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It Might As Well Be Me! with Lyssa Adkins

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Keeping Agile Non-Denominational, Episode 10

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Alex Kudinov   Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Tandem Coaching Academy's Keeping Agile Nondenominational podcast. Today we have a very special guest joining us. It's Lyssa Adkins. We are your hosts today Cherie Silas and ,I, Alex Kudinov. Lyssa it's really good to have you today and my first question to you is, everybody in the Agile space knows your book; knows your work. You've been put on this pedestal of Mother of Agile Coaching quite some time ago; you've been standing there? How does it feel?

Lyssa Adkins   It's not mine and sometimes I'm put there and that's okay. I'd rather have someone occupying that space who's got the perspective and the position of serving the hole. What I notice is that over time, the work of advancing Agile coaching has been fanning out to many, many people. I'm not the one advancing Agile coaching anymore. Cherie Silas is and lots of other people and I think that feels really good. I think that's what we need to do is just continue advancing together. If it serves people that I am, and my work is an entry doorway, and that somehow has them go, "Oh, my gosh, she's a model to follow." Great! Let them follow a model. That's how I learned my hardest mind and heart shifting skills was by following a model.

Alex Kudinov   So as you are observing this ever changing landscape of Agile coaching that you helped to ignite what do you like and what don't you like particularly about it?

Lyssa Adkins   I like pretty much everything about it. I think that we are serving our teams, we're serving our organizations, I believe more of us will be serving our communities and our world, the best we can with the situation's we're in. So the thing about Agile coaching is that we enter a situation and it's already there. It's already there, you know, the water has come under the bridge, there's lots of hard feelings, there's this belief, there's that thing in the way, there's all of this stuff and unlike methodologists, who want to sit around and talk about questions like, "Well, what's the right approach? Is it approach A or approach B?" I'm like, "I don't know. I get in, and it's approach hybrid A and B" and we go from there. So I think that, to answer your question, we're doing the best we can. We need to just continue honing our skills so we can continue meeting the challenging situations that we get presented with because we're not in control of how they get creative.

Cherie Silas   It sounds like you're very responsive in your work and that makes me wonder, what role the learning of professional coaching had in the way that you actually interact with people?

Lyssa Adkins   Professional coaching changed me utterly. People who knew me as a plan driven project manager, and people who know me now, there are very few of those people. It's been a long time but they see two very different people. I think, actually, my husband is one of those people and I think what he sees is someone who is more her real self now.  I think that that's the journey a lot of people take. A little meandering pathway on the journey a lot of people end up taking when they encounter professional coaching is they get permission to be themselves, and then finding out that them being themselves is actually the smartest, most strategic safest thing they could possibly do when it felt like the diciest.

Cherie Silas   I know that my journey from the time I spent from the day I heard about professional coaching until the time I finished my first couple of rounds of training, I was a completely different human. I didn't know myself anymore, or maybe I knew myself and realize that I never did before. What would you say about the journey of professional coaching and how that connects for people who consider themselves Agilists? Why would they even want to do that?

Lyssa Adkins   Well, people who consider themselves Agilists are likely to run into many situations when being smart about something isn't actually going to change the situation. You'll feel it, an Agilist will feel it, when it's like the third or fourth case study they brought and still the other person hasn't changed their mind. Or they've tried approach A, approach B, approach M, approach N, and still the person is not moving. Though they say they want something, they're doing something different over here. So those are situations where more mentoring, more teaching, more convincing, all of those tactics are going to fall short.  So if an Agilist, if you're out there and listening to this and you're going, "Oh, gosh, that's what's happening to me," then you might want to look into professional coaching school. That's the skill set coaching and facilitation are both from  the body of work that says you don't have to know about the content to be extremely exquisitely helpful to other people in helping advance their movement through their situation or their content. I think that's how people know whether or not professional coaching is something interesting to them. One of the things I like about the professional coaching world is that most of the schools are set up that there's a taster class at the very beginning. If you go to this three day class, and you hate it, you can never come back again but you will have gotten something useful because it's just a bite size unto itself. It also can open big worlds and to help people know when they're ready. When I went to organization and relationship systems coaching school, that taster, that three day taster, I was like, whoa, whoa, that's not for me. I was not ready. I didn't come back for two, three more years.

Cherie Silas   We do something similar. We have what we call Discover Coaching. It's just a ten week program where we meet weekly and you get in and figure out if this is the right thing for you. If nothing else, you'll leave with some better communication skills and coaching skills that you can bring to your job.

Lyssa Adkins   Yeah, I think at this stage in the game, pretty much everyone, not only people doing Agile coaching pretty much everyone, have to bring up their level of skill in listening, self management, and inquiry. Everyone. We're no longer in a situation where it's, "Oh, yeah, there's a problem. There's a solution. Let's go. If we were in that world we would have so many things "solved." What we're in is a world of messes and it just takes a while to clean up a mess. So any number of things might start to clean up the mess a little bit but probably no one thing is going to "solve it." So we need a lot of people in it together to figure out what's the next wise step to take in this mess.

Alex Kudinov   So one thing I would add to that is professional coaching is all about awareness. It was  an interesting study, a survey of C-level executives and they actually named awareness, awareness of your surroundings, or yourself or your behaviors, the top skill for the C suite these days.

Lyssa Adkins   I'm happy to hear that.

Alex Kudinov   Yeah and it's another question what they do about it, right?

Lyssa Adkins   But awareness about awareness is first. Come on. Let's give them some props, you know?

Alex Kudinov   Yeah, it's like unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence.

Lyssa Adkins   That's right. That's right.

Alex Kudinov   That's a step?

Lyssa Adkins   That's a step.

Alex Kudinov   So as the Agile coaching community gets from that unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence, what do you think professional coaching skills would give those who are already good at Agile coaching as it's practice today?

Lyssa Adkins   Well I think the biggest thing that professional coaching skills give Agile coaches who don't already have this skill set, and there are fewer and fewer of those -- more and more Agile coaches I encounter already are quite deep into professional coaching skills in one way or another -- it doesn't mean they're good at them. This is the important thing too. So we just talked about conscious incompetence right now. Right? So the thing about professional coaching skills is that unlike other knowledge, it's not like you read it, you got it, you move on. It's like you read it, it upsets your entire world, you have to reorganize your identity and come out the other side, and then practice your ass off. Then eventually you get good at it. So I think this is why this skill set is quite different; you'll stay in conscious incompetence for a while. That's okay because the cool thing about professional coaching skills is that if you are doing it with the other person, or the or the team, or whomever you're working with, in control of what happens, you can't hurt them. Very unlike mentoring, you actually can hurt people by the forcing of your point of view and them just swallowing or getting tired of dealing with it and saying, "Fine, I'll do it." So while you are unconsciously incompetent, don't worry, the incompetence is okay as long as you keep the other people in the driver's seat.

Cherie Silas   Trust the process.

Lyssa Adkins   Absolutely.

Alex Kudinov   Yeah. Trust in the process is the mantra. So I'm wondering, we talk a lot in the Agile community about the differences between fixed mindset and growth mindset. How do you keep that growth mindset and what are you still learning about coaching skills as you keep developing?

Lyssa Adkins   So, for me, I'll answer the question for me. So, as me, as an individual human being, the growth mindset gets presented to me again and again because I feel places where I am incompetent. One of those places this year was just how much trauma we are going through as a human species right now and our first truly, truly global pandemic that has touched every nation, the political upheaval, and the struggle for equality that has been too long in coming; all of these things. So all those things in the backdrop and my inability to have conversations with people who I hold dear in my life because they're holding a point of view that I find abhorrent. So this is where I run into my conscious incompetence as a coach. Holy crap, all of a sudden, I'm in situations where I don't have the range to hold what people are saying. I don't have the range to continue to turn judgment into curiosity and enter their world. I don't have the skills to work with people who are experiencing significant anxiety.  So one of the outlets that I have for learning is the Coaches Rising group. I really, really love their productions. One of them that they did was called The Power of Embodied Transformation this last summer. So I think that's about a four month course. It's pretty intense; 90 minutes every week for four months. They bring what I consider to be the best of the best of people in the professional coaching world. It's like these little tasters or these little vignettes. So we touched into trauma informed coaching and we did a lot of touching into somatic coaching and different different ways in different philosophies. That has been really informative to me in ways I don't really quite know yet. I know my practice is influenced by it but I haven't practiced those particular skills enough to say, "Yes, I'm now a trauma informed coach." I'm not there. I'm still practicing but I know they're important.

Cherie Silas   So I agree. This world we're in right now is...it's a mess. I do see where some of the skills and competencies we know as professional coaches are helpful, right? They give us the ability to open up conversations and to be curious, rather than being judgmental...and yet, I don't always know that I have enough emotional intelligence to handle what's in front of me. I do realize that over these past few years, I'm realizing things I didn't understand. For me, who I am as a coach has really helped me and being able to just kind of live through that experience. What about you? How's that been?

Lyssa Adkins   This last year has been hell. I mean, in a nutshell. I can look back and find all kinds of silver linings. I can see all kinds of growth that's happened for me. I can be so grateful for my privilege that I have a roof over my head and I'm not worried about food, which is not true for so many people right now. So, all of that said, I have been keenly feeling the tremendous suffering we're going through as a human species. We really are. We really are. I wanted to be really clear of how much of that suffering I could hold in my coaching work and how much of it I need to refer out to other people who are specifically skilled in helping people work with that. What happened for me is in that power of embodied transformation class, it was coaching for me. I got on every week and I learned some skill or some process but being led through the process myself was allowing me to process all of this emotion, all of this fear and worry, all of these very low vibrations; emotions I was and have been stewing in. Now, I've gotten so much better processing those in my body. So between that class, between my Zen practice, between my movement practice, my practices have significantly increased this year, just to keep on an even keel; just to keep open and functioning.

Cherie Silas   So the same stuff, we're still humans. So we go into the corporate world, we go into the office, and we carry that in with us. I think the organizations, people in the organizations, they recognize Agile coaches, and they're like, "Yes, you're a coach, I'm going to go with you to talk about everything, not just Agile." What would be, I guess, the words of wisdom that you would have for Agile coaches, as they're dealing with this tough environment in the corporate world?

Lyssa Adkins   I think my biggest word of wisdom is know what you're there for and design a very clear alliance around it. It's a very dicey thing to be a professional coach, have those skills, and be in an organization in an Agile coaching position. Let's say the organization views that as, "Oh, you're going to help my teams deliver better?" Let's say that that's the perhaps unspoken expectation of why you're there. Yet, you have this big toolbag of professional coaching skills, and your beingness, your ability to handle such a range of human experience, has people disclose lots of things to you but you might not be there to be their coach, to be their personal coach, to be their career coach, to be their Agile coach; these are all very separate things. So I think that the skill of designing an alliance on the way in the door, and then continually as things happen, is the thing I'm finding the most useful in my practice, and the thing I'm finding that my clients don't tolerate very much. So I have to really sort of muscle them into that conversation to begin with. I don't think people are used to talking about how we want this to go and where are the boundaries and expectations? And through the conversation, "Oh, I just discovered an expectation. Let me tell you about it." People are not used to that in the moment but I think it's super important.   I need to tell my clients, for example, "If you want me to coach the whole person, it's possible that we're going to be talking about them leaving your organization. So how would that go for you?" Really. Let's talk about that. These are things people don't think about. These are things hiring managers don't think about.

Alex Kudinov   Yeah, so it's fascinating how many different perspectives professional coaching brings to the world that we get used to operating in. So I'm wondering, so Lyssa Adkins is known for -- and I checked, 11 years in May -- when the first issue of Coaching Agile Teams was published. If you were to write version two, right now, what would you have included that is, you think, sorely missing from that book?

Lyssa Adkins   I did but I did it in a series of podcasts. About this time last year, I started to get the idea of, "Gosh, the world is not done with this book." Then it was just coming up on its 10th year anniversary, Alex, and I was thinking, 'Why is it selling more in this six month period than in any other six month period before?' I just don't understand that. There's a way in which I just want to close the book end on this and move on into my own endeavors but there's also a way that the world is not done with this book and this content. I think of it as just a really useful, early first book. Right?  It's shocking enough, as a first book, there's more shocking to come but it's shocking enough as a first book. So when I got the bright idea that I want to record this audiobook, and the publisher said, yes, then I really looked at the book, and I really challenged myself. Do I need to write a second edition before I record this audiobook? The answer was, no. We're still working on every single thing that's in this book. We've not gone past any of it as a community. It takes a lot longer. Plus, there are new people coming into our Agile community all the time. They're starting from not even hearing about professional coaching. So, Alex, what I decided to do was record that book, as is, because that book is doing its work in the world. It's functioning as intended.  Of course, the art and science of Agile coaching has progressed quite a bit in ten years. So what I decided to do was sit down with Leslie Morse and the Women in Agile podcast. We recorded a podcast series that covers 10 topics. What I do is I point to the thought leaders in those topics and I say "Go learn from them." So this is a way that I'm pointing to...you know when someone assists you in soccer, and you make the goal, you turn around, you point to the person who assisted, right? Give them kudos, give them their appropriate place, because without them wouldn't have happened. This is a little bit different. I've left the field and I'm pointing to other people going, "Hey, they're still on the field, look at them." So we talk about, for example, systems coaching, I point to Cherie, I say "Go look at what she has done. Bringing systems coaching into the world of Agile coaching, more specifically with the scrum Alliance and that whole path of mentorship toward the scrum team coach and the other certifications" as an example. So that was my decision; to point to others.

Alex Kudinov   Before I go to your, 'more shocking things are coming', and we'll definitely get there, because, look, shocking things from Lyssa Adkins are shocking and exciting. So it sounds like you are ready to move on. It sounds like you are thinking about other things there. It sounds like you will be pulling a lot of people; a lot of people will follow you. What will they need to know before they are ready to follow you into your next stage?

Lyssa Adkins   I have no clue. I just don't know what that next stage is. More than likely, it's going to be much more of a collective effort than an individual effort. I look back at the Coaching Agile Teams book and that was very much of a, Lyssa and the universe are creating this thing, and we're bringing it into being, and boom, here it is. Now let's move.'  What's happening to me now is that I am awash in a very large context of how the hell are we going to advance the human race so we don't annihilate ourselves or so that we don't have to just retreat into horrible warlike tribalism. So that is certainly not going to be something that is more of a universe, "Lyssa go off and create and throw something on the world." That is going to be something that I need and other people will need. We'll all need each other equally to figure it out together.

Alex Kudinov   So as you talk about that, I remember that SOGI model which starts with an individual goes to groups, then goes to organization, and those go to society. What's coming up for me is that you graduated from groups, graduated into organizations, and now you're looking at the society as a whole and what the skills you are bringing to that new endeavor, new fight, whatever you call that. So what are you seeing there that we, as Agile community, might not yet see?

Lyssa Adkins   Well, I think there are plenty of people doing a lot of really good work to deal with our planetary issues, which I think it's gonna become more evident to us that they really are planetary, and they are beyond national boundaries. I think the pandemic is sort of the first that's waking us up to, "Oh, holy crap, we really are interconnected in ways that are terrifying and beautiful." That is a whole new consciousness for us. That's a new thought to be arriving to a lot of people at one time. So I would love it if people who are good at dealing with change that is pervasive, perpetual, exponential, exhausting...people who know how to do that, Agilists and professional coaches, could start to put our feelers out in the world and go, "Okay, if we're going to participate in helping there become a more thriving and just and sustainable, maybe even regenerative, human presence on the planet, what will we do? Where will we go? What will we invent? Who are we joined with? What needs to be done now? These are all questions I don't have answers to. I do know that there are millions of us already distributed all over the planet. I mean, if you think about it, if I were to sit up there as some evil genius and go, "So how could I create this community of people all over the planet who can deal with persistent and really difficult change?" Then think that's gonna take decades to do that? Well, that piece is already done. That's pretty cool.

Cherie Silas   In the midst of that, we're very resilient and, I think, have shown ourselves to be able to just pick up the pieces and keep on going in the face of everything. I guess I'm wondering, for you, what part this world of coaching has brought to your own personal resilience?

Lyssa Adkins   Well, I appreciate the reminder that we're resilient, Cherie, actually. I tend to go into the dark night of the soul amazingly quickly and dive in there, and wallow around in there, maybe a little bit too much and forget that I actually am resilient. Clearly I am because I'm thriving. I'm still thriving through this, even though it's tough as hell and I don't particularly like a lot of it. My business is thriving; my family's thriving. I am thriving. I'm growing. We're all moving forward. I think resilience is a daily replenishment activity for me. What's come into it recently, and this sounds strange in the face of so much that's dire, but what has come into recently is the role of innocence and play for me. I really don't prioritize play, fun, and joy; I don't. That has been a real detriment to me and when I can prioritize play, joy, and fun and sort of being more in the flow, everything goes a lot better. So it's a conscious practice for me to pick up those essence energies and inhabit them while I'm going about my day, doing my work, whatever I'm doing.

Cherie Silas   So you mentioned your family, and I'm going to ask you a question. It's like way left field. I've been doing this for over a decade. You've been doing it way longer than me. My family has no clue when I do. They actually claim that I work for the CIA or something. I mean, they literally have no clue. My youngest daughter does tell people I work for the CIA. She says, "We don't know what she does. She goes places. We have no idea. She keeps getting paid so she must work for the CIA." I'm wondering how your family has embraced and understood this world that you've been a part of all these years?

Lyssa Adkins   "So often, I wish that my family members could be flies on the wall in a class that I'm teaching, or in a boardroom -- back when we were in a physical space; we're in a virtual boardroom now -- when I'm working with executives, which is more the case of what I'm doing these days. I would love for them to see what it means to be able to interject into a conversation that's going on from a totally different perspective and to help draw everyone up to the pattern level of the conversation so that they can just have such a much better chance of having a generative conversation, making good decision, whatever. I think, over time, there's enough of me out there in videos and all that sort of thing that my family has watched those things. So over time, they get a sense of the topic areas that I'm involved in and what I talk about. My husband and my daughter are very, very receptive to coach-like things. I will not say that I coach them because I have too much of an opinion.  I'm not good at coaching my family, I don't think it's a recommended activity actually. However, things like designing alliances, things like being clear about needs, making clear requests, asking for help, those things we have definitely used the professional coaching skills in our household. My daughter, who's 23 now, will be very clear with me if she wants coaching or advice. We design alliances about everything. It is not unusual to hear my husband say, "So before we blah, blah, blah, let's design an alliance around this." Now my mother, as soon as I move into anything to try to improve our conversation or communication skills, she'll say, "Don't do that Agile coaching thing to me." In my mind, I go, "It's not even an Agile coaching thing. Come on mom."

Alex Kudinov   She's mom and she probably knows her daughter best.

Lyssa Adkins   From a certain perspective, yeah, but I think all children supersede their parents and their parents don't really know the totality of them.

Alex Kudinov   In this world that is stressful, that is busy, and I cannot imagine how busy you are, these days and always, what are some self care tips you can give to us, as an Agile coach, that work for Lyssa Adkins.

Lyssa Adkins   I'm not busy. I think that's the first self care tip is that I have finally encountered what is sustainable pace for me. There are times when I choose to go beyond that but those are small blips in time now versus going beyond it all the time, which was my norm. One of the self care things that has helped me do that is that I've been using the Personal Agility System for the last three years. It's week 122 of using a Personal Agility System. That starts with the question of what really matters; what matters most. The number one thing that matters most, to me, is what I call ample time. That's to have ample time to take care of myself and my family, and ample time to do everything that I'm doing well. I really get quite nervous, and beside myself, and, over time, very surly, if I am doing too many things, and I feel like I'm not doing some of them well. So because I have this category of ample time, things that are in the self care bucket count. They count. They count as part of the work. They are on my list next to the record the podcast with Tandem Coaching is yoga and meditation practice. I tick off how many times a week do I do the yoga meditation practice? So that's part of it. I think that for me, for someone who is a successive achiever, for me I have to have something in my face that says to me, "Wait a minute, you wanted ample time." This helps me do that.

Cherie Silas   Lyssa, plenty of people in this industry look up to you, as a mentor, even from afar, they may really see you as someone that can contribute to their lives. I've been blessed to be able to know you and actually interact with you and see just the humaneness of who you are. I'd like to hear you just give your wisdom, what are the words of advice that you would give people in this industry based on your experience?

Lyssa Adkins   There's a quote, I often say, I'll start with that. That's not new, necessarily but I think it's still really important. It's on my refrigerator, and it says, "It'll be okay in the end. If it's not, okay. It's not the end."  I really love that because I think that's maybe where the piece of advice comes from, is that none of this is forever. The things you love are going to fall away; the things you just like are going to fall away. None of this is forever. Every time we get fixated on something that's not right, something we want to be different, something we want to change, it's perhaps our fixation with that that keeps it around longer. Perhaps it would flow through if we were to ask, instead, the question, what's the lesson this thing is trying to show us? If it were a teacher, what would it be saying? We're talking about awareness before on the podcast, what is the exquisite awareness we can bring to what is. So it's this grasping again --  now I'm now realizing as Zen influence; the Zen lessons that I've been doing for years now that's coming in here -- it's the grasping that we do around situations, and people, and states of mind, and states of being, and we want it to be a certain way. I think if we're not learning the lesson through this pandemic, that nothing is permanent, we should start paying greater attention to that lesson. So there's also the wonderful side of that. It's that if it's not okay right now, chill out, it's gonna change. Don't grasp so hard and maybe it'll change even faster.

Alex Kudinov   Maybe just by the fact that you're grasping it, you are delaying its going away.

Lyssa Adkins   Very likely. This is true of emotions too. This year, I have really expanded my ability to process emotions through my body. I didn't know this, that if you allow yourself to fully feel an emotion, it flows through in about 90 seconds; it's not a long time at all. However we get into this recapitulation of emotion thought, thought that creates the emotion, emotion to thought, thought that creates--and just on and on this sort of macabre dance that happens between our mind and our bodies, all having to do with the release of stress hormones and whatnot. That will keep that stuff stuck for a really long time. If you drop the story and just feel the sensations in your body of the emotion, man, it flows through. It's shocking. So that's another process. That's another practice to pick up.

Alex Kudinov   So, just a little bit change of a topic. You are really big in Women in Agile communities. Ten Women Strong has the slogan, 'Lead a life on purpose.' What is your goal there?

Lyssa Adkins   Well, I want to be careful because the Ten Women Strong organization and the programs are created by Carolyn Dragon, the woman who owns that company. One of the things I decided to do after the sale of Agile Coaching Institute was to not create my own thing, but to find people who are already doing things that I wanted to support or that I thought were important. So, Maria Matarelli, one of the co-creators of Personal Agility System, that was one of the things I started supporting, and the other is Ten Women Strong, Carolyn Dragon, who comes to us from outside the Agile coaching world, but I knew her in the professional coaching world. We met in Coach's Training Institute Leadership Program more than 10 years ago now. So I'm speaking really on behalf of those programs, I thought they were so important that we needed to bring them into the Agile world. There are plenty of women in the Agile world but not plenty of women who are named as thought leaders. When you do this little test, who are the thought leaders in the Agile world, you don't get even close to an equal representation of women and men's names.  There are lots and lots of reasons for that, many of them structural, but some of the reasons are the internal oppression that women put on themselves and that I myself have imbibed plenty of. So the Ten Women Strong programs help women just dismantle and reprogram that stuff. Starting the authentic, creative, expressive is the process. So start authentically, like who are you? Who are you? Take off all of those things that people put on you. Who are you? Explore creatively. What are all the different creative aspects of yourself that you might not be bringing to your work or your life and why aren't you intermingling those things? Women have discovered things about themselves that they had put on the shelf for years and years and have been able to bring that forward. Then the final piece is live expressively. What are you here to express? For some women it's deciding whether or not to stay in a marriage with an alcoholic spouse. For other women, it's deciding, "I'm going to create, I'm going to create that collaboration with that woman over there that I've been seeing for the last couple years, who I think we really have something in common." For some people, it's starting a business, leaving a job, whatever it is. So 'live a life on purpose' is on her purpose. No one else's purpose, hers.

Alex Kudinov   So I'm wondering, we talked a lot about bringing professional coaching skills into the Agile world. Now you as an Agilist with a world name, moved into and associate with professional coaching folks and professional coaching people, what role of Agile do you see that might play in the professional coaching world?

Lyssa Adkins   I think Agile is the greatest excuse ever for all the things professional coaches talk about. Really. I think about the stuff that the Coaches Training Institute has been trying for years to bring into organizations with their leadership programs, for example, it's all incredibly good stuff. I've been through their program myself, it totally changed my life. It's all good stuff. Without the scaffolding that the Agile frameworks provide and without the constant pressure that they provide, by revealing impediments, by creating more transparency, by making it incredibly painful, for example, if there's not a product owner, or if the manager keeps telling people what to do. So all of that, all that churning up of the stuff that we can sweep under the carpet. That's like gold for professional coaching skills. So I think Agile is a cause creator for professional coaching.

Alex Kudinov   That's an interesting perspective. So for those professional coaches who are not Agilists and who listen to us, and the one kind of to wet their toes in Agile, what would be your advice?

Lyssa Adkins   Well, this is a dicey place, actually. We talked earlier about how professional coaching is such a different mindset that it's not like you just go learn about self management and bang, you're good at self management. It takes a deconstruction and reconstruction of who you are to expand your capacity to be good at self management and a lot of practice. It's the same with Agile. So I want professional coaches to be really careful here. It's not like you're gonna go take a two day class and then bang, you've got Agile, and you can just jump in as an Agile coach. No, it's not. It is a completely different world and a completely different mindset, and belief set, about how organizations should work, how teams should work, how we should organize work in general. Now, it's a belief set that is consistent with professional coaching. So that's the good news. Totally consistent. I mean, it's like peanut butter and chocolate. It goes together great, right, but those are two separate things, peanut butter and chocolate. So I think that I think that I would caution professional coaches to take Agile seriously.

Alex Kudinov   Yeah, it's not a two day class. So listen, what's on your desk that Agile community or professional coaching community for that matter can get excited about and should be looking forward to?

Lyssa Adkins   I have nothing on my desk right now.  I do have this inquiry that I am in this really deep inquiry of what does a globally distributed group, a network of networks if you will, of people who know how to work with change. What's our role? What's our role in our world? It's an inquiry I really want to invite other people in with me.

Alex Kudinov   I'm sure a lot of people will be happy to join and happy to help. So, Lyssa, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been very insightful, very fascinating conversations. I personally learned a lot and this has been Tandem Coaching Academy's Keeping Agile Nondenominational podcast. We had Lyssa Adkins today on our podcast and we are your hosts Cherie Silas and Alex Kudinov. Bye now.

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