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