new project delivery approach Agile lets the team make so many decisions that previously the Project Manager would make.	What type of Scrum Master do you want to be? What needs to be in place for you to be that? What choices do you have in this new role? Which choices will help you or your team be successful? Which choices do you want to avoid? What choices do you fear the team won’t make well? What options are available to you to provide insight to the team that might help them make good choices? What else could you choose to do to increase your sense of autonomy?
Relatedness	Sense of safety with others; In-group or out-group	Moved out of the established program management group A new team forms, not sure where I fit in	What’s your vision for how the team members will relate to each other? What can you do to understand what the team members want? What’s the Scrum Master’s role in helping the entire team become a well-functioning group? What can you do first to start that process? What have you done in the past to encourage healthy relationships with the delivery team? What might you try with this new team?
Fairness	Perception of fair exchange	Asked to take on a thinly-defined role, without proper training to ensure success. The entire team, including the Scrum Master, is unsure of how to work together in a fair manner.	What resources could you use to become more knowledgeable about this new approach and the Scrum Master’s role in it? What’s the Scrum Master’s role in ensuring transparency so team members and stakeholders experience fair communication about what’s going on with the project? What can the Scrum Master do to ensure everyone has a fair understanding of how the team will work together?

Obligation vs. Opportunity A Coaching Strategy Can Aid Individuals in Progress

This is such a common scenario in Agile Coaching, in that many people experiencing an “Agile transition” are having to use their knowledge and skills in new ways, which can be disorienting and threatening. I’m excited to be putting more thought into how specifically a coaching approach can help people move forward, away from the obligation of an Agile approach, toward the opportunities this approach gives them to learn, grow, and increase their teams’ successes.

I am just finishing ICA’s Vocational Coaching Program and recognize that as I continue into the Advanced Coaching Program, I will learn much more that I can apply in this Power Tool. I look forward to getting feedback from other ICA students, and further refining this tool in the coming year.

References

“Obligation” Googled Oct 4, 2020: https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/opportunity, accessed December 4, 2020
“David Rock’s SCARF Model” Accessed Nov 28, 2020, http://web.archive.org/web/20100705024057/, http://www.your-brain-at-work.com/files/NLJ_SCARFUS.pdf, and https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/SCARF.htm