Being a grupmy cat is not a bad thing, but it’s not very productive either. In this scenario we try to teach our team how to turn their grumbles in constructive way.
Team learns how to express their needs in actionable way, so that they can be addressed by involved parties.

Key thing to remember as a leader is that only successful closing off of feedback loop - actual change in identified areas of improvement - will turn grumpy cats into agents of change. But that said, it’s basic need of any change to happen. Often grumpy cats are just people who are frustrated by lack of change, and they are not able to express their needs in constructive way. A role of a mentor is to help them to do so. A role of a leader is to hold the team accountable for their actions and express those needs higher up the chain of command if needed. Coach should observe if all involved parties are doing their part in closing off feedback loop, and if not, raise questions about it.

Goals

  • Group understand negative effects of grumble
  • Group can identify underlaying needs from current work
  • Group assign working groups or individuals to most important actions identified

Time and place

  • Around 1 hour long
  • Room to sit in circle

Participants

  • Group of interest
  • Moderator

Prerequisites

  • Group members know each other fairly well
  • Group members understand requirements for empirical process

Room and items needed

  • Room with round table preferably
  • Flipchart & markers
  • HD display or projector

Duration

  • 60 mins

Outcome

  • education, actions to improvement backlog

Scenario description

10 mins - Set the stage - Explain meeting goals to the Team

  • How do we differ between being grumpy and constructive criticism?
  • What are the consequences of being grumpy
  • Being grumpy is valid human feeling, its the things that hurt us we want to identify and address

15 mins - Explain method

  • From materials, display examples from [grumble_to_need_example_file]
  • Work on examples until whole group understand principles behind method

25 mins - Real life application

  • Write up most notorious grumbles heard in your group
  • Sort and possibly group results into categories, prioritize
  • What need is vocalized by each?
  • For top 2-3 try to identify low-hanging fruits to grab at low cost

10 mins - Define Review Date and next steps

  • Define way to synchronize status information
  • Define follow-up meeting for Backlog refinement, add generated items to appropriate backlogs
  • Gather feedback on methodology used