Elaine Lin Hering: 0:00

Announcer, welcome to the scrum.org community podcast, a podcast from the home of Scrum. In this podcast, we feature professional scrum trainers and other scrum practitioners sharing their stories and experiences to help learn from the experience of others. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Patricia Kong: 0:20

Hello and welcome to the scrum.org community Podcast. I'm Patricia Kong, your guest host for today, I've been invited to participate in a really cool conversation. I I'm really excited about this topic. So personally, as an Asian American and and somebody who's worked with Asians in Western countries and in in Asia, I know firsthand how silence can mean different things, depending on on where you come from. So in Chinese culture, foreign existence, and I think in many Asian cultures, it's a sign of respect, harmony, deference, deep thought, maybe even strategic growing up, it was about obedience. So there's a lot of different aspects of that, just to kind of frame how I think about this. But still for me and a lot of probably our listeners, when we work together in teams, especially in an agile way, where experiences like conflict are really necessary for us to excel, right when we're working in complex situations, figuring out what what silence means is tricky. It's not easy. And I think that that's a topic really worth exploring. So that's why today I'm really excited to talk with Elaine Lynn herring, who's a new friend. We just established that she's the author of a book called unlearning silence, and Ravi Verma, who is an old friend. He's also a professional scrum trainer and founder of org whispers. And we're going to talk about how cultural norms shape our voices at work, where individuals can feel like they're not heard, how can they explore that? But also from the perspective I think about for leaders, people who are leading, how can they recognize that and what they can do to make sure every voice matters. I think I stole that from you. Elaine, you care about making sure every voice matters. Anyways, hello. Thank you for coming.

Elaine Lin Hering: 2:26

Thanks for having us.

Ravi Verma: 2:28

Thank you

Patricia Kong: 2:30

so Elaine's background, I want to start here first, because you're not necessarily a scrum agile person. Your background is actually in mediation and in law. So how did you get from that to being on a podcast about Scrum and Agile, talking with two professional troublemakers, and where we're talking about your book unlearning silence?

Elaine Lin Hering: 2:59

Yeah, because you're in law school, and you realize that the actual practice of law is maybe deadening to your soul. Oh, and even though your Asian mother is really proud that you're at Harvard Law School, and you also realize that the thing people don't teach you in law school, or maybe in engineering classes or whatever it is, is communication. How do we actually work together? How do we transmit thoughts to one another and actually receive them? And as you mentioned, when there's conflict, what do we do about it? Now, the legal system is one escalation of that. But the question I started to answer was, other than sue each other and blow each other up, what can we do? Because it turns out there's a whole lot, and that meant that I fell into this world, apparently, called Leadership Development of how do we help professionals leaders develop the skills necessary to actually work together, because I can't cure cancer, I can't lead a scrum team, I can't program anything for the life of me, but I do know quite a bit about the interpersonal dynamics that get in the way of any of that good work. So I'm delighted to be here with you troublemakers.

Patricia Kong: 4:25

Thank you. Speaking of troublemaker so Ravi, I think what Elaine like just set it up beautifully, right? Because we all think in that way, you can lead Scrum teams, you can program and how do we communicate? And I remember just talking to Ken, obviously, and it's like, well, we know how we'll do it. We'll set up a process that will tell us what we should do at every step. And there's even a step where we have to reflect and talk about what we can do to improve and get better. But thank you actually, Robbie, for for bringing Elaine on the podcast. Um. How did you guys get connected? You always bring us some fun things.

Ravi Verma: 5:06

So I was driving and I was listening to NPR, and one of my favorite programs is think by Chris Boyd. I think that's where Elaine was, and it's just my lucky day. I was listening to Elaine, and it really moved me, and her voice spoke to me, and then later on, just coincidentally, we happened to join the same networking group, and then I made a request if she would be willing to share her wisdom with our community, because I found so many parallels, and we had a very unfortunate first experience where we got zoom bombed. So I asked Elaine to speak at my meetup. It was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. So hopefully that won't happen here. But anyway, that's how we went from a car drive to think Chris

Patricia Kong: 5:52

Boyd. So let's, let's get into the book. Thank you again for sending me a copy. I really, I really dove into it right away. And that being said, you start off this introduction. You're really talking about all these things that you've experienced. She told us about your your your background in mediation and law. What? What got you into deciding to write it down into words,

Elaine Lin Hering: 6:19

because it was a way of getting an idea out in the world.

Patricia Kong: 6:22

Yeah, because it's not easy. Like as a fellow

Elaine Lin Hering: 6:26

author, I question my judgment to tell

Patricia Kong: 6:29

you to stop being quiet, open your mouth, that you decided to do that well.

Elaine Lin Hering: 6:35

And what's interesting about it is right in the scrum values, there is courage, there is openness, there's commitment, all these ideals that when you talk about them, people like, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. How do you operationalize? Operationalizing that is actually incredibly difficult, given human nature and human behavior, and so as is writing this book, there's actually, there's a lot of nuance to it, because unlearning silence doesn't mean just speak up, even though we say willingness to speak up about issues, right? It's not that easy what gets and our best shot at actually being able to bring these values to life is understanding what gets in the way. Because for too long, it's been misdiagnosed as if you don't have courage or you're not open, then you need to get some more courage. You know, get it on aisle 12 at the grocery store, maybe on sale, and then you'll be good to go and the world will work. Versus, maybe it's a misdiagnosis that it's not actually that you lack courage, but there's this thing called silence that many of us have learned, it means different things to us. It undermines our ability to trust one another, to work with another, and so what we really need to do is understand the role silence is playing on our teams and choose an intentional relationship with it, so we're not unintentionally silencing each other when really I'm like, no Patricia, I care what you think. Why won't you tell me we're in a retro This is the purpose of this meeting. Just speak up.

Patricia Kong: 8:09

I I love that, and I think it's, it's so as professionals, we're always like, Oh, we're gonna we'll just learn it. We'll just learn it. We'll figure it out along the way, even as individuals, we'll, we'll figure it out. And I think you're, you're calling out just some more tips. And I love this, because the book kind of sets up the scene about what you just said. And then you give in the second half, you give, you give some some frameworks and some ways for people to start taking steps. But I have to ask this first, because your your silence is so big, so and I want to know this from both of you, and this is the most abstract question I think I've ever asked, but how? How do you define silence? And I'm going to ask Robbie first, because Elaine wrote the book. I want to know what you think.

Ravi Verma: 8:56

I think I define silence as some part of my body tightening up and telling me something is getting suppressed, making their conscious or unconscious decision that what I have to offer cannot be offered. That's how I would interpret silence.

Elaine Lin Hering: 9:21

Elaine Ravi has done my job for me, so I feel like he's done the Mic drop. I would put a finer point to say silence is the absence of voice, and it happens so subtly that you don't even realize it's happening. So Ravi has this gut feeling in his stomach. I want to offer it, but I don't feel like I can. And then we tell ourselves, it's okay, not a big deal. We brush it off, right? I'm used to sucking it up or dealing with it or pushing through and over time what our bodies do to deal with the cognitive and physical. We call dissonance is we tell ourselves it's okay, it doesn't matter that much. And in doing so, we're discounting our thoughts, our insights, our expertise, discounting our own voice. And it's not just problematic for me, it's problematic for the people on my team. It's problematic for my scrum master because they don't have accurate data on which to make sound decisions, because I haven't told them the thing that I've noticed that might be off or that I have questions about because it felt too risky, or that's not what we do here, right? Patricia, you started us off with culture. Culture isn't just where you came from, it's what culture are we building on this team? Are we building a culture on this team where we talk about things, where we ask questions, even if it might slow us down in the short term, or are we building a culture of silence where I'm just going to do as I'm told? And you know what? There's a process. We'll button it up, we'll move it on. I can point the finger at someone else, and at least I'll get paid.

Patricia Kong: 11:00

I love this notion of developing awareness around that, because when I was thinking about silence, I don't know if it's just some really deep scars that I have or and it's not just, you know, my upbringing, but also in in in the teams that I've worked at, but I think, I think about silence as the opposite of noise, and so you can really have this culture of noise where it's, like, and I think about it as a spectrum, like, there's noise from this person just can't help being chatty, and they talk and, like, there's not, you know, there's noises and voice to the other end of like, Ah, I just wish I said something, you know. And that can have many different dimensions, but there's, there's, there's, there's something, and you go into this in the book, but it's like you're not talking just to talk. You're not voicing, you're not you're not voicing your opinion just to, just to get your voice heard, which, honestly, some cultures, and I want to say professional environments, they kind of say, Oh, who's talking about who's participating, right? And they do that to impress people. So I want to talk about a little bit about the risk of misinterpretation, because we were just diving in there. So how do you think about

Elaine Lin Hering: 12:14

before we go there? Okay, let me clarify, because I love this visual that you've given us of the opposite of voice is not noise. The opposite of silence isn't noise. The opposite of silence is voice, and it's a spectrum. And I'd argue that voice isn't just the words we say or don't say. Voice is how we move through the world. So voice is also I'm on that team. Someone sent me, someone pinged me again, and I'm really triggered because I just think they're so out of their mind and don't understand any of the context. Do I fire back a message right then, or do I pause and choose a response? Right? But that act of choice in the moment of how I'm going to react or respond is also an expression of voice. If voice is how we move through the world that's part of creating a culture on a team, is what are the collective behaviors of how we work together. And so I love that distinction between noise and voice, because unlearning silence doesn't mean saying everything all the time to everyone. The world is far too noisy and complex for that, but it is choosing with intentionality, how you're going to show up, how you're going to work, how you're going to lead. And the trap is that we forget that we have a choice because we're so used to the rhythms of, yep, this is just how a scrum team works. This is just what work is. I just have to grin and bear it, versus I might have agency to impact and change or experiment with the way that I train, with the way that I lead, with the way that I work with with when I send my messages, or how I send my messages.

Ravi Verma: 13:49

I said, You know what? As I was listening Lynn, what? What I got was voices choice and me making choice for myself, as opposed to the circumstance or the system making the choice for me?

Elaine Lin Hering: 14:01

Yeah, now I'm going to put Ravi in charge of my marketing. It's a choice,

Patricia Kong: 14:09

and I think it's, it's, it's also element that it's about, about choice, because it's not always just about the vocal, the vocalness of it, it's, it's also saying, you have an option to say, I changed my mind, yeah. And so, so the three of us, we facilitate the different degrees, different different environments, but we've probably always seen the situation of we're trying to get to that outcome, whatever that is, and then all of a sudden, next time somebody changes their mind, and if you can use your voice effectively, that's great. As a facilitator, you can also look to see what did I do to make sure that everybody participated in a meaningful way? That's also an excellent thing to think about. I'm really trying hard to. Not love this, but I was thinking about, but Ravi kind of opened it. So I think that people can use their voice. It'd be interesting to see what you guys think about this in a different way. And I want to see, have you guys seen an expression of that where a group of people or person has kind of worked around the system to express themselves, not undermining, not undercutting, but to just to just express themselves. Have you seen any of that?

Ravi Verma: 15:33

I mean, what I have seen is, and I have done is, if I'm in a system and I feel my voice is not being heard through the established norms and processes, and I don't want to be subversive. Sometimes there is a microcosm of that system where I go and choose to be part of a subsystem where my voice is honored, or I just go leave the system, because that's a very heavy price I've paid that it it internalizes that suffering will be internalized. Actually, it's like laws of conservation of energy. Suffering will neither be created nor destroyed. It will be transferred from one person to another. So if I choose to stay in a system where my voice choice are not enabled. I'm going to take it to my family and the people who love me the most. So the two ways I've decided, I've worked around the system is find a microcosm inside that big system, or go find or create another system.

Patricia Kong: 16:35

And now that kind of touches on back chatting, right? So in our very present day, you were talking about messaging Elaine. So there was there was the back chat. There's all those, but the ultimate back check that kind of talks to what Ravi is. And I'm sorry this is what I wanted to shake. It is that in ancient China, women were not allowed to express themselves. It was for the men. The men could go to school, they could talk, they could do all these things. Women were made to say they created and their own writing system. This has passed down from generations in ancient China, and it's like the ultimate back chat. And it's so interesting because it was there that they could find their sense of community, they could find their sense of safety. They weren't even allowed to learn how to read and write. So they created their own system. So that's really cool to think about how voice can be used in that way

Elaine Lin Hering: 17:22

totally. And to me, it's are you choosing your relationship with the pre existing systems, rather than assuming that that's it and that you need to you know, so much of this is women. You need. I've literally gotten the feedback you need to be more man like because you need to fit into the pre existing norms within a system. Systems are not net neutral, right? Systems reward certain voices and silence others. We see this in the return to Office question, right? All policies have impacts. Who does return to Office serve the people who are used to leading working in person, who have shorter commutes, who does it silence? The people who benefit from flexibility usually have more caregiving responsibilities, longer commutes, right? No policy is neutral. What we can choose, as Ravi saying, is our relationship with the system, right? If I am aware of the impact that it's having, am I staying within it? Am I fighting within the system to change it? Am I choosing to exit the system? Am I choosing to do a subcategory, create my own language, Patricia, as you're saying to me, it's a call to action for leaders within the system, which is to say, what choices are you leaving your people? And in my book, I quote Albert Hirschman. This is the economist from the 1970s of you've got three choices, exit, voice or loyalty, right? What choices are you giving the people on your team? If voice, the expression of what you see, bringing your insights, your expertise, is not an option, then the only two options remaining are exit or loyalty. Exit meaning leave the system. Take your talents elsewhere. Go work for someone else, build your own language or system. And the people who can have the privileges that they Ravi, you mentioned, they might do that, have the skill sets have the network are going to exit. Go work for someone else, where conditions are better, and what you're left with as a leader is just loyalty, which might feel good in the short term because there's less friction, but loyalty leads to group think. Loyalty leads to the echo chamber. Loyalty leads to the issues not surfacing until it's too late, and actually creates more problems in the long term. So the question I would be asking as a leader, whether you are a formal leader or just someone trying to lead and influence from within. Is what choices Am I giving the people around me? Exit voice or loyalty? Because I'm pretty sure what we're looking for here is voice.

Patricia Kong: 19:55

It's interesting, I think especially relevant right now. Now in terms of so many things, but I think a lot of people are wondering what's going on with their jobs, or choose AI, or whatever this is, and goals and and, you know, what is what? What is the goal of company, the strategy and Scrum and Agile, it's, it's really a community based movement. That's all it just started. It's like, there's, there's, you know, for us, there's some pages that describe process, and there were so much like you were doing a great job talking about the values and all these things that have different layers. So of course, we knew we were going to have you on the podcast. I asked, Hey, any questions that we think that would be great to toss around to it, or just some things to explore. And Robbie, you said several, I think that I would say they were almost kind of on this, this level of the cost of silence and how you deal with that. That's how I framed it for myself. Do you? Do you want to kind of go through some of those thoughts about, what does it mean when you're when you're silent in a community driven whatever, and there are common goals, and what are those three options that you know Elaine just mentioned responsibility. You have that very layered in there responsibility and accountability in your questions too.

Ravi Verma: 21:20

Yeah, I think, you know, I was just listening to Elaine's book, and there's a section about reactive decision making and reflective decision making. And I'll tied back to your question, Patricia, but what I remembered was, 26 years, almost 27 years, in the tech industry, and there are biases in our tech industry, and the bias is reactive decision making, and it reminds me of something I learned from my life coach. So it's the be no, do get level. So let's start with getting so let's say I'm an executive in a software product development company. Stock price is not good. I'm not getting the stock price and my bonus and promotion right. So what do I do? I start thinking, what do I need to do different Okay, let me introduce Scrum, agile, Gen AI the buzzword then even that's not working. What do I do? The next layer is, what do I need to know? Especially in our industry, we are certification junkies. Okay, let me go get new certification. Let me go attend a workshop. But the problem is, in the last fundamental layer, who am I being? You can change everything at the other three layers. But if there's the substrata, the bedrock of who I'm being is not change, you're going to get the same results. So what listening to Elaine's book and the reactive, reflective that tension reminded me is very often in Scrum, the name of the game is transparency, and if you don't have high quality information, you won't get high quality decisions. And the bedrock of transparency is voice. And if there's silence, the whole damn architecture is unstable. And as I look back at the older version of me, maybe not that old, even a recent version, one year ago, I remember getting cranky with people in training. Hey, why don't you speak up. I remember getting cranky with people and facilitating retrospectives. Why won't you speak up? I get cranky, Hey, why did nobody bring this up in sprint planning? Or I remember telling getting frustrated with the scrum master in a consulting engagement, why can't you just speak up to your boss? Why are you telling me all these issues? And then I listened to Elaine's book, and I realized, oh, I have so many layers of privilege, and there are so it's a complex equation in so many variables that influences the calculus, should I speak and risk personal retribution, or should I be silent and maybe protect myself And my salary. So speaking, as Elaine points out, is more for the good of the community, the product and but the retribution is likely individual. So that's what came to my mind, and which is why I wanted Elaine to be on this podcast and share her perspective.

Patricia Kong: 24:17

And there's so many obviously, this is, this is a shorter podcast I could talk to you both for much longer, and they you have a lot of great there's, there's a technique you have in the book, and it's like every chapter has reflections, and so there's, there's good things that for those who are interested, just explore that from an individual perspective. One that I loved was what parts of yourself might you be silencing currently? That actually made me think of Ravi, because he, I think he's probably asked me that before, and how do you even know if you're silencing yourself? But Ravi is kind of dipped into the next, the next part, which is you start you have some awareness, and you start to take some action. And so your, your book is structured that way. Yeah. So when would you say? How can someone start to think about a couple things? Because we've said, you know, okay, we're exploring this art of UN silencing ourselves. But in that, there's a power in knowing when silence is the right choice. When how do you how do you explore that? How do you start to understand that in more than Hey, when you're facilitating, you know, shut your mouth. Count to 10. Let people think might be be open, but when is from negotiation? When? When should you be intentional about allowing there to be silence?

Elaine Lin Hering: 25:38

Yeah, for people who like citations, this is chapter three in the book, which is titled, when silence makes sense again. Silence has many different impacts. And actually the difference between silence that is additive or strategic, right, allowing other people time to think, allowing different voices to come forward, because we have different processing times or silence that is damaging or oppressive is agency. Are you choosing it? Take it from a really practical perspective, we're all wired differently, right? So if voice is an expression of who we are, we're going to have different voices. We know that logically, how are we wired differently? One of the primary ways that we're wired differently is there are real time processors and there are post processors. So if you've ever sat in a meeting, you can't quite figure out what to say. 20 minutes after the meeting ends, you're like, oh, that's what I wanted to say, right? How many of us have been there and we get performance feedback that we need to be quicker on our feet, we need to be more responsive. Maybe work on our extemporaneous speaking. Maybe take an improv class to get better at that. Those are all good and useful things, but we're actually calling something that is a difference in wiring a weakness versus Wow, our brains work differently. So how can we design the way we work to be able to capture not just the loudest and fastest voices, but also the post processors. This is Kahneman working on slow and fast thinking, right? And it doesn't mean we don't have our meetings anymore. It does mean that whoever's owning the meeting might say, All right, here's where I think we're headed. Everyone, sleep on it as you post process, share whatever comes up, you know, in this portal, or leaving a ticket, or replying all, or whatever works best for your team. And we've done that because we've planned ahead, so we actually have the night for people to sleep on the idea. But we're also normalizing post processing versus prioritizing, real time processors. Real Time processors, the more we talk something out in the moment, the more clear the idea gets. The post processors are like, Will you shut up and let me think I need time to cash and compile, right? Let's design differently, because we are prioritizing one way, one voice that doesn't serve us, because we don't hear from the insights of people who process differently.

Patricia Kong: 28:09

I think that is really especially when we talk about facilitation in terms of, like the scrum events, or we're planning, it's ours, right? We're gonna figure this out, and then we have another event, sometimes refine it. And it's really important to consider that. And how people think about planning, why people change their minds, Thunder the notion that convergence diver, it's not linear, right? The ways that people make decisions and it's and it's and it's okay. So, Ravi, you are nodding your head a lot, very vigorously, because you're a post processor, according to chapter three of this awesome

Ravi Verma: 28:46

book that reminded me of something I learned in my my Myers Briggs training, that extroverts think by talking, and introverts like me, we need silence. We need we think before talking. And that's where there's a clash. There's a tension in meetings and facilitation. And I think the art of giving people voice and choice is for facilitators and people with power and privilege to first of all be aware of this dynamic and this diversity in human beings and how to set up the environment that harnesses the unique strengths of all in pursuit of a shared goal, which could be solving complex problems, maximizing your stock price, whatever be your shared context, it requires nuance, and so that's why I was

Elaine Lin Hering: 29:32

nodding. And notice that processing style is only one of many factors, right? Another is in terms of wiring, is are you a morning person? Are you a night owl? Or I've asked this question to enough groups that some people, apparently their power hour, when they're thinking is finest is midday, which as a morning person. I'm like, I don't understand. It's called.

Patricia Kong: 29:53

I'm only 10 to two. Okay,

Elaine Lin Hering: 29:56

she's one of the Patricia such tend to to her, right? But then. We have time zones, and we're working across geographies, and so the 9am meeting Eastern Standard Time is not net neutral. It doesn't mean that we stop meeting, but it's that if we have the opportunity to design differently, or we realize everyone actually hates real time conversations, we should do this asynchronously. Fantastic. Play to those strengths, reduce the barriers, because so often we're working in autopilot, right? This team has always done things. There's always been a 9am meeting on Fridays, even if everyone hates it. Oh yeah, move it to 10 o'clock. But before two o'clock is what I hear you say.

Patricia Kong: 30:42

Now I Yes, yes, yes. But I love that, because you talk about, when you talk about some of those, like great techniques, tips, things to consider in the in the second half of the book, and how to think about that, not only communication styles. You talk about level of directness. I think that that, especially for us when we're dealing with stakeholders, or anybody dealing with stakeholders or with their teams, how to, how to, how to, how to do that, because we think about, you know, in a team, who are our stakeholders, how often should we interact with them? Why? But we, we this. This was a new layer for me, the level of directness and how to, how to, kind of, how to, kind of navigate that. So that's in the book that was really cool. There's for the end of the book. And we're not going to talk about systems. That's a whole nother day, but you basically talk about using small experiments to start for people to start to build your muscles. If this isn't something that you're used to, and I have the same exact experience you did that you gave in the book lane, where you're, like, I was in a taxi and I don't know it was hot or something like that, something and like, I just couldn't, I couldn't, and I tried, and it was okay, and, and, and, and I love that. And so it's those small things that should people should try. But what other recommendations within the workplace? Both of you want to leave people with who are listening today to just get started beyond getting the book.

Elaine Lin Hering: 32:14

Yeah, Ravi, I'll go first and invite you to add so on the try something, right? Design a small experiment. Oftentimes it's I want to offer something. I want to offer my perspective, but I actually don't know how to interject. And my favorite two ways of interjecting are, I see it differently, right? I see it differently doesn't mean you're wrong. Doesn't mean I'm telling you you're bad. It just means, literally, I see it differently. So that's like the yellow flag to stop the conversation so that you can formulate the rest of your thought to add it and whether how difference is treated is actually a litmus test for the health of a team. Because on some teams, on some toxic teams, difference is not okay. That's that loyalty we're talking about earlier. That's also the call to action for the leaders to normalize difference and oh, great, you see it differently. Another is from where I sit, from where I sit. That deadline doesn't seem possible, right? It allows you to owe the own the legitimacy and the limitation of your own perspective. What many of us do is because we're not omnipotent. We can't see everything. We discount our own perspectives. Versus saying from where I sit, it doesn't make sense from where I sit also naturally begs the question, what does it look like from where you sit? Because you literally sit on the other side of the country or the globe. So of course, things are going to look differently because you have a different piece of the puzzle. So I see it differently, or from where I sit, if you're looking for really practical ways to inject your voice, if that hasn't been part of your practice, the other big piece for starting are those practical decision choices for leaders, of what voices Am I welcoming by, what I reward, right? What choices Am I giving people exit voice loyalty. And the natural human default is to assume that other people are like us. So if we're morning people, we've already run the half marathon before everyone else wakes up. And we like 9am meetings, and we like to talk things out, we tend to default to those practices unless we have the awareness that people aren't wired like us, and then we can choose our actions of let's see what actually supports the voices of the people on my team, because I care about what they have to say, because openness and transparency means I need to know what they have to say, and because I can't make good decisions if I don't hear what they have to say. And so we might do some things asynchronously. We might move the meeting to 2pm whatever it is the action for me would be a design challenge to take one standing meeting that you have analyze it through the lens of what choices. Is a synchronous, real time virtual typing versus talking, whatever it is, video on, video off, analyze it through all the design choices of what plays to your strengths, to extent you don't know what makes it easier for the other people on your team to express themselves. That's a 32nd conversation that pays dividends in not having to figure out by trial and error, or for those people to feel like you don't care about them, right? And then optimize design differently. Try it as an experiment. See what you learn. See what comes up. My money is on you actually hear more from the people that you need to hear from, because you're reducing some of those barriers that you never intended to be there in the first place?

Patricia Kong: 35:43

Yeah, and I like those, the practical statement of just, I don't see it that way from where I'm sitting, because that's very that begs someone to be empathetic, take a pause, reflect, versus when someone goes I don't agree or no, you know which is, which is already good. When you can be like, I don't agree, and you can explain, because somebody might just be like, Well, I don't care if you agree, and that doesn't really matter, right? But the other one begged a little bit of curiosity. So, so that's that's really helpful, and all those other things are, are very important to Ravi, have you finished post processing.

Ravi Verma: 36:22

So much, yeah, so much to think about. So I feel like one of the key messages or takeaways from Elaine's book is Be curious, not furious. Be curious, what else might be at play here in terms of influencing voice, choice, noise, the whole spectrum. And I love it reminds me of some things that I learned from Ken Schwaber in the PSM class. So one of Ken's favorite quotes is ask the team, the person with power or privilege or awareness does not need to shoulder the burden of solving it. You can tap into the collective wisdom of the team and ask questions like, what might influence voice? How might it impact our shared goal of value, and how might we navigate it? So when we are when someone is facilitating a working agreement creation for a scrum team or recreation, you can frame the conversation by asking these questions. And the last thing is, I love there's a there's a part where Elaine talks about the yes and which used to be an exercise in our PSM class. If I can say both things, I want the sprint to be successful. And I'm sensing some risks. So it's not a black or white, it's not a Boolean. We are able to express multiple values, acknowledge the tension, and express it in such a way that it can create a path forward to navigate it, as opposed to shutting some people down. So there are so many great tips in Elaine's book. And I think my closing suggestion would be, listen to the audio book and do what I'm going to do next, which is buy the physical book so I can underline, underline, underline, but that those are my thoughts for those of us, those of our listeners who are trying to figure out, what do I do next?

Patricia Kong: 38:19

Thank you. I'm going to ask you, after we finish the podcast, why you feel someone needs to listen to it first before they read it physically, like I did, but I

Elaine Lin Hering: 38:29

appreciate and we can be different processors. Oh, yes, right. So some people are not audio book people. I will admit I am not an audio book person. I have a young child. It is too noisy. I have a really hard time listening to things, because I just want peace and quiet. But give me a book. I mean, this is why the book is an e book, hardback, large print,

Patricia Kong: 38:49

audio, so it's available in so many different ways. Thank you for offering it that out there. Thank you for being here, both of you. I really enjoyed it. I hope some people try, something, and if they think that they're not silenced, then maybe they'll think about who they're silencing. All right. So thank you very much.

Elaine Lin Hering: 39:08

Thanks for having us. Thank you.

Unknown: 39:20

I think.