When Silence Becomes Your Most Powerful Coaching Tool | Alidad Hamidi

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast – When Silence Becomes Your Most Powerful Coaching Tool | Alidad Hamidi

Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Alidad Hamidi, Strategic Advisor and (self-described) "recovering agility coach"
Date: November 10, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the transformative role that intentional silence can play in agile coaching and team dynamics. Through personal stories and practical analysis, Alidad Hamidi discusses a pivotal moment when simply holding back and allowing silence to fill a meeting shifted a team from passivity and disempowerment to true ownership. The story and discussion highlight how subtle shifts in facilitation—combined with trust-building and consistency—can catalyze genuine self-management in agile teams.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Alidad’s Journey to Scrum Mastery

• Background: Alidad started as a business analyst before taking on Scrum Master responsibilities. This first-hand exposure dramatically shifted his view from seeing work as purely technical to understanding it as a “human system.”
• Quote:
  “The moment I joined as a Scrum Master, it changed everything for me. I started to see things from a more human perspective... boundaries, team interactions. That angle stayed with me.” (03:04, Alidad)

The Fail Monday Story: Silence as a Coaching Tool

• Situation: Newly hired as a contractor (“iteration manager”) for a team at a large organization going through a significant transformation (moving servers to the cloud).
• Initial Mistake: When first asked about the impact of the transition, the team said “nothing,” and Alidad accepted this answer at face value.
• Discovery: Conversations with other teams revealed major hidden impacts that the team maintained critical, revenue-generating systems that would be heavily affected.
• Turning Point:
  • He returned to the team, presented the facts, and asked them to outline the impacts on a whiteboard.
  • When met with silence, rather than filling the void or directing individuals, he leaned into the discomfort and waited—deliberately not rescuing the conversation.
  • After a minute of silence, the team asked if he would write the impacts. He declined (“No, you write it. Here is the pen.”), prompting a breakthrough where the team took ownership and the whiteboard quickly filled with ideas.
• Key Insight:
  “I purposefully designed a moment of silence, and I use that a lot going forward... Stay in the anxiety of being silenced. Do not interrupt the team. Put the question there, let them come up with a solution. It is very hard, but very effective.” (09:33, Alidad)

The Foundation: Building Trust Before the Silence

• Small Acts Matter: Prior to the silent whiteboard moment, Alidad focused on informal team-building (team lunches) and demonstrating support in moments of failure (standing up for the team instead of blaming).
• Quote:
  “I do care about them, right? I wasn’t there just to tell them what to do and blame them. But it wasn’t enough. It was the beginning... they started to trust me.” (10:49, Alidad)

Consistent Behavior Amplifies Impact

• Reflection: Both host and guest emphasize that the one silent moment was powerful but only because it was built on a foundation of consistent, trust-building behaviors.
• Quote:
  “It’s not just that one moment, it’s all of the small interactions we bring into the team... The attitude we bring in has an impact in that moment of silence.” (11:33, Vasco)

Socio-Technical Systems and Open System Theory

• Alidad’s Influences: He touches on his affinity for Open System Theory, an evolution of socio-technical theory emphasizing that effective teams and organizations must be designed with both social and technical considerations.
• Quote:
  “Socio-technical system was initially created by Eric Tristan and Fred Emery… and transformed into Open System Theory. In fact, I did a master class with Marilyn Emery… maybe we can talk about [it] in another episode.” (12:22, Alidad)
• Reference: Links to more on Socio-Technical System and Open System Theory promised in show notes.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On realizing the impact of stepping back:
  “That was probably the longest silence I ever had… I waited and waited and no one said anything. I said, ‘Okay, looks like you don’t have any concerns. I’m heading back to my seat.’ They were shocked… all the managers before me just told them what to do.” (07:31, Alidad)

• On stepping into servant leadership:
  “They were used to someone, a manager, coming and telling them what to do… but I didn’t do it. The way I recovered from that initial failure, I purposefully designed a moment of silence… It’s very hard but very effective.” (09:15, Alidad)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:59 – Alidad’s background and perspective shift becoming a Scrum Master.
• 04:54 – Fail Monday story setup: The transformation project and initial oversight.
• 07:31 – The whiteboard meeting: Embracing silence and changing team dynamics.
• 10:27 – Laying the groundwork: informal social connections and backing the team.
• 11:33 – Consistency of approach: Why moments of silence work when trust is present.
• 12:19 – Touch on socio-technical and open system theories as frameworks for understanding agile organizations.

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Episode Takeaways

• Intentional Silence: Purposefully giving space—however uncomfortable—can trigger teams to step up, take ownership, and think critically.
• Pre-conditions are Key: Such interventions only succeed when built on a foundation of psychological safety, trust, and a clear signal that the coach/leader supports the team.
• Socio-Technical Awareness: The most effective Scrum Masters recognize the interplay of human, systemic, and technical factors in team effectiveness.
• Servant Leadership: The comfort to hold back, even in anxiety, is a hallmark of strong, non-directive coaching.

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This episode is an excellent reminder that sometimes the most powerful thing a leader can do is simply nothing—creating just enough space for genuine team autonomy to emerge.

Transcript

[A]

Hey there, agile adventurer, just a quick question. What if for the price of a fancy coffee or half a pizza, you could unlock over 700 hours of the best agile content on the planet? That's audio, video, E courses, books, presentations, all that you can think of. But you can also join live calls with world class practitioners and hang out in a flame war free and AI slop clean slack with the sharpest minds in the game. Oh, and yes, you get direct access to me, Vasko, your Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. No, this is not a drill. It's this Scrum Master Toolbox membership. And it's your unfair advantage in the agile world. So if you want to know more, go check out scrummastertoolbox.org membership, that's scrummastertoolbox.org Membership. And check out all the goodies we have for you. Do it now. But if you're not doing it now, let's listen to the podcast. Hello everybody.

[B]

Welcome to one more week of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast. And this week, joining us from beautiful Sydney in Australia is Alidad Hamidi. Hey Alidad, welcome to the show.

[C]

Hey Vasco, good to be here.

[B]

Absolutely. So Ali dad is a strategic advisor in human centered transformation focused on organizational design for autonomy, ownership and impact. He calls himself a recovering agility coach and I'm sure we'll talk more about that. And he draws on years across delivery and coaching roles to help build organizations truly fit for humans, resilient, adaptive and designed for people, not just processes. So Alida, that was a short intro. Tell us a little bit more about yourself and how did you end up becoming a Scrum Master?

[C]

Thanks for that amazing introduction. I think, I don't know if it was from LinkedIn or somewhere else, but I listened to you. I said, really? Do I do all of that? And actually I've been in this space of agile agility, organizational design and product delivery for a very long time. I won't go into the history because it's, it's a long story, but to answer your specific question, I was a business analyst in a team that have adopted Agile for maybe two years and one of the other teams in our company, their Scrum Master, Wendell, and just someone just asked me, look, while they're awake, can you just do the Scrum mastery of their, their team? And said, oh yeah, that's easy. You know, I see my Scrum Master, they just, they just run these meetings and talk about feelings and everything and of course I would be able to do that. And that was the Beginning and then the moment I, I joined as a Scrum Master, it changes everything for me. Like I, I see things from a very different perspective, See things started to see things from more of a human perspective, the inter perspective, team boundaries. So other things become more important for me than it was before. Although, you know, after that experience, I did go and become a product owner for a few years, but that stayed with me. That angle stayed with me. And then my very first contracting gig after that job was a Scrum Master role. That's kind of a really, really brief history of how I ended up as a Scrum Master.

[B]

I really, I definitely recognize that shift in perspective, right, like from doing the things like, you know, working with, as a business analyst in your case. For my case, I was a software developer and an architect. And that shift of starting to see the people side and how the interactions affect people, that is a really big shift in how we see software development because we start to realize that it's actually a human system, not just the technology system. And I would say these days I would call it the socio technical system. So that it includes both the social aspects as well as the technological aspects. And when we shift that perspective, we try different things. But sometimes, as it so often happens, when we try different things, they don't go so well. Right, so today's Fail Monday here on the podcast Alidad. So we want to explore one of those stories, a story of a difficult moment you had. And of course we'll dive into what you learned later. But tell us that first. That story, Alidad.

[C]

It was a pivotal moment for me. I joined the team as a contractor. I think it was my second contracting gig and I've already had quite a lot of failures working with different teams and learned a lot from, from those interactions. But I was working with a team. I joined a team as a, as a consultant. They asked me to be the iteration manager for that team. You know, it's the term that they use in Australia for a period of time because they didn't like the term Scrum Master. So there was this moment very early in my interaction with the team that I realized, you know, the people who hired me, they tell, oh look, we going through this transformation, we're moving all of our servers into cloud and I think your teams also will be impacted. They haven't get back to us because they haven't had a team lead on a Scrum Master for a while and the product owner is really busy. Can you just do some work around that? And I kind of sure I'M happy to do that. And just went to the team and I said, well this is what I'm hearing, guys, what's happening? What's the impact to you? They said, nothing. I said, all right, there's no impact. And I moved on. And then I started to talk to these other teams that I realized, oh, it's going to significantly impact this because these guys, which I might actually talk to it later, they were maintaining about over a half a billion dollar business assets or they were maintaining software that was generating that, that type of money. And they realized that a lot of their environments as well as development and some of their more kind of a testing environment is going to be hugely impacted. In other words, they won't be able to support the system. And I was shocked that why they are not saying anything. So I went back and I said, guys, this is what I heard. Tell me what is going on. And, and you know, being a contractor consultant, you know, I was anxious. I'm here to get the job done, you know, all of that pressure. But right before I start telling them what to do, all I did was I said, here is the list of all of the apps you're supporting. Draw it on a whiteboard. Back then we were still using physical whiteboards. I said, tell me, what is the impact? How do we use this? What is the impact? What do we need to do? And no one said anything. I was about to point to the more senior person in the team to say, you tell me or you tell me and give them the pen. I hold back. And that was probably the longest silence I ever had. It wasn't long. It was probably one minute. I looked at everyone and I waited and I waited and I waited and no one said anything. I said, okay, looks like you don't have any concerns. I'm heading back to my, my seat. And they were shocked because all of the managers before me, they were just telling them, you need to say this, do this. What, what do you think? What do you think you're going to come up with? So, all right, it's. You don't think there is an impact? Okay. And they were at shock. They were just looking at me. I said, one of them said, come back. I said, why you. You're not saying anything? I don't know, I'm new here. And they said, can you write it? I said, no, you write it. Here is the pen. They take the pen. The first person that come and write down the first impact, the whole thing gets started. And then there was a lot of interaction. Conversation, debates and they started to fill that whole board and then we turn it into this and look, there was massive impact. But they were used to someone, a manager, come and tell them what to do. They were used to someone is telling who needs to do what and I didn't do it. So my initial failure, what, I just ignored it and I moved on. But the second time, the way I recover from it, I purposefully designed a moment of silence and I use that a lot going forward, especially when I work with other team coaches or leaders and I help them to help their team to become high performing and self managing. I specifically talk about staying in the anxiety of being silenced. Do not interrupt the team. Put the question there, Let them come up with a solution. It is very hard but very effective.

[B]

I want to believe that that one moment of silence was the only thing that really kind of shifted the team's perspective and attitude. But I'm guessing it wasn't just that moment of silence. Right? There's that moment of silence which is maybe kind of the, the tipping point when the team finally takes ownership of their work. But what were some of the other things that you were doing meanwhile, ahead, before that moment of silence that you think also had an impact during that moment of silence?

[C]

I think very, very basic things. Like I took them out for a lunch, we had a team lunch few times before that. Once in a while, you know, sometimes there was a moment that we kind of had a failure in one of our support tickets and they were used to the manager come and shout at them. I actually stood and say, look, I went in and talked to the product owners, talked to the systems owner and the leaders. I said, we can either start blaming the team or we can actually find out what's going on and get it fixed. They can fix it. They kind of started to see that I do care about them, right? I wasn't there to just tell them what to do and blame them. But it wasn't enough. It was just the beginning. It was very early days in my working with the team, but I think I feel that helped them to begin to trust me. And when they see me just leaving, they kind of started to believe that I'm not there to tell them how to do their job. Right?

[B]

And I think that that storyline is really important for us to hear because it's not just that one moment, it's not just that one action, it's all of the small interactions that we bring into the team. Right? Because if you had as opposite to that moment, if in the other moments you had been telling them what to do and organizing their work for them. Of course at that moment they would be lost, right? Like they were lost in the end.

[A]

But they would be even more lost.

[B]

And they probably wouldn't take up the pen and start writing what they thought. So I think that this is a great story because it highlights that moment of change, that tipping point, if you will. But as you just related, it also highlights that this is something we prepare from day one. The attitude we bring in has an impact in that moment of silence.

[C]

Absolutely. You mentioned socio technical system. I don't know if we would get a chance to talk about it, maybe in other days. But one of the approaches I specifically used a lot in Open System theory, which is the evolution of socio technical system Sociotechnical system was initially created by Eric Tristan and Fred Emery. Fred Emery and Marilyn Emery are Australian. When they come back to Australia they continue developing the socio technical systems and transformed it into Open System theory. In fact, two years ago I did a master class with Marilyn Emery. She's 85 years old and we're also planning to hopefully in November go down to Canberra and meet Hurricane so maybe we can talk about I'm sure it will come up.

[B]

I'm sure it will come up. I'll put the link to those two aspects, Socio Technical system and Open System Theory in the show Notes for those interested in knowing more. Thank you for sharing that story. Alidad.

[C]

No problem. Thanks for the question.

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

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[B]

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[A]

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[B]

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