How Vulnerability Creates Magic in Agile Leadership | Renee Troughton

Summary

Podcast Summary: How Vulnerability Creates Magic in Agile Leadership

Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Renee Troughton
Date: October 16, 2025
Episode Theme:
Exploring the role of vulnerability in agile leadership, foundational team values, and practical techniques for fostering trust, safety, and collaboration.

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Overview

This Success Thursday episode features agile coach and leader Renee Troughton, who shares her philosophy and practical experiences on creating high-performing Agile teams. The conversation centers around the importance of vulnerability in leadership, the foundational role of values like trust, respect, and safety, and practical actions Scrum Masters can take to nurture these qualities in their teams.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Creative Retrospectives and Team Energy

[01:25–04:08]

• Themed/Metaphor Retros: Renee highlights the value of mixing up retrospectives with themes (e.g., Monopoly, football, current news events), which brings freshness and energy.
  • "I do like doing strange things every now and then. So like Monopoly retro... they just took a whole collage of pictures...and you sort of got to put your name as to what you were feeling that week." — Renee [01:40]
• Regularly changing retrospective formats helps keep the process engaging while still addressing the same core questions.

Host’s Reflection: Themed retros make it easier to express nuanced feelings and trigger creativity.

• "It also allows us to verbalize things that are not necessarily verbalizable... it can trigger a lot of creativity." — Vasco [03:18]

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2. Redefining Success for Agile Leaders

[04:10–05:36]

• For Renee, personal success is closely linked to integrity, authenticity, and especially vulnerability, not just standard leadership KPIs.
  • "For me... it's like integrity, holding my truth, being compassionate, authentically and caring, being open, honest, listening, vulnerable. Yeah, that's a big one for me." — Renee [04:36]
• Vulnerability in leaders allows others to show up authentically, creating psychological safety and "magic" for team dynamics.
  • "If you as a senior leader demonstrate vulnerability, it creates real magic in an organization where others can open up and be their authentic self..." — Renee [05:08]

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3. Vulnerability as a Foundation for Trust

[06:04–07:12]

• Building personal connections should take precedence over jumping straight to business, especially if team members are going through difficulty.
  • "When I have conversations with individuals, it's not about getting to business straight away. It's about me connecting with you as a human being..." — Renee [06:16]
• Leaders should be “contextually sensitive” to team members’ emotional states, respecting them as people, not just resources.

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4. How Organizational Values Shape Teams

[07:36–09:07]

• Drawing on Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations, Renee separates “lower order values” (results, performance) from higher-level, heart-centered values (trust, respect, safety).
  • "A lot of classic corporate organizations... they think about results... those are what I would consider very lower order values... When you look at more collaborative, more autonomous organizations... it's trust, respect, safety." — Renee [07:36]
• Sustaining high-performing, autonomous teams requires cultivating these higher-order, foundational values. Without them, organizations cannot operate successfully at scale.

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5. Trust, Respect, and Safety as Outcomes and Preconditions

[09:07–11:07]

• Trust, respect, and safety are both outcomes of specific actions and preconditions for genuine collaboration.
  • "You don’t bring trust to a team. You build trust through small interactions... trust is the outcome, not the end point." — Vasco [09:49]
• Renee emphasizes the cyclical nature of values and collaboration: a little collaboration may plant the seed, but substantial trust, respect, and safety must be in place for true high performance.
  • "If you don’t have trust or safety or respect, there is going to be no collaboration... fundamentally those three have to be in place to have a high performing team." — Renee [10:39]

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6. Listening, Appreciation, and Repairing Broken Trust

[11:07–13:20]

• Starting with Appreciation: Bringing positive energy (e.g., starting retrospectives with appreciations) can prime a team for better listening and openness.
  • "If we start with an appreciation in a retro, you opened up the energy in the room to listening." — Vasco [11:40]
• Limits of Repair: Some breaches of trust can be hard—or even impossible—to repair, making authenticity and true apologies essential for any chance of healing.
  • "If you don’t trust someone in your team because they have stabbed you in the back before... no matter how much appreciation you get... it’s really hard to rebuild that trust." — Renee [12:27]
• Sometimes Separation is Necessary: There are occasions where it’s healthier for individuals or teams to part ways rather than continue trying to force collaboration after trust is broken.
  • "Sometimes, not even after the apology. Some teams are just not meant to be together." — Vasco [13:03]
  • "Trust, respect, fairness, honesty, these are really foundational elements to the success of any team." — Renee [13:11]

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7. The Call for Compassion and Higher-Order Leadership

[13:20–13:44]

• While separation may be appropriate, mature leaders strive to give people second chances and lead with compassion.
  • "For higher order individuals you should always try to be the better person to give another chance." — Renee [13:31]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "If you as a senior leader demonstrate vulnerability, it creates real magic in an organization..." — Renee [05:08]
• "It’s about being really contextually sensitive to them as a human being." — Renee [06:40]
• "Trust, respect, safety—these are really the fundamental values. And so you get to trust, respect and safety, you get through vulnerability." — Renee [09:39]
• "You don’t bring trust to a team. You build trust through small interactions... trust is the outcome, not the end point." — Vasco [09:49]
• "Sometimes, not even after the apology. Some teams are just not meant to be together." — Vasco [13:03]

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Segment Timestamps

• Creative retrospective formats: 01:25–04:08
• Defining success, vulnerability in leadership: 04:10–05:36
• Human-first leadership, personal connection: 06:04–07:12
• Values and organizational culture: 07:36–09:07
• Building trust, respect, safety: 09:07–11:07
• Appreciation, rebuilding trust, limits: 11:07–13:20
• Giving second chances: 13:20–13:44

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Episode Tone

• The tone is warm, candid, and reflective, with both host and guest sharing personal insights and practical advice for Scrum Masters seeking lasting impact through authentic leadership and human-centered values.

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For Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches:
This episode is a compelling reminder that building effective teams goes far beyond process mechanics. True Scrum Mastery calls for vulnerability, deep respect for people, and the courage to both build and repair trust—sometimes even accepting when it’s time to let go.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Hello everybody. Welcome to our Success Thursday. The big question of the week this week with Rene Trotten. Hey Rene, welcome back.

[C]

Hey Vasco, thanks for having me back. And hi everybody. For the fourth time this week.

[B]

Absolutely. Happy Thursday. So we'll talk about success for Scrum Masters in a bit. But, but before diving into that, do share with us what's your favorite agile retrospective format and why?

[C]

So I probably have two favorite ones. I'm sure that everyone's actually talked about the sailboat retro many times on this show, so I won't go into that. I do like doing strange things every now and then. So like Monopoly retro, I did for a while work at a big consultancy and they had the most ingenious retros, where every week it was themed on something different like football or something else that's happening in the news. And they just took a whole collage of pictures and different faces, like people upset versus people angry versus people happy and so forth. And you sort of got to put your name as to, you know, what you were feeling that particular week and then you sort of reframed your week in the context of that theme. So, you know, it might have been a rough game, for example, and we didn't score enough goals as we wanted to do. Yeah, so I think you'd basically make anything a retro.

[B]

So tell me a little bit more, Rene. Why do you feel that this themed retros, as you call it, work so well?

[C]

I think the format in that environment was the same questions happened, but it gave a freshness to it and it gave almost like a livelihood or a joyfulness to it as an activity as well. I think that was very unique in that environment. Just the ability to make sure it wasn't always the same, but yet the same at the same time. It's weird.

[B]

And one of the things that I usually call this retros, metaphor retros, but of course they are themed. That's clear. One of the things that I feel when I go through that kind of retro is that it also allows us to verbalize things that are not necessarily verbalizable. When we are thinking in a structured manner about what happened during the week or during the sprint. The sailboat is a great example. What might have been some rocks that we faced during the the week or the sprint and or in this case, what made me happy, what made me worried, what made me sad. Like all of those things bring up different aspects of our way to relate to the events of that particular week. And I think it can trigger a lot of creativity.

[C]

Yeah, for sure.

[B]

So these retros, of course we use because we want to help our teams be successful, but that also means we are trying to be successful with our teams. So stepping out of the team game now for a moment and thinking about our own work as Scrum Masters and Agile coaches. When you think about success for yourself, Rene, how would you define it?

[C]

Well, me personally versus Scrum Master actually is a little bit different. So for me, maybe, maybe it's not. Maybe it's like integrity, holding my truth, being compassionate, authentically and caring, being open, honest, listening, vulnerable. Yeah, that's a big one for me. I find that if, because I'm quite a senior leader, to be honest, I find that if you as a senior leader demonstrate vulnerability, it creates real magic in an organization where others can open up and be their authentic self and importantly, not be a different person at work than they are at home.

[B]

That's a very interesting perspective. Can you illustrate for us what you mean by that? I hear vulnerability creates maybe openness. You called it magic. I'm trying to translate that into my own words. So that would be kind of openness, maybe even more acceptance of whatever may be going on in the organization. Give us an example of what you mean by that.

[C]

I think it comes back to almost like a Tuesday comment around what has helped me in the past. Book wise and I think, you know, loving what is, is. You know, when I have conversations with individuals, it's not about getting to business straight away. It's about me connecting with you as a human being straight away. And if you're having a shit personal life, then I Might not even go to business for a very long period of time. And maybe you need space to not even go there at all. Maybe the greatest kindness that I can give someone in that moment is just seeing them completely for who they are, not for them being a resource in an organization or someone that I have to change or work on or that I need them to change. It's about being really contextually sensitive to them as a human being.

[B]

Can you give us an understanding of why you've come to this realization? I'm assuming you didn't start with it, but maybe you did, I don't know. But how did you come to this realization that this vulnerability and acceptance of the other person as a leader, the other person that you are talking to, as they are, wherever they are in their lives at the moment, is so important?

[C]

I did some work around values in organizations and a lot of organizations that if you think about Frederic Laloux, sort of reinventing organizations like a coloured domain classification about where organizations sit on human authenticity or human behaviors, a lot of classic corporate organizations or orange organizations, they think about results, orientation, what's the outcome that we had or the output that we had. It's around, you know, performance and incentivizations of those sorts of things. And those are what I would consider very lower order values. Like they're not highly of the heart, if that makes sense. When I looked at more collaborative, more autonomous organizations, even then when you go through to green or teal organizations, those are organizations that have higher value centricity and it's not just about alignment or collaboration or empowerment and autonomy. When you look at the foundations of what values need to be in place to give those, it's trust, respect, safety. And so I try and start from there because if you don't have that foundation, everything else sort of implodes.

[B]

That's a beautiful way to describe it. What I hear you say is we need to understand what are the, let's call it, the fertile ground for successful teams and successful organizations. And that that fertile ground is in the values that the organizations implement in practice, not what they talk about, but what they implement in practice. And what I also hear you say is that within those values there will be values that lead to trust, respect and safety.

[C]

Well, those are really the fundamental values. And so you get to trust, respect and safety, you get through vulnerability. That's an example of how you would get there.

[B]

Yeah, but one of the things that I don't know what your experience is from my perspective, what I try to do when I work with people and teams. What I try to exemplify, but also help them understand is that you don't bring trust to a team. You build trust through small interactions. Right. Like trust is the outcome, not the end point. Right. You're not working towards trust, you're working towards listening better. You're not working towards safety, you're working towards collaborative, finding different solutions. You're not working towards respect, you're just accepting that people might not have the same perspective or might have other priorities. And we work with those different priorities. Is that how you see it? That trust, respect, safety are kind of results of particular actions that we take?

[C]

Definitely of actions. The thing I would call out, it's a cyclical thing though. So you mentioned sort of collaboration, et cetera. If you don't have trust or safety or respect, there is going to be no collaboration. And so, yeah, you have to start off with a little bit of collaboration. But fundamentally those three have to be in place to have a high performing team. As a ground rule, basically.

[B]

And I think that this is what I was trying to get to. One of the things that I find in, in teams that are not collaborative is not that they don't want to be collaborative, it's that for whatever reason, they ended up not being collaborative. And not being collaborative is a self reinforcing loop. And then when I see that, what I try to figure out is, okay, what would help us get out of that loop. And I run experiments. It's never only one thing that works. There are many things that could work depending on the team and their manager and myself and who is on the team and so on. And what I try to implement always is first listening, but not listening, as in me listening, but creating the environment where everybody listens. Like for example in retros. A very simple thing that I often try to start with is appreciation. Because if we start with an appreciation in a retro, you opened up the energy in the room to listening. If I start the retro by complaining or criticizing, you close everybody off. And this is what I mean by these actions. Because if we start with this is my own experience. If I start the retro with appreciation, I can feel the energy go up. I can feel the readiness to listen go up. How about you? What, what, what do you think the.

[C]

Counterbalance I would say is if you don't trust someone in your team because they have stabbed you in the back before or let you down in some way, no matter how much appreciation you get from that individual, it's really hard to rebuild that trust. Yeah. And so you probably feel like it's a two faced or an inauthentic statement when you know you've been really hurt, emotionally hurt by that individual. Until you get an apology, nothing's going to happen.

[B]

To be honest, sometimes not even after the apology. Right. Like some teams are just not meant to be together.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And I think that's why, you know, trust, respect, fairness, honesty, these are really foundational elements to the success of any team.

[B]

Yeah. And that's a great call out that sometimes lines, when certain lines are crossed, there's no turning back. And maybe it's better to just some individuals.

[C]

I'd say for higher order individuals you should always try to be the better person to give another chance.

[B]

Thank you for sharing that with us, Renee.

[C]

No worries. It's something I'm incredibly passionate about. I love values in organizations.

[A]

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