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