Are there Benefits for adding ChatGPT as a team member?

There is evidence that ChatGPT can be beneficial in helping you do your work. Involving ChatGPT today is already occurring in repetitious, creative, and diagnostic type work. Some say it’s inevitable and you should learn to work with many forms of AI. Current uses have shown that it can improve work efficiency, assist with tedious tasks, help you with creative tasks, and facilitate learning. We are also learning that because ChatGPT is based on a large language model, it can act as your assistant; providing personalized responses based on your inputs, helping you work smarter, and boosting your productivity.

As it can help an individual in their work, how about helping a team?  In this article, I explore how helpful ChatGPT can be for a team. In other words, I suggest making ChatGPT a member of your team. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot capable of mimicking human-like conversations so why not be a member of your team? As mentioned, ChatGPT has been recognized to boost productivity so let’s consider the context of a software engineering team who are producing new features and correcting bug fixes to the code base.  To consider this, here are the potential positives, negatives, and limitations of incorporating ChatGPT as an engineering team member. Here are some considerations:

First, let’s start with some Positives:

• Multi-tasking: ChatGPT can handle many questions, inquiries, and tasks simultaneously allowing certain work to be handled more efficiently and scaled to a higher volume of work.  
• Quick feedback: ChatGPT provides quick feedback to questions and inquisitions allowing for more input for potential better options and decision-making.
• Availability: ChatGPT is technically available 24/7 and can work while team members rest allowing for busy work to get completed and tasks to be ready for team review when they are back online.
• Scalability: As an AI, ChatGPT can handle a high volume of inquiries without experiencing fatigue or requiring breaks.
• Database of information: ChatGPT has access to a vast amount of information and can provide accurate and up-to-date answers to team members' queries.
• Human Languages: ChatGPT can speak in multiple languages and can accommodate global teams across multiple boundaries and locations.  
• Programming Language: ChaptGPT has the potential for programming capability across various language platforms.  

Next, let’s move to the Negatives:

• Time from Team Members: Working ChatGPT will take time from some team members. A buddy for ChatGPT will need to be designated to help provide context for ChatGPT, line up tasks, reduce ambiguity of the requests, verify and validate the work done by ChatGPT, and more.
• Lack of emotional intelligence: ChatGPT lacks emotional understanding and empathy, which may limit its ability to provide refined and empathetic output to team members.
• Limited contextual understanding: ChatGPT will struggle to understand the context in which you are working including the complexity of the work, potentially leading to misunderstandings or incorrect responses.
• Bias and completeness fn training data: the database from which ChatGPT pulls has already shown some bias based on patterns and data provided which means it may generate reasonable responses but may be incorrect or biased if not carefully reviewed.
• Lack of creativity: Because ChatGPT pulls from existing data and patterns, this limits its ability to generate genuinely innovative or creative ideas.

Finally, several considerations should be factored in. The first is ethical considerations as ChatGPT may inadvertently generate or reinforce biased or discriminatory responses due to its training data (which includes such biases). Careful monitoring and bias mitigation strategies will be necessary. The second consideration is legal and compliance challenges.  Incorporating ChapGPT into a product team may raise legal and compliance concerns, particularly in regulated industries that require human input, oversight, and/or accountability.

It's essential to consider these factors and strike a balance when integrating ChatGPT or any AI model into a product team. Human supervision, ethical guidelines, and continuous evaluation can help mitigate the limitations and ensure optimal utilization of AI technologies like ChatGPT. Now it is time for you to wrestle with this question: Are there Benefits of adding ChatGPT as a team member? Hopefully the overview, positives, negatives, and considerations can help you with your answer. 

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If you are interested in learning more about ChatGPT in relation Agile, Teamwork, or experimentation, consider reading these additional articles:

• A Discussion with ChatGPT about Agile 
• Are there Dangers with ChatGPT for Agile? 
• How to Experiment with ChatGPT 

Tuckman Model strategies to achieve and sustain High Performing Teams

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If there ever was a model that highlights why companies have few high performing teams, it is the Tuckman Model.  This model describes the path that most teams take from forming, to storming, to norming, and then performing.  When companies strive to achieve high-performing teams, they often fail to realize that the moment you reorganize, this takes any team that has been changed, back to forming.  In fact, if a company reorganizes enough, their teams rarely achieves the benefits of performing. 

What are some strategies in keeping teams in “performing”?  At a high level, it is to minimize reorganizations.  While some reorgs may be reasonable as part of an overall corporate strategy, others tend to be frivolous.  Realize that a reorg will take a performing team back to forming that means a significantly negative impact to velocity and productivity, leading to reduced delivery. If you have to reorganize occasionally, attempt to minimize the impact to high performing teams.   

At a more detailed level, what strategies aligned with each of the stage of the Tuckman Model can help you get to performing effectively or more quickly.  Let’s walk through the strategies at each stage. 

Forming

Forming is when the group of people are first introduced to each other. The cohort tends to be polite as they are trying to get to know each other.  Some people will be excited while others will be anxious (and sometimes both).  Forming may take time, as this is when people are getting to know each other and the work. People are trying to get to know each other and what they are there to do.

Strategies for moving through “forming” effectively and more quickly:

- Introduce a series of icebreakers.  Icebreakers provide a way for teams to get to know each other and start building psychological safety amongst each other.  When applied periodically, it can help groups more quickly get to know each other.  Consider the Constellation icebreaker as a start.

- Initiate team chartering.  In order to move from being a group of random individuals to a team of motivated people, it’s important to know what to strive for.  Team chartering is an explicit practice that helps the team understand their consequential purpose, the direction in which the team is moving, and objective of the work ahead.

Storming

Storming is when the group of people starts to play against each other and vie for position. Egos often are involved as each person is attempting to establish themselves with group. Some will want to be perceived as leaders, others may want to take a back seat.  Conflict will arise between people’s natural working styles.  This is also the time that niceness starts to wear off and where people start challenging each other. 

Strategies for moving through “storming” effectively and more quickly:

- Continue the path to psychological safety. Start establishing safety norms in meetings that encourage an equitable balance of speaking up and letting others speak.  Normalize conflict by discussing how you want to act when conflict occurs. Hold icebreakers that focus on sharing vulnerabilities.

- Conduct sessions that identify working styles such as Myers Briggs, Jung, DISC, Color, and more.  Each member of the team should take the test and examine how they themselves operate. Then share their results with other team members and understand how to best operate amongst each other.  

- Groom the work together.  This builds a common understanding of the work in a collaborative manner and keeps the team hyper-focused on the work ahead.

Norming

Norming is where team practices become clear and everyone is attempting to follow them.  Team roles are clear and accepted amongst the team. Team members have resolved their differences, begin to self organize around the work, respect how each other operates, and understand where to collaborate to get the work done. Team members begin to socialize, really get to know each other, and begin asking each other for feedback.

Strategies for moving through “norming” effectively and more quickly:

- Begin formal feedback loops amongst team members.  Get educated in how to give and receive feedback. Team members practice giving and receiving feedback.

- Apply regular retrospectives so the team can identify areas of improvement.  This is a whole team activity where everyone should be participating.  Reflection of the work should lead to improvement actions that are added to the team backlog of work and collaboratively completed. 

- Establish team measures on how the team inspects, adapts, and improves.  This may include team velocity, employee satisfaction, and delivery metrics. The team may experiment with increments of improvement to ensure they are moving in the right direction. 

Performing

Performing is when the team has a shared vision of their work, knows exactly what they are doing, and works independently with little assistance from their managers.  The team continually achieves its goals and seeks to go beyond their goals. Team members attend to their relationships and look after each other. Differences are resolved in a positive manner.

Strategies for achieving and sustain “performing” effectively:

- Initiate Peer hiring where team members own and interview new team members.  Team members determine fit and complementary skills such as problem-solving, technical, and interpersonal skills.

- Team members agree to and apply intrinsic motivators to encourage high performance.  This may include autonomy, mastery, and purpose, from Dan Pink’s list of motivational elements. When team members are paid fairly, these three elements and drive people to do their best work.

It is important to know that when a team moves through the Tuckman model, they may find themselves in several of the stages at the same time.  For example, while a team may be “norming” on team practices, they may still be “storming” on how to work together.  Understanding this model can help you appreciate where your team is today and what you can do to more effectively get to the next stage, ultimately learning to high performing.  More importantly, it can help an organization be more careful on their frequency of reorganizations as this can bring many of their teams from performing back to forming.  

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Importance of Treating Psychological Safety as a Journey

Amy Edmondson defines psychology safety as “a belief that one will not be punished for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.” The benefit is that this can lead to high performing teams and innovative ideas.  To align with a shared belief at a team or organization level, it explicitly requires a change in the way a culture works and this will take time. 

More specifically, a culture shift that must occur in the following areas: openness to asking questions instead of staying quiet for fear of looking ignorant; admitting mistakes instead of hiding them for fear of looking incompetent; offering ideas instead of holding on to them for fear of looking intrusive; and challenging norms instead of sitting back for fear of sounding negative. 

As it can take time to shift to a culture of psychological safety, I have seen great benefits in treating this as a journey.  I encourage this as my experience has shown that attaining psychological safety requires several components that work together.  With that in mind, I’ve created, tested, and applied what I dub the Psychological Safety Roadmap.  This roadmap is meant to be adaptive as your starting point and the dynamic as each organization is different.  The journey and practices therein are meant to be spaced-out and applied over months as building psychological safety takes time.  As you proceed with your journey, you may also add or adapt the components of the roadmap.  

The components or metaphorically the cities along the journey to psychological safety include: Get to know one another; Establish Safety Norms; Show Vulnerability; and Practice Safety via Feedback.  Within each city, there are a lot games and practices you can visit or try, each supporting the city you are in.  It is important to understand that the roadmap is not meant to be sequential and instead, several cities may be visited concurrently.  The only exception is you should visit the city of Getting to know one another before visiting the city of Showing Vulnerability.  My experience has shown that it is easier to show vulnerability after you get to know someone. 

Now let’s visit each city on the roadmap.  The city of Get to know one another includes practices and games where team members will, well, get to know one another.  The intent is if we know about each other, conversations tend to be safer and easier. This includes practices and games such as “Who am I?”, “If I were an animal, what would I be?”, “How do we educate ourselves”, and “Checking-in”.  

The second city on the roadmap is Establish Safety Norms.  The intent here is to make meetings a safe space to encourage speaking up with ideas, questions, and concerns.  This includes practices and games such as “All voices will be heard”, “Learn to repeat”, and encourage such attributes as being curious and non-judgmental. 

The next city is Show Vulnerability with the intent that being open and showing vulnerability helps build trust and creates a safe space within a team.  This includes practices and games such as “Circle of Vulnerability”, “I Feel Safer When”, and “Three Before Me”. 

The fourth city on the roadmap is Practice Safety via Feedback. The intent is giving feedback with good intent helps build trust and create strong relationships.  This includes practices and games such as "Appreciative feedback", "Differentiating feedback", and "Reflection for improvement".  

As you approach the Psychological Safety Roadmap, remind yourself that it is not meant to be a sequential journey nor are the games and practices a definitive list of what can be applied along the journey.  You (or your team) are meant to visit several cities (and practices and games therein) sometimes concurrently and it will take many months to achieve psychological safety.  Enjoy the journey and remember that your goal is to create a safe environment for people to speak up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.  This can lead to high performing teams and innovative ideas. 

To learn the basics of psychological safety, consider reading: Psychological Safety leads to High-Performing Teams.

Woven Together - A Practice to Build Authentic Connection and Psychological Safety

By Jody Gold with Mario Moreira

The game is changing. Hierarchies are flattening out. Companies are re-organizing to profit from the agility and collective intelligence of smart, flexible teams.  The concept of “leadership” itself is changing—from individual leadership that devises strategy and drives troops into battle, to relational leadership that catalyzes the creativity and commitment of all team members.

The good news is that there are constructive frameworks from the isolation, frustration, and disengagement that reduce collective learning and performance, to fully engaged, highly coordinated, innovative and agile teams that increase learning and performance. Matrix Leadership is one such framework that helps you successfully navigate this transformation.

Woven Together is an early practice and part of Matrix Leadership that helps strengthen the fabric of your team. Icebreakers and team-building exercises are often fun but their value fades.  Woven Together builds authentic connection, curiosity, and care among team members that last. People who’ve worked on teams together for years often rarely know about each other as people.  They may not know that John has a baby girl, and fills up with love when he talks about her getting her first tooth, or that Jennifer gets lit up by the smells, sounds, and tastes of street food when she is in another country. 

Woven Together raises energy in the room and can be used as a stand-alone activity.  It’s also a tangible introduction to core concepts like seeing relationships as first class entities that Mario Moreira describes in his article (part 1 of this series) and the entire network of relationships within a team as the relationship infrastructure that Jody Gold describes in part 2 of the series.  You can practice Woven Together with your team, right now.

Set-up

The ingredients include your team, a ball of yarn, 20-30 minutes depending on the size of your team, and enough space to stand in a comfortable circle.

Determine if each person in the circle will say just their name or their name, role, years in role, years at company, years doing agile.  This will depend on how well the facilitator and team members know each other.

You are person A.  You will explain the activity and model the two most important components: 1) forming a connection with one person—person B - and speaking to that person only, instead of scanning from person to person as we’ve all learned to do, and 2) telling person B 'something that light you up' in a way that is genuine and concise.

Steps 

1. Person A wraps the end of yarn around a forefinger and loosens enough yard equal to the distance between person A and B.  Person A throws the ball of yarn to B.  A speaks directly and only to B.
2. Person A says their Name.  Person B says their Name. 
3. Person A shares, “Something that lights me up is…”
4. B responds in a few words to complete the connection, “Cool. Thanks for telling me that. I want to know more about that. Etc.”
5. Person B chooses person C.  Repeat steps 1-5 (figure 1)
6. C chooses D and repeats steps 1-5.  Iterate until all people steps 1-5 and the ball of yarn is back at A  (figure 2).
7. After the yarn is back at person A, ask people to share what the experience was like and how things feel different now than before the activity.  

Final Thoughts

If Woven Together is used to introduce other practices, you may invite observations about the structure itself and its capacities.  Participants will name many characteristics of distributed leadership before they’ve learned about them formally.

Woven Together almost runs itself.  It’s amazing how much authentic connection, trust, and psychological safety arise from sharing ‘What Lights You Up.’  As the one leading the activity, be prepared for someone to say that speaking to only one person feels rude, exclusive, or uncomfortable.  Of course it may—scanning from person to person is a deep cultural norm.  Others may describe a sense of ease staying in connection with one person, like talking one-on-one with a friend.

Woven Together is also a good way for everyone to hear everyone else’s name a couple of times, and to quickly know who’s in what role and for how long, and/or how long they’ve been on the team or in the company.  It’s a great activity for a new team, a team whose membership has changed, or a new cross-functional project.

You have everything you need right now to turn thirty minutes into gold.  If you would like more information, consider contacting Jody Gold to discuss Woven Together or to learn more about how to equip teams to think, decide, and act as effectively as they can together.  

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Read Part 1 & 2 of the Relationship series:
- (Part 1) Importance of treating Relationships as First Class Entities 
- (Part 2) Strengthening the Relationship Infrastructure to Build High-Performing Teams