DrunkenPM Radio 3: How to Cope with Coaching Burnout - with Lyssa Adkins

Lyssa Adkins is one of the leading voices in Agile coaching. A founder of the Agile Coaching Institute, her book “Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition”  set the bar for what it means to be an Agile Coach. In this interview Lyssa and I talk about what’s happening with the Agile Institute, coaching middle management and how to deal with coaching burnout.


Show Notes
The Super Nervous Interview Begins 2:10
Focused Listening 4:05
Four essential skill sets of coaching 6:00
The difference between “coaching” and being a professional coach 6:30
Big things going on at Agile Coaching Institute 7:45
Coaching Middle Management 8:40
The impact of the cultural change Agile brings 11:40
Is there a limit to how much change we can handle and where are the boundaries 12:30
Background on the burnt out coach14:30
Burn out is on the rise with Agile Coaches 15:00
Finding a path you can be on with heart 15:45
Finding the heart in letting the org become what it wants to become 16:40
Checking your own ambition 18:20
Goal setting and knowing when to walk away 19:00
What to do with the organizations on Life Support 19:15
Hospicing the death of old systems 20:20
Trying to reach people who don’t want to take your hand 21:30
Meeting confusion with curiosity 22:20
Agile coaches are agents of human evolution 24:00
How Agile Coaching Institute helps organizations 24:30
Developing a coaching capability that is in sync with where the organization’s goals 25:45
How to find and develop the coaches in an organization 27:45
How to help a burnt out coach/change agent 31:25
The importance of self-care if you want to be present and help others 32:50
Exposing why people avoid self-care35:00
Ways Lyssa practices self-care 35:30
The job is to “allow” 37:05
You can’t let go because it’s the tension that holds it together 38:18
What happens when you do let go 38:50
Lyssa Reads Poetry 40:25
All of us in the Agile community are part of evolving our capacity for complexity 41:45
We are in the time of organizations being living thing 43:05
How to contact Lyssa 43:25
Lyssa’s advice for the coaches who are feeling burned out 43:55
Lyssa’s Coaching Agile Teams book is 6 years old 44:45
Thanking Lyssa for making me uncomfortable (in a good way) 45:50
Upcoming Events for Lyssa 46:00
Links Mentioned in the Podcast
Lyssa in Twitter https://twitter.com/lyssaadkins
The Agile Coaching Institute
http://www.agilecoachinginstitute.com/coaches/
2016 Scrum Gathering Agenda http://bit.ly/1Upsg9W

Perseverance - Meg Wheatley http://amzn.to/1W4PSmM
Little Guide to Empathetic Technical Leadership - Alex Harms https://leanpub.com/littleguide
Agile Base Patterns, a Cross-Quadrant Conversation - a conversation between Lyssa Adkins and Dan Greening http://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-base-patterns
Iawake.com http://www.iawaketechnologies.com
The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America - David Whyte http://amzn.to/1NtifV7

Personal Agility Canvas 2.0

Here is my presentation from the 2016 Global Scrum Gathering in Orlando and the new Personal Agility Canvas.

Thanks to everyone who showed up for the session.

Presentation
Canvas

PMP Rehab: Personal Agility Canvas 2.0

I'll be leading a workshop to introduce the new version of the Personal Agility Canvas at the 2016 Scrum Gathering in Orlando on April 18 at 3 PM. If you know anyone who is struggling with getting their head (or heart) around Agile, please encourage them to attend and I promise they will leave with a plan of attack to improve their adoption of Agile.

Podcast Interview with Woody Zuill on Mob Programming

My Projects at Work interview with Woody Zuill is live. Woody is an incredibly inspiring guy because of the work he does and the passion that he brings to it.

I hope you will enjoy the interview.

Catching Up... 27 Podcasts, 5 Blog Posts and a Chicken

Me holding a chicken

Sometimes, when you leave for the airport so you can go teach, you forget your guitar. (Actually, it isn't really a "sometimes" thing... more of a "once" thing... NEVER AGAIN).

When that happens you find yourself staring at your Kanban board looking at the cards that never move... like the one that says UPDATE YOUR BLOG!

I've been total crap at keeping this up to date. Sadly, my own blog is always the last place I remember to post new things, so... here is an onslaught of things  I have posted since the Agile 2015 Interviews.

I'm going to try (again) to suck a bit less at keeping this up to date.

If you like any of these, the best place to see updates from me on podcasts is on Twitter @mrsungo or @drunkenpm. (And there are some REALLY good ones coming.)

drunkenPM Radio Interviews (Episode 3 is coming soon)

• Episode 2: Bimodal with Steve Elliott and Dennis Stevens (2/2016)
• Episode 1:Hybrids and Organizational Agility with Shane Hastie and Data Literacy with John Cook and Troy Magennis (12/2015)

Projects at Work Podcast Interviews
Note: these require registration, but it is free

• Jim Benson - Personal Kanban, Lean Coffee, his new Distributed Teams workshops and great new stuff coming from Modus Cooperandi (3/2016)
• Johanna Rothman - Becoming Influential Agile Leader and the workshops she is doing with Gil Broza (3/2015)
• Dean Leffingwell Scaled Agile Framework 4.0 or "The one where Dean completely changed the way I think about SAFe "(2/2016)
• Mike Vizdos - Starting, Practicing, Coaching and Leading Scrum - Note: You should listen to this one because... Vizdos (2/2016)
• Manny Gonzales - The new mission of the Scrum Alliance  (1/2016)
• Mike Cohn - Mike Cohn on when we need Estimates and Why (12/2015)
• Kathryn Kuhn - Human Centered Design Thinking and Agile (11/2015)
• Rex Madden - Estimating and Answering "How Long, How Much?" (10/2015)
• John Miller - AgileSchools and using Empathy Maps with students (10/2015)
• Michael Tibbert - The challenge of moving from PM to Scrum Master (9/2015)

LeadingAgile SoundNotes Interviews 

• Tim Wise -  Agile Bodhisattvas and Developing Empathy For Change  (3/2016)
• Dan Greening -  The Five Characteristics of Sustainable Agility  (3/2016)
• Russ Pena - Managing Value in the Portfolio (3/2016)
• Mike Cottmeyer - The Focus of Agile in 2016 (2/2016)
• Jann Thomas - Why Should the ScrumMaster be a Full Time Role? (1/2016)
• Derek Huether - The Agile Baltimore Unconference (12/2015)
• Mike Cottmeyer - The Rise of Bimodal IT (12/2015)
• Tim Wise - Portfolio Telemetry and Optimization (11/2015)
• Russ Pena - The Integrated Business Analyst (11/2015)
• Isaac Hogue - The Importance of Measurable Progress in Agile Transformation (10/2015)
• Tim Wise - DevOps in Product Development Organizations (10/2015)
• Robert Sfeir and Adrian Wible - Coaching Q&A : Answering Student Questions  (9/2015)
• Andrew Fuqua - ATDD, BDD, TDD and More (9/2015)
• Mike Cottmeyer - The Emperor Has No Clothes Part 2 (9/2015)
• Chris Spagnuolo - System Design for Innovation Hubs in Large Enterprises (8/2015)

LeadingAgile Blog Posts  

• Should We Limit WIP for Organizational Change (3/2016)
• Why Bimodal IT Matters (2/2016)
• Digital PM Summit Report on the Use of Agile in Digital Agencies (10/2015)
• This Year's Model - Hybrids! (10/2015)
• Personal Agility Canvas (9/2015)