Self Reliance and Victim Mindset

Last month, I attended a Coaching/Leadership Mastery Course with Your Infinite Life, called Self Reliance. The focus in the course is about identifying situations where you may be using a Victim Mindset, and moving yourself towards Self Reliance. It was a profound learning experience, and one I'm still working on integrating. Below are some takeaways that I captured.

1. Hope as an inspiration but not Hope as a need

A lot of our weekend was focused on the idea of giving up hope. No, I'm not kidding. And that's not to say that 'having hope' is a bad thing. Hope is inspirational. Hope can be a source of aspiration. But it can also be a source of desperation. It can be the figurative act of beating your head against a wall. It can be a distraction from seeing what's possible, and a way of keeping yourself stuck in what cannot be. Where are you stuck? Are you holding on to hope as a need?

2. Accepting the Truth over Wanting Things to be Different

This is where letting go of hope serves us. If we put our energy into constantly wishing that things were different, we're wasting our energy. This act of showing up self-reliantly, and seeing others as self-reliant, means that we accept others as whole, capable people. Remember the Popeye episode where the old escalator stairs flatten out and Popeye and Olive Oil fall to the bottom of the stairs? That's the feeling that letting go of this tension reminds me of. Holding on to this 'wishing that things were different' has us continually trying to make it up the broken escalator and falling back to the bottom. Accept the truth of what is, and work from that point, rather than keeping yourself stuck in wishing things were different.

3. Detached Yet Connected

In coaching, there's a important tension to hold (or let go of): being "Detached, Yet Connected". A big part of coaching for me, has been a journey of learning to SLOOOOW DOWN and Connect. Real, true, open-hearted connection with the people/teams/ organizations I'm coaching. It's been a learning process, and frankly I'm still learning about this. I probably always will be. Sitting with the intention of detached yet connected has me not longing for the person to find some truth that I think I have for them or imparting some wisdom on them. It's about connecting, open-heartedly, to the truth they have within them. I'm detached from their outcome, but connected to them and their truth, whatever that might be. I don't own the work it takes for them to achieve their goal (detached), but I'm connected to them personally, and I care about their growth and serving them in that growth. Everyone has their own hero's journey to travel upon.

4. Stepping Into Our Power yet Accepting our Limits

There is incredible power in holding space for someone in an open-hearted, connected way; in showing up, and truly listening. Not listening for what you want to hear, but listening and sensing what is being said and felt. The power of witnessing the unleashing of a person's creativity is invigorating. And yet, we are limited in that power. Sometimes we have a inkling of and we are able to see something that the person, team, or organization we are coaching is not ready to see. We are limited in what we can do to get them to see that thing. In fact, this is where we are truly powerless. You know the old story about leading a horse to water. As they say, we can't make them drink.

Where are you stuck? Where might you be limiting yourself through 'holding on to hope'? What situations are you in where you have need for it to go a certain way, despite your limit in making that way come to pass? Let it be. Accept that the escalator is broken. Come at it from a different angle, but don't bring along that feeling of need or desperation. That feeling comes through in your interaction. Through that feeling, you take away your client's ownership of the problem/solution, and you take away their power.

Finding the Light

Rebuilding yourself
Over and over
Searching, seeking, redefining
Turning over rocks and leaves
And finding all the places
where the light doesn’t shine

Every now and then
Seeing the light peak through
Trying to hold onto it
But you can’t hold on to light

You can see it
You can feel its warmth
But holding it turns it into dust particles floating in the air

So you dig deeper
You go under
You dig a cave
And bring the rocks and leaves you’ve overturned
With you into the cave

You wait there
You sit there
Under the debris you’ve brought along
Wondering where all the light went

Then this little light you have with you
Becomes two beams of light
You start to find your power
You see small shards of light
And return to the light you thought you had left behind

You follow it out
And you feel that light again
You touch it but you don’t hold on to it

You let it go
That letting go feels like darkness for a minute
But it isn’t
It’s actually the finding of the light

And then you realize
That the light is not shining from them
The light is connection
It’s love
It’s your love that is light
After finding all of those places light didn’t shine
You forgot to look inside

Agile Coaches and Codependency

What is a codependent? Someone who is a helper. Sometimes a martyr. Someone who does way more than their fair share. They often get caught up in trying to impose their help where it isn't necessarily wanted. They might also be enablers and often cover for an addicted family member.

It turns out that codependent people often look for a jobs that involve helping. It might be as a paramedic, a nurse, or a counselor. At work, a codependent is someone who often is a great employee. They will do whatever is asked of them and more. They have a hard time saying no to work assignments and will work their tails off to achieve. They won't complain much about what is asked of them, but they may secretly be stewing inside about all that they are taking on. They may have a hard time asking for a raise. They may resent others on their teams but still continue to take on more than their fair share because they want the team to succeed. If they are especially smart, they will breeze through things and think nothing of it, but then get frustrated when others aren't similarly capable. They won't see themselves as 'anything special' and therefore if others aren't similarly capable, those other people just aren't good enough. It's a strange dynamic because these people probably don't think they are good enough either. 

As an Agile Coach who is also codependent, you might find someone who may get too caught up in how a team is doing. They may try to impose their 'solutions' on the team, forgetting that each individual on the team is a whole and capable human being. They may be able to see what a team cannot, but be unable to guide the team without pushing an agenda that is help imposing. They may depend on a team's dysfunction and the team may depend on the coach to support their dysfunction. This is classic codependency. 

This is an Agile antipattern and happens way too often. When I was responsible for an Agile Transformation a few years ago, the first time around (agile transformations are iterative!) I thought I had all of the answers and I knew exactly what the organization needed. If they'd only listen to me! I kept talking louder and louder. And getting more and more frustrated. The real problem was not the organization. It was me! 

Michael Spayde and Lyssa Adkins at ACI teach that every person is a whole and capable person. In any type of coaching or therapy type role (yes Agile Coaching is part psychology!) if you go into it thinking that people need you in order to become their best selves, you're only creating a self-fulfilling situation. People or teams WILL need you. Because you're the one who makes sure they have the retrospective. You're the one who 'facilitates' the standup every day. You're managing all the time to make sure the team is doing all of the things. 

The fact is, as an Agile Coach, one of your primary goals should be to coach yourself out of a job. The team should become so adept at lean and agile thinking that it should become second nature. They should be such a tight knit group, that the retrospective process is productive and meaningful WITHOUT YOU. 

It feels GREAT to be part of a team that is really gelling and just having a great time getting amazing work done. As a Coach, you might find yourself caught up in the middle of that. But YOU can't be the cog that keeps it together. You have to take yourself out of the equation so the team can be great without you. And they definitely can. 

If you think about the sports analogy here, it makes sense. On the practice field, the coach is there correcting the team and spot coaching when things don't look right. But when it's game time, the team needs to know what they are doing without the coach managing every move. 

You bring your whole self to work, even if you don't think you do. Everything that you are is there with you, even if you try to squash certain parts of you at work. If you get your feeling of self worth out of picking up the left overs that the team drops, if you're the safety net for the team, if you are constantly monitoring the team's progress, you might be a codependent Agile Coach. If you think this might be you, skip the next retrospective and see what happens. If the team decides to not have the retro, you have work to do to separate yourself from what's going on with the team. 

The next post will be a somewhat opposite view point - the 'do nothing' Agile Coach. Because too much of anything is not good! 

Back in the Game

I left corporate life almost a year and half ago. To reconnect with my family. To recenter myself. As an introvert, leaving the corporate world and thinking I could simply take care of kids and work at my husband's masonry company and still somehow stay connected to myself - laughable. But I learned some really important things.

What did I learn?

As an Agile Coach, I'm challenged daily to improve myself. So much of that improvement was only implemented at work. Sometimes it seems like I can only implement certain ways of behaving and thinking in one dimension of my life. The other dimension just stays the same. I'm not sure why. I learned some really important things while away from work. I hope now to apply those things in the work dimension of my life. 

I learned to love my oldest son better. Funny how you can connect with people that you work with day in and day out, but you have a hard time connecting with those closest to you. Sometimes I feel sorry for my oldest son. He's the guinea pig in this parenting experiment and there have been lots of failed attempts with that one! It turns out, he likes hugs and being tickled. The being tickled thing is something he's always liked. "Tickle my back! Tickle my leg! Mom, you missed a spot. Just one more minute. Thirty seconds. Please!" When my son gets mad, instead of being annoyed with him, I hug him. It works really well. Duh. #lovewins

I'm totally not a tactile person. But I've learned that a slight touch on the arm is a way of connecting with even strangers. My son taught me that hugs are a great love currency. I've since made a conscious effort to touch people on the arm when talking to them and I've hugged people that I've just met. 

My daughter taught me what it means to be a light in the world. Everyone probably says this about their kids, but this one - this girl is a connector of people. When we have family over, she talks to every person and says hello to every person and says goodbye to every person, by name. When we are out shopping, she asks me if she can say hi to people and talks to the person at the checkout lane and says thank you and just lights up the world around her. She has these giant, piercing blue eyes. The kind of eyes that change color depending on the light and the color around her. They glow sometimes. She gets this scrunched up smile on her face when she's being goofy. She loves people. She practices shameless love. She also says "Mommy" over and over. She uses the word love ALL THE TIME. At trick or treating no matter what the candy was, she told the person "I love that one!" I'm totally cool now with feeling all of the love emotions. #lovewins

I am warmer to people now. I make an effort to pay attention to others lives, and it's not just a fake caring like I'm doing it for networking or personal gain. I actually really care. I talk to people in the elevator and at the grocery store WAY MORE. And people talk to me more. It's like she's opened up my heart or something. 

And my new baby boy taught me that I don't call the shots! At three months old, he decided he did not want to breastfeed. He just was not having it. And so we stopped. And I let go of the need to control what he wanted. Also, this kid wants to stay a baby for as long as possible. My niece, who is just a month older than he is, holds her bottle, sits up and crawls, can stand while holding onto something, and is generally just looking to get out of this baby phase! My baby boy loves his bottle, loves to be held and cuddled, and prefers everything baby. But he has no desire to sit up, hold his own bottle, or crawl. I've learned to let go of achievement because of him. There is no reason to rush him into meeting someone else's milestones. He can do what he wants and I don't get to call the shots! He doesn't need to climb to the next phase as quickly as he can. He can just be what he is and become what he's becoming. With my oldest son, I read all of the BabyCenter milestone emails and made a mental checklist of what he was doing and not doing. I literally had a list of words he could say until he was like 2 years old and kept adding to it. Oh the achievement! Sheesh. I think the kiddos can feel that pressure, and they just don't need it. Because I love them anyway. #lovewins.

I don't feel the need to prove myself anymore. I'm not trying to climb the corporate ladder. I'm letting go of outcomes and just doing what I can to spread love into the world and especially at work. There's really enough to go around. 

My kids taught me a lot over the last year and I'm so grateful to them. And I'm really glad to be back at work so I can apply what they've taught me. 

And in the spirit of not being too focused on outcomes and achievement, I've spent about an hour total on this entry including edits. It's shipping as is. 

On Endings

This is the seventh in a series of posts describing my experiences at Integral Agile Wizardry Boot Camp attended December 3 - 7, 2014 in San Francisco.

Post 1: The Starting Line of Integral Agile Wizardry
Post 2: The Integral Race Begins
Post 3: Learning to Pace Myself
Post 4: The Me
Post 5: Getting Over Myself Already
Post 6: Impact

So a crazy thing is, 6 months after the Integral Agile Bootcamp ended, I have a huge ending of my own happening. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

The last day of the Integral Agile Bootcamp was a tough day. After spending the week in beautiful Petaluma, CA I was mourning the end. I spent a lot of time during the week looking out the windows of the worn-out, minimalist building that was our training facility, noticing the beautiful rolling hills backdrop. This place is so beautiful and plush and green, it almost looks unreal. It looks like it could be a movie set. And what irony that I compare the truth of a beautiful, natural setting to something created by people! I noticed that the frame of the windows and sliding glass doors and the building blocked my view. I could only see fragments of the hillside. It’s a lot like what you can know about people. You can only see part of them, and even then you don’t see them clearly. You see only what they make visible to you, clouded by what you want to see through your own lens, a view obstructed by the frame of your own windows of reality.

I wanted to see the purity of the landscape, without it being spoiled by human-created structures. So I went outside to the back of the building. I kept walking until anything human-created was outside of my line of sight. I stood there and I cried. This was not just a few tears falling from my eyes. This was not just a brief sadness. This was an all-consuming cry, the kind that you think might never end. The kind where you can’t breathe through your nose and your throat is constricted with sadness. The kind of cry that leaves your eyes and nose red and afterwards you’re exhausted. Petaluma is such a beautiful, serene place. Leaving there that Friday felt like I was leaving home.

But home is not a place, is it? Home is people. That week, the participants of the first Integral Agile Bootcamp became home to me. We created the kind of connection that is very rare. The kind of connection that means the next time you speak with one of those from the group, it’s like you’ve never stopped talking no matter how long it’s been. 

How much of what I saw in the people I met was only what they let me see? How much of it was obstructed by my own windows of reality? One can never know another entirely. Nor can one know themselves entirely. But I digress.

So the week ended, but it didn’t end there. It was just the beginning for many people. The beginning of a life-changing transformation. “There has been a ripple created in the plane of the universe.” That’s how I described it to the facilitators afterwards. I still don’t think they appreciate or understand the extent of what they opened up.

Many of us have been to ‘fucked up’ and back again and then some since that week in December. But those of us that I speak to regularly would never say we wished it didn’t happen. Even though I may have been to hell and back since then (and might still be in hell or headed there again – who can say for sure?), I would never wish for a trip back in time to choose another path that didn’t include Petaluma.

I try to put my finger on the one thing that created such an impact from that week, but I really have no idea what it was. I guess it could be this group of people in this place at this time. I know now more than ever that there are things at play in the world that I can’t explain and don’t understand. I’m sure this is one of those things. One of my new friends said “this group has been together before in some past life.” Maybe that’s it.

After leaving Petaluma, armed and ready to change the world, who would think 6 months later I’d be leaving my company to start a new adventure?

For the last four years, my company has been ‘my home’. I felt like I had finally found the company culture that matched my values and goals. World Wide Technology is a people-first company. They want to build strong teams and realize that the people make a company. I worked with some really wonderful people who have become very important to me. And home is people. They are home to me in many ways. 

And today is my last day at WWT. It's been a tough choice to make, but I think there are good things coming from it already. 

I sure will miss home. Terribly. My last day at WWT is not joyful. I'm very sad to be leaving. I've helped build and been a part of some really great teams, and that's the point of all this anyway. Connection with people. 

I used to be pretty scripted and have a solid plan before going to the next step in my career. Not this time. I’m certain about the immediate future with my husband’s company, but this change also opens up all kinds of opportunities that have never been possible to me before.

My son says all the time, “anything’s possible mom.” You’re right buddy. Anything’s possible. 

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.

- Gilda Radner (SNL comedian)

Impact

This is the sixth in a series of posts describing my experiences at Integral Agile Wizardry Boot Camp attended December 3 - 7, 2014 in San Francisco.

Post 1: The Starting Line of Integral Agile Wizardry
Post 2: The Integral Race Begins
Post 3: Learning to Pace Myself
Post 4: The Me
Post 5: Getting Over Myself Already

By Thursday night of the Integral Agile Bootcamp, we were all pretty tired, but kind of stoked for our Thursday night celebration. A few of the participants and I drove into town and stocked up on liquor, wine, and beer (lots of it).

Things started with some music and just hanging out. One of the participants spent the night creating balloon caricatures of each of us. He did amazingly well capturing the likeness of every person he drew.

At some point after a little bit of alcohol, the facilitators kicked off a 'talent show'. We all felt weird about being grown adults and planning for a talent show, but it turned out to be this amazingly raw, vulnerable, beautiful thing where people shared a part of themselves that they normally wouldn't. Some people told jokes, some people sang and played an instrument, others read a poem, and still others simply spoke. I cried more than once. It was such a moving experience, and after awhile just about everyone wanted to share a part of themselves with the group.

The trouble I had: I couldn't come up with a 'talent'. I dabble in painting. But I wasn't going to paint a picture. I had written a poem months earlier that seemed appropriate for the night. I'm not one who writes poems. In fact it is the only poem I've ever written ever, still (although I have one brewing in my head).  With shaking hands and wobbly feet (partly caused by alcohol consumption but mostly nerves), I stood up in front of the room and read my poem. I was asked to read it again. And again. And then one of the group asked if they could read it. Then someone else wanted to read it. Finally, a gal who now is one of my greatest friends came up, and tearfully read my poem. After she read it we hugged and cried.

What the hell was that?? I was so surprised. That experience alone has been a huge motivator for me. That I could inspire others with something I wrote was a big reason I started this blog. Apparently I can write. I've always loved research papers, but everything I had written thus far was very IT quadrant focused. This blog is all I and a little bit of WE quadrant. (for an Integral quadrant refresher, click here)

Over the last few weeks I've felt a little demotivated. I attempted to start a daily writing habit , and in so doing I realized that I had fallen into a bad mindset again (and more than once fallen back into it and out of it). I had started to feel like I wasn't making a difference. I had started again to feel like I didn't have a direction. That I was just going through the motions. Through writing, and by remembering that night at the bootcamp, I was reminded that the impact I can have doesn't have to be right there in front of me. Through writing and sharing my story, I'm making an impact. I need to be okay with not having that tangible outcome that shows me "here's the impact I've had". Sometimes just sharing myself out into the universe has an impact, and that can be enough. But I can't fall into the habit of not going for it. I wonder why I haven't written anything in this blog for two months? Hmmm...

That's such an "agile coaching" thing too. As a coach, I'm sort of separated from the outcomes of a team and an organization. I can sometimes see the outcomes, but the team or organization doesn't usually attribute the outcomes to anything I did. This is where the satisfaction of coaching teams has to come from within myself. Teams find their own way and their own answers. I'm just there to help them see that they can find their own answers. I have to have a "way of being" that creates a space for them to find their way. Many people don't realize how hard that is, and there aren't very many carrots along the way. In fact, there are LOTS of sticks! I need to have an internal compass that lets me see that I'm making an impact, even if my traditional carrot was others seeing and praising that impact. I'm good with what I'm doing. I'm pleased with the outcomes so far.

The night of the party I felt this amazing sense of acceptance. We all shed judgment, many of us faced our fears and anxieties and just went for it. I'm going to keep going for it.

Getting Over Myself Already!

This is the fifth in a series of posts describing my experiences at Integral Agile Wizardry Boot Camp attended December 3 - 7, 2014 in San Francisco.

Post 1: The Starting Line of Integral Agile Wizardry
Post 2: The Integral Race Begins
Post 3: Learning to Pace Myself
Post 4: The Me

Around the third day of Integral Agile Wizardry Bootcamp, I started to get out of my own way a little bit. I started to put myself into the group (the WE, if you are an integral person). Instead of sitting in the group fearing to speak, I started to put myself out there. At this point I still hadn’t dealt with my survey results (see this post), but I had started to realize I was a worthy part of the group nonetheless.

On a smaller scale, we had established groups of 5 to work together on creating an Integral Agile Readiness Assessment that we could take back to our companies and expand upon. The group was made up of a pretty diverse set of people. All of us had our own set of creative and reactive tendencies, and the dynamics of the group created a perfect environment to explore and experiment with those tendencies.

Immediately upon our group joining together, group dynamics took hold. Tuckman’s stages of group development come to mind: Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing.

Our group did a little bit of Forming work, but not to be outdone, we went pretty quickly into Storming. And what a Storm it was. Who hasn’t been in a group with a super diverse set of people and hasn’t gotten completely stuck in Storming? The setup of the group provided a perfect parallel to what an agile team goes through. We had all of the right ingredients:

• A goal (Draft Agile Readiness Assessment)
• A timebox (End of the week)
• Motivated, committed people
• People with diverse skills and backgrounds

We immediately got stuck on process (The IT quadrant of the integral model). Were we going to work independently to come up with our own ideas or were we going to work to group consensus first? Was this survey question a modality or an item? I felt myself getting frustrated. I felt the achiever in me just wanting to get something done. Ah what a perfect manifestation of my reactive tendencies! And those tendencies are: to go off on my own and do it myself without anyone else. Ignoring the relationships that need to be built (The WE quadrant) to make something amazing and thinking I could do it all myself. As we discussed process, I wanted us to work independently and come back to the group. At least then, the achiever in me (Reactive, but “I” quadrant) would be satisfied. I’d get SOMETHING done! Other members of the group wanted to work together.

We agreed to work together, and we tried the good ole' agile technique of an information radiator. We combined individual work with group work by individually brainstorming focal points and then coming together to combine those focal points. Brilliant.

Or not. We got caught up in process (IT quadrant) again, trying to categorize things appropriately and not duplicate multiple focal points. UGH! I kept observing my reactive tendencies to want to take over and control the situation. I’d observe, accept the feeling, and move on. I’d feel intensity in my core. I’d acknowledge the feeling, accept it, and relax. Throughout, I kept trying to get us going and was open about my feedback on how we were doing. I was sure people could feel my frustration, but I really tried to take more of a backseat. At least for me, it felt like a backseat.

At the end of one of our group sessions we did a brief gratitude exercise to close the day. We went around our small group, appreciating each other for whatever each of us found compelled to appreciate. As we went around the group, it was clear to me that there was some major unsaid tension. I was so sure that everyone was pissed at me for having my reactive tendencies come out. I started to get more and more upset and by the time we got around to all five of us and we were ready to step away, I blurted out, “I feel like there’s some major tension in our group. I would please ask you to provide me with feedback if I’ve offended you or if my reactive tendencies have impacted you negatively today.” Everyone awkwardly looked around at each other. Suddenly the floodgates opened. In fact there was some unsaid tension. But that tension had very little to do with me. I was only there taking on the feelings of the group as my own. I was accurate in my feeling of tension, but I was way off about it being all about me.

What’s the big lesson here?

There can be tension happening in a group of which I am a part, and it’s NOT ALL ABOUT ME. I really need to get over myself. How does this ‘being caught up in myself’ impact my ability to coach teams and organizations? It has a MAJOR impact.

I realized during the boot camp that I have all of this static going on inside my head about how I’m being perceived, what people are thinking about me, how they are looking at me, and how they are judging me. And I do this to a point that is unhealthy and unproductive. I’m not suggesting I should be walking around not giving a shit. But I kind of am. As a coach and just as a healthy person, I need to realize that this world is not all about me, and that people are often not paying me a second mind. Most people are caught up in their own internal struggles and aren’t laser focused on what I’m doing or not doing or saying. Get over yourself Nikky!

It was this realization that really got me into the mode of putting myself out there in the boot camp. Something that I hope others take away from this post: When you’re working with individuals or teams, either coaching or playing an active role as a member of a team, try to remember that it’s not all about you. Everyone has their own shit they’re dealing with. Everyone is in their own head, worried about how they are coming across or worried about their own conflict with someone. The tension isn’t always about you. People aren’t worried about your misstep when you provided feedback on someone’s code or someone’s acceptance criteria. They are worried about their own missteps. Get over yourself! And if you're working people are in that constant mode of judgment and they are paying attention to your every move, they might have their own unhealthy reactive tendencies.