- Lead people toward agreed-upon objectives in a manner that encourages participation, ownership and creativity by all involved.
- Good facilitation enables transparency and collaboration, creates synergy and leads to achieving a collective objective.
- Help people to understand and achieve their shared goals and objectives while remaining neutral and impartial.
- Enable a purposeful and participative environment in which people feel safe to engage, learn and collaborate.
- Participatory - Core to effective facilitation is full participation and engagement, which enables shared responsibility in a team.
- Healthy - a healthy space where people feel safe to raise differences and even conflicting perspectives while respectfully learning from each other.
- Transparency - only exists when there is shared understanding.
- Process - progress toward the desired objective of the interaction in a way that is collaborative, inclusive and leverages diverse perspectives.
- Purposeful - have a clear objective that everyone is aligned with and works toward.
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Active Listening - focus on what is said and what is not said → lead by example, and inspire participants to both fully expressing themselves and engaging in active listening when others are speaking.
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Encouraging Curiosity - encourage curiosity and different viewpoints → ask often open-ended questions to stimulate reflection and discussion.
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Problem Solving - apply group problem-solving techniques → define a problem, reframe it clearly and encourage the group to consider a range of solutions to the problem.
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Resolving Conflict - Recognize that conflict among group members is natural, and does not need to be suppressed when expressed respectfully and constructively.
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Using a Participative Style - Encourage all participants to actively engage and contribute in activities and discussions → creating a safe and comfortable atmosphere for group members share their thoughts and ideas.
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Encouraging Openness - Encourages the group to be open to other people’s ideas, suggestions and perspectives.
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Empathizing and Showing Compassion - Be understanding, aware and respectful of the feelings, perspectives or actions of others.
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Demonstrating Leadership - Lead a group of people to reach their collective goals and objectives.
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Building Consensus - Be skilled in helping groups to achieve general agreement.
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Managing Time Effectively - Keep things on course while allowing flexibility → focus on achieving the outcome within a timeframe instead of a strict agenda. Overly restrictive time management can stifle good, purposeful conversations and reflection.
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Setting Objectives - Communicate the purpose of a meeting in a clear and concise manner → set a strong overarching objective (often done in collaboration with the team) instead of focusing on a strict agenda.
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Communicating Adequately - Communicates effectively with clear and concise language.
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Being Organized - don't start or end with the act of facilitating a group of people → prepare and follow-up on decisions that were made.
- Help a Scrum Team thrive as a self-managing team.
- When someone on the team acts as an objective facilitator and knows how to frame problems to understand how Product Backlog Items, it may be valuable for customers.
- Good lightweight facilitation can help the Scrum Teams get back on track when Scrum events don't go as planned e.g., if the Scrum Master observes that the team continually uses the Daily Scrum as a status update instead of an inspection of progress toward the Sprint Goal, then the Scrum Master could help team members to focus by reminding them of the purpose of the event.
- When the Scrum Team and stakeholders inspect progress toward the Product Goal, taking on a facilitator stance is also valuable for a Product Owner, e.g., the Product Owner and Developers can learn and hear different opinions from the stakeholders.
Tips for effective facilitation:
- Ensure that everyone participating understand its purpose → set the context at the beginning and may have to reiterate once in a while when you see that the discussions are digressing from the context.
- Working agreement at the beginning will help e.g., mobile/electronics usage, punctuality, participant expectations, etc. Listing the Scrum values, especially when dealing with conflict may help the discussion.
- If the event/meeting is not interactive → spend some time to find the Root Cause.
- Create a safe environment for people to speak by ensuring the focus on task at hand rather than pointing fingers. Immediately interject if there are any personal attacks.
- Use Timeboxing to ensure that discussions are productive.
- Balance the discussions so that introverts feel included in the discussions.
- Read the mood in the room to take breaks at regular intervals to keep the energy level high for productive discussion.
- Be neutral in your stance and do not take sides (beware of your implicit bias during heated discussions).
Benefits of building consensus:
- Better decision-making as discussions would help uncover flaws/situations which may not be thought of.
- Assist in better implementation of solution since it is a team cooperated decision.
- Maintains team's working relationship healthy by making everyone feel included.
Steps for Building Consensus:
- Have everyone understand the meaning of giving consent by encouraging them to think about what's best for the entire team rather than individuals.
- Clearly articulate what needs to be decided → explain why the issue is being raised.
- Before pitching for lengthy discussion, do a quick poll to check if there is consensus → If majority of the team agrees to a solution, listen to the concerns of dissenters + adapt the popular solution to get their points addressed and gain a win-win solution.
- If there is a disagreement amongst team members, allow everyone to voice their concerns during the discussion so their ideas can be included → Can list them out to ensure these get addressed.
- List Scrum Values and ask people the follow them throughout the discussion.
- Leverage Timeboxing to ensure that you curtail lengthy discussions.
- For final decision, do another poll to see if majority of the team agrees → Dissenter (if any), can serve as critical evaluator of the implementation of team decision → help spot issues before rest of the team can see it.
- Ensure that the team decision is finalized at the end of the meeting.
Liberating Structures are 33 microstructures that allow you to unleash and involve everyone in a group – from extroverted to introverted and from leaders to followers.
1-2-4-All is one of the most applied facilitation techniques from the Liberating Structure collection. Within 12 minutes you can engage everyone simultaneously in generating questions, ideas, and suggestions regardless the group size.
Captured in the 1-minute of silent self-reflection. During this minute participants are invited to reflect on a shared challenge framed as a question, for example:
- What opportunities do you see for making progress on this challenge?
- How would you handle this situation?
- What ideas or actions do you recommend?
→ It gives you the opportunity to make up YOUR mind. What do YOU think? How would YOU deal with this situation?
Tips:
- should be done as a group, simultaneously.
- take sufficient time to explain the purpose and importance of the first part of 1-2-4-All → people might consider the silence a bit awkward.
Applications:
- As part of a Scrum training to help define learning goals:
- Use the 1 minute of self-reflection to think of personal learning goals.
- Share your learning goals within pairs and afterwards a foursome.
- After 10 minutes the fully refined goals are discussed with the group as a whole.
- During the Daily Scrum:
- Share what they've done yesterday to help the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal.
- What they'll do today and if they see any impediments that prevents achieving the Sprint Goal.
- Simply answer the question “what would be the best result we could achieve today?”.
- During a company-wide Retrospective with participants that used to be excessively influenced by their leader.
- As part of the Sprint Review:
- Gather feedback on the Increment.
- Adapt the Product Backlog.
- Inspect likely completion dates.
- Analyze marketplace changes and potential use of the product.
- During the Sprint Retrospective:
- Inspect how the Sprint went with regards to people and relationships
- Figure out how to make the next Sprint more enjoyable
- Adapt the definition of “Done” to increase product quality.
- As an opening exercise of a large seminar (e.g., 250+ ppl):
- Reflect on the question “how is the Scrum Master a management position?”.
- After having everyone discussed the results in pairs and foursome, we discussed the main takeaways as a group.
- To gather feedback (questions, comments, and ideas) after a presentation → Don't ask the usual “any questions”, use 1-2-4-All to get more rich feedback.
- To redesign a boring weekly meeting with management.
- To address a problem or an innovation opportunity.
- Start with 1 minute of silent self-reflection by individuals on a shared challenge, framed as a question;
- Take 2 minutes to generate ideas in pairs, building on ideas from self-reflection;
- Create groups of four and use 4 minutes to share and develop ideas that you've discussed within your pair. Notice similarities and differences.
- Take 5 minutes to share insights, ideas and takeaways by asking “What is one idea that stood out in your conversation?”. Each group shares one important idea.
- Repeat cycle as needed.
A key characteristic of Liberating Structures is they can be combined to create programs for entire workshops or trainings, for example:
- Start with Impromptu Networking to introduce a theme. Then, facilitate a more in-depth reflection with 1-2-4-All.
- Use 1-2-4-All to discuss the questions in the final part of Appreciative Interviews.
- Use the highest scoring ideas gather with 25/10 Crowd Sourcing as input for 1-2-4-All or Open Space Technology to translate actionable ideas into action plans;
- Facilitate the silent self-reflection firmly before the paired conversations.
- Invite everyone to write down their ideas during the quiet self-reflection.
- Use Tingsha bells to announce transitions.
- Stick to precise timing, do another round if needed.
- In large groups, during “All”, limit the number of shared ideas to 3 or 4.
- Invite to share unique insights per group.
- Make ideas visual with your imagination.
- Maintain the rule of one conversation at a time in the whole group.
- Try this variation: go from groups of 4 to groups of 8 with consensus in mind.
Some clear patterns of High Performing Teams:
- Goal: We had a clear objective – to provide the most awesome casual dining experience in a friendly, fun environment.
- Leadership: if never done this before, then lead by example. Worked hard and expected others to also do the same. Perform self-managing.
- Culture: Create a culture of extreme teamwork by always having each other's backs. When introducing new staff, focus on the team culture and only introduce one or two new people at a time → create trust and courage as a core group value.
- Continual improvement: Call a retrospective every day's night. Talk through the how the day had gone, what worked, what hadn't and what could be better.
- Transparency: The entire operations could be viewed by the public the entire time. Nothing was hidden.
- Rapid experimentation: Constantly try new “specials” ideas, and gain valuable customer feedback during the process.
- Trust & Fun: Had a lot of trust and fun together as group.
“Good management” was based on planning, hierarchy and control:
- The top layers of the organisation would come up with the right strategy → coming up with the best strategy.
- Then the troops would execute → execution excellence, namely conformance to plan (i.e. control).
Autonomous teams are self-managing that requires two critical ingredients:
- An absence of traditional management.
- A light set of constraints. Constraints help balance autonomy with accountability. Constraints might be an iteration, a Sprint Review, a social contract or a facilitated meeting.
Tips:
- Choose how much space to leave by actively stepping out, in order to allow others space to step in.
- Move their focus away from telling others how to do the work, to the following three areas:
- Clarity – what do you seek? What difference does it make and to who? Why is this important? What does success look like?
- Competence – does the team/individual have the competence to deal with this situation (or at least the growth mind-set to learn what is required). Does the structure support them in their level of competence? What help might they need?
- Control – delegate control to the people doing the work, once the platform of Clarity and Competence is in place.
- The important part is recruiting the core group that share the same visions and enthusiasms.
- Don't hire managers that teammates can't learn from.
- Best managers are great individual contributors who don't want to be managers at all, but decide to be one because on one else is able to do the job as good as them.
- Allow risks in promoting existing members that have potential to become managers.
The most critical factors for a high performing culture is leadership and situation-appropriate leadership is the right answer.
To help organizations discover what this means:
- Use the Cynefin framework to first establish context.
- Work through what it feels like to work in each of the domains, what is different about each, and which approaches might work best for each domain.
- Then, work through what sort of culture and leadership style would be required to support this way of working in each domain.
- Review how we all currently think and lead compared to this.
The Scrum Master acts as:
- Servant Leader: Focus on the needs of the team members and those they serve (the customer), with the goal of achieving results in line with the organization's values, principles, and business objectives.
- Facilitator: Set the stage and provide clear boundaries in which the team can collaborate.
- Coach coach the individual with a focus on mindset, behaviour, the team in continuous improvement and the organization in truly collaborating with the Scrum team.
- Conflict navigator: Address unproductive attitudes and dysfunctional behaviors.
- Manager: Are responsible for managing impediments/wastes, the team process, the team's health, the boundaries of self-organization, and the culture.
- Mentor: Transfers agile knowledge and experience to the team.
- Teacher: Ensure Scrum is understood and enacted.
A Great Scrum Master:
- Involves the team with setting up to the Scrum processes.
- Understands team development → Understand Tuckman's different stages of team development: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.
- Understands principles are more important than practices.
- Recognizes and acts on team conflict → Read the book 'The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team' by Patrick Lencioni for tips in managing team conflicts.
- Dares to be disruptive.
- Is aware of the smell of the place → Know the movie ‘The Smell of the Place’ by Prof. Sumantra Ghoshal and apply the related workshop.
- Is both dispensable and wanted → The role is not a daily coach and teacher, but a periodical mentor and advisor.
- Let his team fail (occasionally) → The lessons learned after a mistake would be more valuable than some good advice beforehand.
- Encourages ownership.
- Has read... → Read all the stuff produced by e.g. Geoff Watts, Lyssa Adkins, Tobias Mayer, Henrik Kniberg, Growing Agile and Gunther Verheyen. Basically knows whom to follow in his area of study.
- Has studied... → Study the Trello board that Growing Agile has published. Also, the Shu-Ha-Ri levels offer a very useful structure.
- Is RE-TRAINED → Recognizes himself in the acronym made up by Geoff Watts, RE-TRAINED:
- Resourceful, is creative in removing impediments.
- Enabling, is passionate about helping others.
- Tactful, is diplomacy personified.
- Respected, has a reputation for integrity.
- Alternative, is prepared to promote a counter-culture.
- Inspiring, generates enthusiasm and energy in others.
- Nurturing, enjoys helping teams and individuals develop and grow.
- Empathic, is sensitive to those around them.
- Disruptive, breaks the status quo, help create a new way of working.
- Has faith in self-organization → "Bring it to the team" is the daily motto. e.g., they make their own decisions about their work, estimate their own work, etc.
- Values rhythm → Understand the value of a steady sprint rhythm and does everything to create and maintain it.
- Knows the power of silence → Be aware of the three levels of listening and knows how to use them. Carefully listen to what is said, but also to what isn't said.
- Observes → their daily activities.
- Share experiences → This might be within the organization, but seminars and conferences are also a great way to share.
- Has a backpack full of different retrospective formats → Ensure the retrospective will be a fun and useful event for the team.
- Can coach professionally → Know about books like Coaching Agile Teams and Co-Active Coaching. Knows how to guide without prescribing and close the gap between thinking about doing and actually doing.
- Has influence at organizational level → Know how to motivate and influence at tactically different levels within an organization.
- Prevent impediments → 'read' situations and hereby act on them proactively.
- Isn't noticed → Don't disturb the team unnecessary and supports the team in getting into the desired 'flow'. But when the team needs him, he's always directly available.
- Forms a great duo with the Product Owner.
- Allows leadership to thrive → Focus on the motto "leadership isn't just a title, it's an attitude".
- Is familiar with gamification → Use the concepts of game thinking and game mechanics to engage users in solving problems and increase users' contribution.
- Understands there's more than just Scrum → There is also competent with XP, Kanban and Lean. Knows the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks of every method/framework/principle and how & when to use them.
- Leads by example → At difficult times, shows team members how to find the solution and don't panic. Have some resemblance of Gandalf.
- Is a born facilitator → Create Scrum events to be a joy to attend, is well prepared, useful and fun, and has a clear outcome and purpose.
- Servant leadership is a commitment to humility.
- Is not about your success but it is about the success of those you are serving.
- The people whom you are serving should be the center of the attention, not you.
- The growth of a Scrum Master should not be seen by the rank in the organisation chart but by the impact of her service.
- Focus to serve others and stay away from corporate politics, stay neutral and unbiased.
- “reward & punishment” model is no longer relevant.
- Should help an under-performant and lift them up to be greater.
- Is always at service to make others great instead of punishing, blaming or judging them.
- Is proactive to get to the heart of the problem.
- Do not differentiate a person inside and outside a workplace.
- Care about the well-being of her people at the workplace and is personally interested in her people as a human being.
- Be compassionate and curious genuinely.
- Is okay for your people to come to their boss with their difficult problems without any fear of judgment or punishment at the workplace.
- Tell the truth even though it will make others uncomfortable or even resistant.
- Is unbiased and does not have any favorites, otherwise, it will lower the quality of the service brought to the whole organization.
- Is genuine, she has no hidden motives and no personal interest in the message.
- Has the humility to admit not having all of the answers to all of the problems and is open about imperfections → others can feel safe to be open about theirs too and gain their trust.
- Create the impression that "it is human to be imperfect and it is not wrong to be human at work".
As a leader you should have focus on helping the roles Scrum grow.
Practical Tip: Ask your Product Owners & Scrum Masters what you can do to help them grow in their role.
Letting go of responsibilities and a possible re-definition of the traditional role. Should be open to delegate responsibilities and create a plan on how to do so.
Practical Tip: Ask your Scrum Team what incentives could lead to a higher focus on customer value.
Create a safe environment where these values can flourish and where you continuously set the right example. Should play an active part in an Agile transformation (monitoring, guiding and regular evaluations).
Practical Tip: Ask your Scrum teams and fellow-leaders how do they perceive the 5 Scrum values in your organisation.
A nice example is Spotify's engineering culture. I encountered a number of organisations who copied Spotify's mechanisms. They replace the role of the Scrum Master by that of an Agile Coach, right from the start. This often results in dysfunctional implementations of Scrum where teams never get the chance to mature.
Practical Tip: If you want fast adoption and growth, hire external expertise and create a setting where people can fail and learn fast.
Create an environment where different roles can work together so they can mature in the same pace. Support the entire Scrum team, so they are not limited by organisational limitations.
Practical Tip: Ask your Scrum team what organisational limitations keeps them from making decisions as a whole.
Trust is a willingness to be vulnerable. When trusting, it is essentially making something important to one person vulnerable to the actions of someone else.
Things can be made vulnerable e.g., position, reputation, ideas, work or creation, opportunity, or feelings.
Elements required to build trust - BRAVING:
- Boundaries - establish clear boundaries, stick to my boundaries, and respect each other's boundaries e.g., Scrum Teams don't accept additional work during the Sprint that would endanger the planned goal, don't check email on the weekend, don't take on any new projects or activities when removing something equivalent, etc.
- Reliability - do what you say you will do over and over and over again. Consistency matters.
- Establish clear expectations → sets a clear expectation of quality and completeness in their definition of “Done.”
- Don't overcommit → Learn to say “no” or “not now.”. Never say “yes” to new opportunities/requests immediately and take some time to consider if it is something you really want to do in the greater context of your life.
- Accountability - hold you to account for doing the things you said you would do. When you screw up, own it by apologizing and making amends.
- Vault - what you share with me, I will hold in confidence, and I expect you to do the same with me and with others e.g., a team member may come to me about issues with another team member. Ultimately, coach this team member on addressing the issues with that person directly. If you put yourself in the other person’s shoes, how would you feel if a team member was complaining about you to someone else?
- Integrity - choosing courage over comfort, what is right over what is simply fun, fast, or easy e.g., POs say no to stakeholders who want something that is not in alignment with the product vision or is of low value, Scrum Teams don't show partially done software in the Sprint Review, etc.
- Non-Judgment - others can be struggling and ask for help, and you will not judge them.
- Generosity - assume the most generous things about others words, actions, and intentions. It means we are willing to forgive, offer an opportunity to make amends, and hold space for the inevitable learning and growth that is part of being human and being part of a team.
Bonus: check out Brene Brown's talk on the Anatomy of Trust.
Often when we act on this desire to help, we take one (or all) of these three actions:
- Quickly move towards action.
- Offer advice.
- Take on more responsibilities.
Limitations:
- Moving towards action too quickly limits learning.
- Offering advice limits creativity and ownership.
- Owning the actions creates overwhelm for us and limits growth for others.
→ We may actually hurt more than we help. If our goal is to best serve the person's or the team's highest needs, a coaching approach would probably be best.
Benefits of coaching:
- Helps people discover what is important to them and what they want. It helps people tap into a greater purpose.
- Helps people discover their own solutions. People will be much more committed to a strategy they choose.
- Encourages and explores creativity.
- Helps people learn from their own experiences. It helps deepen the learning of successes, losses, and failures.
- Challenges people to be open to possibilities, break through limiting beliefs, and take intentional action.
- Creates a safe and courageous space for growth and experimentation.
Change to coaching mindset steps:
- Take 3 minutes and reflect on this question: In the past week, what things have I done that perhaps someone else could have owned?
- Take 3 minutes and do the following:
- Look at your calendar for the upcoming week. Identify any meetings (individual or team) where you want to intentionally practice the coaching tips in this post.
- Set a reminder, make a note, or do whatever will help you remember this intention at the time of the meeting.
- During the next week, track your progress in an electronic device or notebook:
- Keep track of the number of times you catch yourself wanting to give advice and are able to instead help others deepen their learning or come up with creative solutions.
- Keep track of the number of times you catch yourself wanting to take on a new action item to help someone else and instead allow them (or even challenge them) to own it.
- Beginner - concentrate on rules of the new skill (e.g., driving a car).
- Advanced beginner - start forming habits and perceiving environments (e.g., don't need to think about the basics - gearbox and find renaissance) → a teacher is important as the brain isn't big enough to comprehend all the rules at the same time, which is normal.
- Practitioner - Has a lot of habits so things are done naturally. Can predict what might happen on the usual route. For advanced situations that, there might be a little problem.
- Advanced - be interactive and creative with the environment, predict situations never seen before, which means can bend the rules (e.g., drivers know where to avoid the police or when to drive under the speed limits without any reason).
- Expert - has superpowers and know how to break the rules to create new ones since the know all the consequences.
→ Kroger dimming effect: when you are in between advanced beginner and practitioner, you are in a red zone because you start feeling like an expert (start bending and break rules) but you are not yet. (e.g., your driving starts hitting trees, or modifying scrums, etc.)
→ Learn by gaining experiences through mistakes are a good process, but watch out if the failures are too deep that could lead to quitting. Teachers are needed for beginning levels.
A very potent model which is used in court injustice in engaging people. Power can only be given, not take power (e.g., worst-case: having a gun point to your head, you can fight against it if you accept the consequence of being shot).
- Coercive power: if you don't do smt for me, I will punish you (all animals have it).
- Rewarding power: if you do smt for me, I will do smt for you. Is instinctive (get reward and avoid punishment at any cost) → get compliance.
- Given power: need social structures e.g., a king or some kind of formal leaders in the society. (seen in animals and humans)
- Expert power: you know something and you can do something, I respect you. (seen only in human - doctors and some ace animals - elephants or dolphins). Some people refer to this as charisma.
- Referent power: it is pure and natural leadership, exhibit by the people in a group that are the closest to be a leader. Those are someone that others follow. This power is relative to expert power → create engagement.
- Informational power: (might be manifestation of 1 & 2) only present with informational societies that can manipulate information.
→ In stressful situations, it is much easier to use 1 and 2, and much harder to exercise the bottom 3. Scrum Master need to have the bottom 3 powers, but it can be difficult when there is rewarding power in place.
- Irresponsibility: is denial - smt happened but you deny it happened.
- Lay blame: admit smt happen, and lay blame on another person.
- Justification: admit smt happen, don't blame another person, but blaming everything else.
- Shame: admit smt happen and we have smt with that, but not fixing yet. Self shaming which is usually visible.
- Obligation: admit smt happen and we have smt with that, so we have to fix it.
- Responsibility: admit smt happen and we have smt with that, so we want to fix it (we are not the dead end).
→ As Scrum Masters, you can't make people obey, but you can share this model with the team and ask them what level they are on? do you want to be more responsible?
- When you are in toxic relationships, you can be on different levels.
- You can also be on different levels in different aspects of life.
- When you have different expert powers in different fields, you can also be on different responsibility levels.
Some Coaching patterns:
- The Socratic Method: Ask a lot of questions and try to stimulate critical thinking → help lead to an answer that works far better than anything I would have come up with.
- The dictatorial pattern: Literally dictate a solution → for cases that just questioning doesn't work.
- The mirroring pattern: Let your trainee get the ideas with visible examples from you.
- Swarming pattern: Tell your trainee's surrounding people about the issues and solutions → you might lost influence and power.
- The voice from afar pattern: Share with your trainee a more impressive and expensive trainer to follow → it's a win-win situation as your trainee has a direct helper, I can work on other stuffs, and the charging rates is higher.
Takeaway:
- Don't try to influence people just from a gut feel. Learn the patterns and how they can be applied.
- Some great references for coaching patterns are:
- “Fearless change” by Linda Rising and Mary Lunn Manns.
- “Agile Coaching” by Rachel Davies and Liz Sedley.
- “Coaching Agile Teams” by Lyssa Adkins.
- Some great references for psychology of influence are:
- “Drive” by Daniel Pink.
- “Switch” by Heath and Heath.
- “Influence” by Robert Cialdini.
There are 3 levels of listening:
- Internal listening – listen more to your own inner voice rather than focusing on what is being said → may be making opinions or be judgmental.
- Focused listening – maintain a laser sharp focus on what is said by the person → you are listening intently to every word and “listening” to every nuance in the conversation.
- Global listening – Are able to uncover the underlying meaning of the spoken words and are conscious of the emotions of the person → This enables you to connect with the person.
→ For effective coaching, you need to be at Level 2 and then have the ability to listen at Level 3.
Tips for active listening:
- Get rid of distractions e.g., mobile phone, laptops, other electronics, noisy places, etc.
- Before the conversation, become self-aware by taking a moment to assess your mood and clear your thoughts.
- Maintain an open posture – unfold your arms, unclench your fists and keep good eye contact.