Let’s remember basic principles and concepts of the agile mindset:

• Agile as a framework for innovation, has principles and components that enable the formation of inclusive and diverse teams, understanding that quality in innovation processes is the result of the diversity of thought contained in the team that participates and what lead.

• In addition, agility facilitates the structuring of egalitarian work dynamics in which it is guaranteed that the voices of women and men who make up the team will be heard and situational leadership – regardless of gender – based on competencies is motivated. This is possible thanks to agile performance mechanisms focused on self-management of teams, their ability to adapt to changes, open communication and transparency, making visible the contribution of all and everyone, promoting leadership rotation according to needs. of the situation.

• Likewise, agile principles focused on creating collaborative team environments and with horizontal hierarchies, reduce the possibility that unequal power relations that exist between men and women in society are replicated in work teams. Also highlighting the “psychological safety” component within these methodologies, the aim is to create a work environment of openness, respect and trust in which all the people who make up the team feel safe to express their opinions, disagreements and questions.

• Addressing the usefulness of agile methodologies -with a gender approach- towards the development of new products. We see that by including techniques such as design thinking, businessmen and women will not only have the opportunity to better understand their clients, but will also have the ability to develop differentiated products, functionalities and attributes for women and girls. Thanks to the principle of observation, empathy and questioning of the assumptions that give customers a real voice, recovering the needs of women and girls in product design.

Hand in hand with the previous point, the flexibility of the agile frameworks allows incorporating the gender perspective throughout the development of the product, to guarantee that it is really applied from start to finish. For example, it can be included as a criterion to filter and prioritize the objectives, features and functionalities of the product, be incorporated within the acceptance criteria, made visible within the Kanban board and included within the planning and within the review of the results of the sprint.

Several studies and research on gender equality in the workplace, point out a series of inequalities and invisible efforts that women must assume when participating in meetings, working as a team and contributing their ideas. For example, assertiveness is usually frowned upon by women when expressing a clear opinion or disagreement, they are also interrupted more often than men during meetings and are accused of being insecure in expressing their position or point of view, when In reality, what usually happens is that the environment is not very favorable for them to express their opinions. Therefore, installing psychological security within teams is essential to design spaces that facilitate the participation, visibility and leadership of women.

In this sense, and focusing on scenarios of uncertainty and interdependence -in other words, on innovation scenarios-, we define that psychological safety is the belief and sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking out, for exposing your questions, opinions or disagreements. It describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people feel comfortable being themselves and contributing their diverse thinking.

Psychological safety, in addition to being key to forming high-performance teams, is also a fundamental enabler to create dynamics in your organization that facilitate innovation, promote the inclusion and empowerment of women in your company. When a workplace feels psychologically safe, mistakes are seen as a natural part of the learning process and an openness to opinions, questions and disagreements is promoted. This in turn means that your team on the one hand will generate higher levels of creativity and will dare to take risks in their ideas. On the other hand, it means that you will be creating a type of environment designed to make visible and promote the voice of each and every collaborator, generating highly favorable environments for gender equality in your organization.

Communication from your role as a leader

1. Make the uncertainty scenario and the importance of the contribution of each and every team member explicit, with conversations such as:

• • “The team faces enormous uncertainty and we don’t know exactly what the path will be like, but we fundamentally need everyone to contribute their ideas and voice, as well as their ability to listen and build together.”
  • “It is good that we do not know all the answers at this time, precisely for that reason we are innovating, to find out. But what I do hope and should be the expectation of the whole group, is that we solve it by contributing ideas and listening to each other as a team ”.

2. Recognize your own limitations or shortcomings with simple phrases like:

• • “It is possible that I have overlooked something in this approach, if you see something let me know.”
  • “It is the first time I have faced this type of challenge, but I am sure that with our team we will solve it, tell me what ideas you have in mind.”
  • “It’s a good question, I don’t know, let’s find out what actions do you propose?”

3. Guide your questions toward curiosity, not judgment, or criticism. Be proactive in asking intentional, open and focused questions:

• • I would love to know, what is your perspective on this issue, tell me what you think?
  • We currently have this challenge and I would like to know how do you recommend tackling it?
  • What worries you about this project?

The results of the last iteration were not ideal, do you know what happened? What can we learn to incorporate it into the next sprint?

4. Receive responses in an appreciative, constructive way, focusing the conversation towards solutions:

• • I think it is a valuable comment, we had not considered that point.
  • That is a point contrary to what we have planned, if you are sure of that statement, let’s review the issue in more detail, can you take care of that?
  • I understand, how do you think we can reframe this problem in order to move forward?

Designing and facilitating meetings

Remembering that there is a trend of inequalities and invisible efforts that women must assume when participating in meetings, working as a team and contributing their ideas. We see that it is precisely in these spaces where incorporating changes in these dynamics will be critical to generate a transformative impact towards gender equality in your organization.

Within the agile perspective, we design meetings with a specific time frame, frequency and objective. We create rituals. These articulated to the roles, objectives and artifacts implemented continuously create a system of innovation and a climate of inclusion.

1. Guides at a general level to apply as a leader in meetings with your team

You can apply them in traditional Scrum meetings (backlog grooming, sprint planning, sprint review, daily standup, retrospective), as well as ad-hoc meetings that are presented.

• Participants will include representation of women, ideally tending towards parity. Check the list of people invited with these glasses before sending the invitation on the calendars.

• Rotate in each sprint (every 2 weeks) the facilitators or leaders of fixed meetings, ensuring that the women in your team have their turn equally.

• Horizontal hierarchy: includes as a rule of the game and tone of conversation “we are all colleagues and peers”, no matter the role or position, what matters is the quality of the ideas contributed and the construction that is generated on it.

• Ask questions, request reasoned opinions, call by names (in a respectful and cordial way). Design meeting dynamics in such a way that it is more uncomfortable to keep quiet than to participate.

• Ensures that all people have had the opportunity to participate and have been heard at the meeting. Identify particularly that they have listened to the ideas of the women on your team.

• Amplify the voice of women: highlight the contributions of women in your team. Express comments or arguments that they have contributed as a reference, also include it in the summary and plan of next steps that you do at the end of the meeting.

2. Alternative meeting design

• Retrospective meeting: This key meeting within the Scrum framework, focused on creating an open and transparent conversation between team members, to reflect on the work processes and dynamics that applied the last sprint, is a great setting to talk openly with your team about what consider what they can do to improve psychological safety with a gender perspective, in the context of their innovation project.
• Key questions:
• Common questions about team dynamics in the project: What worked well in the previous sprint that we should continue to apply? What did not work, what should we change?
• Add a maximum of 2 open questions to specifically address the level of psychological security, observing if there is any difference between the perception of the men and women in your team: How do they feel about our work environment to ask, comment and express disagreement? What do you think we can improve?
• Failure sharing sessions: a once-a-month space dedicated to sharing failure stories, with the focus of normalizing failure to empower experimentation, learn faster, continually improve, and innovate. Shaping the mindset towards innovation, problem solving and resilience. It is essential that the participants include representation of women, ideally tending towards parity.

• Brainstorming: conversations in which the team brainstorms in a creative and focused way toward achieving a common goal.

• One on one: Informal meetings of the leaders with the collaborators, where different topics are discussed openly, emphasizing how they perceive and what level of enjoyment they enjoy in the face of the psychological safety of the team.

• Mentoring sessions: this is a space of trust and learning in which particular challenges of the collaborators are identified, they are advised or formulated tactical questions so that he / she clarifies their doubts, reaffirms their sense of purpose with their role , team and company. As a leader, observe and identify patterns in the challenges faced by women in your company and take action against them.

1. Design indicators to map and measure the diversity of thinking in your company:

• • What is the percentage of women compared to men?
  • What generations do they represent? (millennials, generation Y, X, etc.)
  • What is the percentage of women from other ethnic groups?

In addition to the gender variable, you can add all the variables that you consider important to measure diversity: age, ethnicity, nationality or if you have lived in another country, etc.

2. Design indicators to measure the level of psychological security in your company:

A practical mechanism is to conduct surveys of your team, to identify the following information and put together an action plan for continuous improvement:

• • How often do collaborators express their questions, opinions and disagreements? What makes you uncomfortable or challenging about doing it?
  • What is the variation between the perception of psychological security between women and men? In what aspects?
  • What is the level of motivation and accountability felt by employees?

With this graph it is possible to map the state of psychological security in your organization, considering the psychological security variables versus the level of motivation and accountability.