Hey Reader,

If you read my last email you already know that we teased our podcast. And it's already here with its first episode!

You can watch and listen to it on my blog or on your favorite podcast platforms and YouTube.

I've really been enjoying these conversations (I've already recorded 5 more - so stay tuned for future episodes).

I think one of the reasons is because it brings me back to the days of Scrum Mastery - something that I really enjoyed.

Ok, I still work with teams part-time, but it helps me connect back to the real world even more when I speak with other Scrum Masters who actively work with teams day-to-day.

It's always fascinating to me how no matter where you are in the world, you will probably face very similar challenges.

I talked with multiple people so far, as I mentioned, and we often go back to the topic of working with a new team - where do you start? How do you make sure you don't overwhelm the team?

It's always so important to get to know your team first, before you start making a bunch of changes, and to actually focus on helping solve their biggest pain points first, instead of slamming a Scrum process on them.

And it's essential to set the right expectations with the team and your managers.

Of course, often, the role of the Scrum Master is misunderstood, which means that the expectations set on you may be very different from what you think.

Make those expectations clear as soon as you can. And also prepare for having to pick some of the work that is not traditionally the role of a Scrum Master, depending on what the organization really needs.

This often leads to having to expand your skills and knowledge beyond what we usually associate with the Scrum Master role.

It was quite interesting when I was talking with Zahava, my guest in episode 1, we talked about skills that I almost was taking for granted, but she had to continuously learn to feel more comfortable in her job.

Like leading conversations, and presenting. There was also a need to understand basic project management and even a little bit of DevOps.

Of course, you don't have to be an expert in everything! But you should have some familiarity with the terms and the concepts.

And that brings me to one more essential point raised by Zahava around confidence and continuous improvement that I believe are not talked about enough.

As a Scrum Master, you need to feel good about yourself, about your skills and knowledge, because otherwise, it'll be almost impossible to establish yourself as a leader. And you need to be a leader. A servant leader. But first - a leader (how many times can I write the word 'leader' in one paragraph???)

In addition, you need to be seeking new knowledge and skills constantly. Continuous improvement is basically in your job description. And so if you want to be successful, you need to learn something new every day.

I think I often see Scrum Masters who have gotten to a point where they have just enough knowledge to be a .. well, a Scrum Master. And then they stop learning. First, they become complacent. Then they start to stagnate.

And the problem with this is that while initially, they bring some benefits to their teams, over time they create more damage than good, because they keep using old practices and tools that may no longer work for their team.

And these are just some of the small insights that came up for me in those discussions I had with different Scrum Masters who came on my podcast.

And I hope that you can gain even more meaningful ideas from these conversations.

Stay tuned for new episodes. And make sure you subscribe at scrummastered.com/podcast​