Coaching Stances

Correct Answer: Facilitating - to enable self-organization and resolve conflicts

As a Scrum Master, one of the key roles is to facilitate. Facilitation enables self-organization and is key to resolving conflicts in a team. The Scrum Master does not necessarily need to teach or mentor the team members, these roles may be performed, but are not the primary function of a Scrum Master. The team is itself expected to be self-organizing and find solutions to problems. While silence may sometimes be useful to allow teams to come to their own conclusions, it isn't a consistent way to resolve conflicts. So, 'Facilitating - to enable self-organization and resolve conflicts' would be the best approach.

Correct Answer: Mentoring - to share personal experiences and perspectives

Mentoring is the stance that is best suited for supporting team members' personal growth. Sharing experiences and perspectives can be beneficial in enabling personal growth and development. The other stances are not as effective for promoting personal growth. Teaching, while important, is mentioned here in a negative context as it is paired with 'hinder personal growth' which is not the aim of the Scrum Master role. Similarly, 'Facilitating - to enable self-organization and hinder personal growth' and 'Silence - to encourage self-understanding and hinder personal growth' are incorrect because the Scrum Master should not hinder personal growth. Instead, a Scrum Master should provide all necessary support for their team to grow personally and professionally.

Correct Answer: Encourage the application of a 'Lean Coffee' meeting format to democratically choose the topics of discussion, ensuring the team focuses on constructive problem-solving.

While all provided options aim to improve the retrospective atmosphere and outcome, the correct answer leverages a facilitation technique ('Lean Coffee') that balances egalitarian principles with structured discussion, focusing on topics that matter most to the team without assigning blame. The wrong answers, while inventive and potentially useful in certain contexts, do not directly address the issue of transitioning from a blame to a solution-oriented mindset in the most effective and practical manner for a retrospective meeting.