Modeling How a Business Coaching Intervention Unfolds

Karma Cycle of Systemic Modeling

My instinct (rather than a rich data set) tells me that most of the people that are achieving excellence in organizational change and coaching are first and foremost excellent practitioners – that is, they did not earn their mark of excellence from book theory though some may have started there.  Rather through applied practice, review and improvement over many decades of trial and error, they excelled. Eliciting their unique knowledge is key to long term community growth and sustainability of their unique skills across time and continents, especially when their gifts are unusual. Establishing a learning cohort of trainees with clean language/inquiry skills (or the requisite curiosity to elicit somebody’s ‘how’ without being suggestive) seems a real win in this type of situation.

Here is one example that might illustrate this.  In 2019, 10 Systemic Modeling trainees and I joined in an advanced online training in which we were allowed to follow a current intervention as it unfolded.  Led by Caitlin Walker, the cohort has met frequently over 3-4 month period during an intervention that Caitlin had contracted for to reduce conflict in a small organization.   We have met online for regular updates on the progression of the intervention and for the opportunity to interview Caitlin on how she does what she does. She has both challenged us to think about what would work best next, and then shared what she actually would do herself as an intervention.  We compare notes, ask her questions to discover her logic and intuition.  Additionally we review what actually unfolded the following time we meet.

We have portions of the class where we can elicit more in depth from Caitlin how she:

1.) interviewed and shaped the intervention with the sponsor
2.) interviewed the group involved in the change/transformation
3.) coded (meaning interpreted against some models) the interviews
4.) decided what next intervention to hold at each step
5.) decided at each step whether to continue with the intervention.

The cohort uses clean questions (non-leading questions) to help reveal how Caitlin progresses in the moment as well as in the larger intervention as a Systemic Modeler.  Some of the answers to our questions revealed insights new to Caitlin (consciously) about how she makes her choices.  The output or the course becomes a way to generate material for her to share in her next book, or in formal training for advanced practitioners.

I felt inspired today to write this up after meeting with Siraj Sirajuddin, another person with a high level of skill in his executive coaching practice. He faces similar challenges to the ones Caitlin faces in growing his community of learners/followers to adopt his level of competence in coaching.  When I was explaining to him about the cohort, he became quite interested in this model.  
When someone reaches such a high level of unconscious competence through years of practice, it is not trivial to

1.) unpack how those unconscious decisions are made
2.) make them explicit in the form of heuristics that others can begin to understand and use, and
3.) train up a new set of people to start working (dipping their toes in) at that level. 

The unique skills of clean language trained group are a good way to do that.  And we have learned a tremendous amount along the way.

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Some of you may be interested in how the Systemic Modeling community has been developing. In 2019, I have witnessed exciting growth including:

1.) increased depth of understanding of Systemic Modeling with many trainees close to achieving Level 1 Certification.

2.) the growth in the awareness of different principles and heuristics that underpin excellence in these practices.

3.) the ability of practitioners to deal congruently and cleanly with a variety of circumstances in a business setting

4.) the number of people who have systematically applied themselves to learning the above and getting feedback within the community

5.) the number of people who express satisfaction, a sense of personal growth, and a sense of purpose in how they are applying clean in their work

6.) the growth in the number of supportive practice groups outside of formal training programs to give and receive feedback on their practice.

7.) the number of countries with practitioners rising to the level of skills mentioned above (Russia, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, Malaysia, France, US – perhaps I have missed a few).

I’m really happy that this valuable facilitation style, and clean inspired toolset for helping business people collaborate is spreading.

Caitlin Walker and Marian Way and all who support them to promote this work have really done a fabulous job over the past several years.  I can only imagine what the the future will bring.

Retrospective Letter to Self on my Birthday

Dear Andrea,

You’ve had a great year. It’s your birthday today and here is a little reflection from your alter-ego. Let’s admit it – you too need a boost. Everyone does.

Where did this all start?  Last fall, you were a bit dejected about the stress and fatigue and ineffective nature of your agile coaching gigs. You went radical. You wanted more joy in your work and you followed your instincts to deepen in the tools you had been reading about and following for years.

So, you decided to deepen in the practices and philosophies of Clean Language and Systemic Modeling.  Let’s not forget how you invested in yourself:

Clean for Teams – Sept 2017
Systemic Modeling – Dec 2017
Clean Space – Dec 2017
Clean Convergence – Jan 2018 (included Clean Interviewing)
Systemic Modeling – Sept 2018
Northern Taste of Clean Sept 2018

Way to go for ‘skin in the game’ and the great learnings you got from each of those! You are definitely better equipped from training, but also from putting it to use. Check out the following ways you put all of this to use:

You proposed and were accepted to present/facilitate Clean related topics at many conferences and meet-ups. The list of folders where you methodically keep track spans your whole iMac screen. Hey, you did that!

You hosted events with your mentor Caitlin Walker in the US 4 times this year – with the last one coming up in Boston on Oct 26th. You and she are offering 8 days of training across 4 modules. Two of those are all but sold out! 

You’ve started to build a small clean agile community in the US. You know Clean ways of inquiry and Clean Interviewing can be a super useful skills set to help organizations build anti-fragility into their human systems. Human systems impact products. Products impact humans too. So cleanagilecoaching.com was born. You birthed that!

You conducted a handful of online taster courses validating that people are happy to exchange money for learning (with you, yes!) You overcame your hesitation about teaching these skills online, even learned to effectively use a Flipchart during the Zoom session.

You started coaching agile coaches and trainers. That is huge. You’re getting paid to help some of the best, most thoughtful coaches out there take on these clean and systemic skills. Not just in the US, but in other countries too.  They came to you. Wow!

You invested heavily in technology this year as well, buying backlights, an iMac, a quality Rode Mike, and a new iPad/pen – where you can also use live drawing and share via Zoom. You travelled in Europe for a month with only a SIM enabled iPad. That magic keyboard was barely touched (hint, dictate, when you can for typing).  Everything worked like a charm (well except that your SIM card provider later texted to you that you used too much on their ‘unlimited’ plan, and their plan wasn’t meant for people living in Europe. For you, three weeks isn’t living, but you’ll have to be more sparing of data usage in the future!

You were contracted by a large university to train them for a day in the use of the clean inquiry skills – yay for first big client in the IT space – at the level of Director. They wanted to improve their listening skills, and stop talking over one another, taking time to explore topics. A perfect use for Clean. 

You have been a great volunteer out there in service too.  While you give a lot of free advice, and time to edit other peoples books and work, you also started running a Jerry Weinberg inspired book club on Quality Software Management book series; you were a voice in the Agendashift community for the Clean Language channel. Gladly, there are many there now, who are training or already properly trained in Clean, who can chime in as well, when folks have questions.

You did mourn when Jerry passed away in August – that was a very big loss for you.  So sad – and glad – you are still thinking of his work! Keep that up!

You’ve taken some risks, stayed firm and on course. It hasn’t been easy being independent, but you did that because you gained your OWN life satisfaction and ability to handle any difficult situation with congruence and curiosity using these same skills. You know the value they bring!

Just wanted to say thank you for taking time out to follow your passions and beliefs during the past year. Wherever they lead from here – the world is out there for you to explore. Don’t hold back, bring your riches. The world needs them. And you will shine wherever you go; whatever you do.  [and please don’t get rid of this blog – it may seem dated, and not up to snuff visually, but it’s a great story of your past 7 years…]

Take care Andrea,

Your alter-ego

(Thank you, alter ego!)

Gratitude for All the Support

Today I started my first email campaign to continue growing the community that is my audience for Clean and Agile work in the US. If you would like to sign up, hop on over to my Clean Agile Coaching website and click on the Register button!

I want to express my gratitude to the many people who have supported me in growing my network of connections.  Sometimes my work is as simple as returning the kindness with a simple thank you!

Thank you Mike!
Mike Burrows of www.agendashift.com invited me to contribute facilitation suggestions for his clean language inspired 15-minute FOTO exercise, documented on his website and in his recently published book, Agendashift. Mike’s attention to non-directive, collaborative, conversation-based continuous improvement from strategy to tactical action is heavily Clean Language inspired. His Agendashift transformation facilitation tools are a true antidote to forced top down agile transformations that don’t work! And his online Slack group is one of the best!

Thank you Daniel!
Daniel Mezick of www.openspaceagility.com invited me to present Clean for Teams in a webinar for his followers. It helped me reach agile coaches while getting me comfortable with delivering online workshops.  Daniel, who wrote the preface to Mike’s book, created another extremely compatible approach called Open Space Agility. Based on invitation, open space, and time-bound experiments using the energy of the willing, organizations should consider that approach for transformation initiation or for correcting a transformation gone wrong.

Thank you Joe!
Jochen Krebs, Scrum Trainer and leader of the www.agilenyc.com community recorded a podcast interview with me on Clean Language and then invited me to New York for an evening workshop at Agile NYC. This in turn is leading to the AgileNYC conference keynote by Caitlin Walker and a few workshop opportunities to help NYC become a hub for clean-inspired agility.

Thank you Ben!
Ben Linders, a keen agilist who specializes in Retrospectives, interviewed me for infoq.com regarding Clean Language and Coaching with Curiosity, which led to many people signing up for my email newsletter.

Thank you Richard!
Richard Kasperowski  helped advertise the first Clean for Teams training in Boston to the Agile community this past April. Richard promotes the Core Protocols, another model for interpersonal team communication that I support whole-heartedly, and which pairs nicely with Clean Language and Clean for Teams.

Thank you Simon Coles!
Simon Coles who has the first ever tech company fully running on Clean Language inquiry, from hiring to sales and everything in between gives me regular advice and guidance.

Thank you Caitlin!
And lastly, but definitely not least: Caitlin Walker of www.trainingattention.co.uk without whose incredible authenticity, skill, training and devotion to bringing clean to organizations and groups has led me to where I am in my life mission. In 2018 alone, she has planned 4 separate trips to the US to help me promote her incredible Clean for Teams facilitation tools, largely to folks in the Agile community.

There are many other individuals in the Clean and Agile communities who have done their part. I need all of you and please stay with me on this journey, as I have not yet ‘arrived’!

Empathic Listening, Symbolic Modeling and Non Violent Communication – Compared

On August 19th and 20th, 2017 I had the good luck and privilege to participate in a weekend of Empathic Listening training and practice, led by by Allan Rohlfs (NVC Trainer), a student of Eugene Gendlin.  Gendlin was a philosopher, who was heavily influenced by Carl Rogers – a pioneer in client-centered psychotherapy. Rogers noticed that Empathic Listening contributed greatly to the creation of a safe space and connection between the client and the therapist. Gendlin went on to create ‘Focussing’, a method Rohlfs uses to help teach his version of Empathic Listening.

Focussing uses the term ‘felt sense’ to describe a pre-verbal or unconscious but emerging awareness about something.  In Empathetic Listening, there is both a listener and a speaker.  The listener is to discern the emergent ‘felt sense’ of the speaker and to use those moments to reflect back to the speaker by repeating or slightly paraphrasing what they said.   The idea is that the listener might, by focussing on the listener, also ‘get’ this same ‘felt sense’, that it is shared.  Unlike what we might think of being empathetic in normal every day discourse, there is a LOT more focus in a one way direction here. In every day interactions, being empathetic comes and goes in between other interactions, but is not the ‘purpose’ of the interaction.

In Symbolic Modeling, there is a client and a coach or facilitator.  The client expresses subconscious thought via metaphors that the coach intentionally elicits. Those metaphors come from what I imagine is the same place of ‘knowing’ as the ‘felt sense’ – expressing something that might never have been verbalized, that is emerging and embodied.  It seems to me, that Symbolic Modeling might be faster in helping the client understand themselves than Empathic Listening.  Symbolic Modeling makes no attempt and has no goal for the facilitator to ‘understand’ or ‘get’ anything about the client.  The Symbolic Modeller is a facilitator for the client – helping them to create their own ‘metaphorical’ or internal landscape.  As he Symbolic Modeller observes the coachee, and reflects their words back, they are looking for embodied shifts or changes (i.e. changes in facial expression, sighs, body movements) to support the new awareness emerging.  This is similar to Empathic Listening – where the body holds the wisdom.

While the  purpose of Symbolic Modeling (coaching with a desired outcome) and Empathic Listening (rapport/connection) differs, the effect on the coachee/speaker could be similar.  

During the workshop, Allan caught me (when I was listener in a pair) trying to use a question, and he interrupted and asked me not to do that because any question would be ‘leading’.  While this gave me a LOT of anguish at first because I am so comfortable with clean questions and I do not experience them as leading, I came to accept the guidance for empathic listening.  This awareness will help me to pause longer and perhaps more frequently while coaching using Clean questions in a Symbolic Modeling session, rather than coming up with a question right away after the speaker stops.

During the training, we each got to sit in both the speaker chair and the listener chair in a pair, with Allan coaching the listener and everyone else observing.  Each speaker (in the speaker/listener pair) seems to have felt ‘gotten’/understood.  We seemed also to all agree that sitting in the Speaker’s chair was absolutely necessary to understanding Empathic Listening.  In other words, you have to be listened to well by someone experienced in Empathic Listening, to really understand the effect. In that way, you may become a more effective empathic listener.  This is true for Symbolic Modeling and Clean Language – best to experience it first.

On the relationship between Non Violent Communication (NVC) and Empathic Listening

The event participants were all familiar, if not expert, in the use of Non Violent Communication techniques for creating rapport and understanding. While NVC has the certain purpose of creating safety and connection between two people, within its construct, it includes places where one person asks questions of the other, in particular with relation to understanding the other person’s feelings and needs.  If you are not familiar, NVC uses OFNR (Observation, Feelings, Needs, Request) framework where the empathic bits are mostly centered in the exchange of feelings and needs.  The most significant difference between Non-Violent Communication and Empathic Listening as learned in the workshop is that in Empathic Listening, the Listener does not try to guess the feelings or needs of the person speaking. That element falls away in Empathic Listening in favor of a more natural verbal validation and very slight rewording of what was said. Observations and Requests are also not present in Empathic Listening.  Both are strongly geared toward creating safety, empathic listening being much more a one way flow, it seems.    As Listeners, participants in the Empathic Listening workshop fairly universally felt much relief NOT to have to guess at the other person’s feelings and needs. 

I know that the philosophy and practice of Empathic Listening will stay with me as a useful alternative in other situations. I really appreciated that Jane McMahon (certified NVC facilitator) organized this event. It gave me the opportunity to connect meaningfully to a variety of interesting people. 

If you want another fantastic article about the relationship of coach/facilitator to client from the Symbolic Modeling perspective, this article is worth a read.

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If you are interested in learning more or wanting to practice, please get in touch with me at andrea@connections-at-work.com. 

Acting Congruently in a System Your Values Don’t Align With

It is hard to do.

Acting congruently has been a long time interest of mine. The early influencers were Virginia Satir, and Gerald Weinberg (who studied with Virginia). Later as I learned Non Violent Communication and Clean Language, I broadened the number of tools and skills I could carry with me in my work with organizations. There are quite a few angles to acting congruently, but in this instance I am referring to your values and your actions being aligned.

Miki Kashtan, a Non-Violent Communication expert, posted her evolving thoughts on ‘Why Patriarchy is Not About Men’ and what we can do about. I posted several years ago my experience report of an all day workshop with Miki and she is not only an amazing facilitator, but an amazing human and writer.

Miki says we need to stop paying exclusive attention to the individual actions (of others) and start to measure the degree to which we take action to change or affect systems we are part of. We need to act congruently with our espoused and actual values. To change up the patriarchal system we live in we need to push ourselves out of our own comfort zones.  Her writing is about societal systemic issues and more importantly about our personal agency for change, when our values do not align. But it can apply just as well to organizational contexts.

Do you have the courage and ability to say so (or ‘No’) even when you feel uncomfortable:

“No, I won’t participate”

“I need X”

“In this context, this does/doesn’t make sense to me’

 

There is no shame in keeping in the umbrella of financial stability, and there’s always a way to be more congruent in your life and work choices. It might involve enrolling others, asking for help and getting coaching. Recoiling, rather than speaking up isn’t one of them.  Following is an example of a principle I stand by when looking for my next consulting work that emerged from having learned about congruence over the years. 

I have left the big-agile organizational transformation coaching business because I do not believe in imposed coaching.  It isn’t that I refuse to coach in a larger organization, but I won’t have a central agile department as well as other placement agencies or prime contractors sending to me to client teams that do not want to be coached.  When I can be a participant in a Setup process prior to engagement, I will be able to choose whether I am a good fit for a potential customer or team.  The Setup I describe is geared for agile coaching and includes links to ‘Systemic Modeling’ Clean Setup / Clean Scoping from which it is adapted.

I didn’t always have this principle and had gotten into incongruent situations several times. Since I stepped out of my comfort zone to align my values to my work life, I can live comfortably with myself, even though I cannot ‘see’ the effect of that on broader systems of coercion. 

And always looking to stretch my learning, I very possibly will gain skills later that will allow a team that is not performing to be coached congruently even when they did not invite the coaching.  I’ve got a Clean Language colleague Jacqueline who does that with an individual who is not performing. It could be well adapted to a team.  

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Update 2020: Written in 2017, I have largely held to this principle. I did take employment internally with one company for about 14 months. There was no middleman and I was sought out for the position, rather than being hired into it.

On Hiring An Agile Coach, How to Setup for Success

Hiring agile coaches is still very much a standard practice. Many organizations hire a cohort of coaches spread around the organization to help teach, train, and lead the teams towards their specific goal of agility (usually related to: better quality products delivered in a shorter increments).  There are indeed many benefits to agile coaching in the right circumstances (i.e. the team wants the outside help). The most critical time for ensuring success with a coach starts before the engagement – the pre-contract setup meeting in which current state, obstacles, and expectations are shared.  The team or its leadership asking for a coach must reflect on its current state, the state of the product (direction or strategy for the future), the dynamics of the team, external factors, the governance and software development processes, and its main points of pain (quality, speed, effectiveness – ROI). The team needs to have a sense of where it wants to focus its improvement so that it can become more responsive in its delivery of high quality software. It will hire a coach accordingly.   In a general sense, the team will have reflected enough to know that – with respect to agility – it is 

• stuck in one or more patterns, that prevent quality or productivity, or general effectiveness. 
• needs additional clarity about specific goals; and ways to reach the goals.  
• has either communication or motivational issues which require individual or team coaching
• wants to own the change….and the results

Given the above, the setup meeting I envision will encompass the following two topics: Goal Setting and Investment Thinking

Goal Setting: The coach and coachee (e.g. leadership and team) generate a common understanding of the specific goals as well as the skills, training, and facilitation needed of the coach to reach those goals. 

Goals should be measurable.  For example, if code quality is the burning issue preventing frequent delivery of features, then a coach versed in quality issues, software craftsmanship and Test Driven Development (TDD) will be suitable. The goal might be to reduce escaped defects by 50%.  Each agile coach has her own ‘book of knowledge’  on topics in the following areas (not an exhaustive list):  team dynamics, psychology, communication, organizational learning, management, agile methods (e.g. Scrum, XP, Kanban), processes and tools, systems thinking, software development, product ownership, lean startup, technical practices (e.g. TDD, ATDD, CI/CD), and scaled methodologies (e.g. LESS, SaFE, DAD).  It is important to find a fit that suits your situation well.  Find out more about the coach candidates and their strengths.  Broadly speaking, we can divide coaches into process coaches, technical coaches, and leadership coaches (focusing on communication and motivation) – but all coaches will be versed at a high level in many of the listed areas and have depth in a smaller number of areas.  

When needed, a coach should be able to call on other coaches in the organization to fill in any gaps.  For example, an agile coach focussing on process and methodology should be able to find assistance with CI/CD – DEVOPS expertise and bring in a short term trainer to fill a gap on the team they are coaching. A technical coach who is less comfortable with running retrospectives, should be able to ask someone with that experience in team facilitation to fill in.  The coach should be able to measure the goal and help you achieve it.

Investment Thinking: The coach shares with potential sponsor/hiring manager of the agile coach the ways in which they and the team will need to invest in the coaching. 

 If this step is skipped, you will encounter many bumps.  It is not uncommon for there to be some resistance to coaching involving change.  Many times it is due to pre-existing schedules and deadlines that are said to be ‘fixed’.  It can be due to fear that some might have of losing their jobs.  If we assume that ‘learning’ is the biggest impediment to a transition to agile, and that learning takes time, and we know that ‘there is no time’, no coaching will help. A coach running behind the busy people telling them what to do, just in time, will also fail.

Agile coaching involves the team learning new habits, and communicating in different ways about the work. Initially there will be knowledge transfer through training; knowledge acquisition (cementing the classroom knowledge) will come through the hands on work.  Doing is believing. A team that is willing to drop their own resistance and invest in some new ways of working together and communicating together will succeed. Management must support this. 

A coachee (leadership and team) will benefit most from a coach when they can recognize and verbalize their own resistance patterns and be open to talking about it.  A good coach will help them recognize these patterns early on.  Any team undergoing change will first experience a dip in productivity before the gains begin to take hold.  The timeline of a coaching intervention will be heavily dependent on the context, culture, and the size of the team.  Expect to have the team spend some portion of their work on learning and improvement.  Expect to experiment, and learn from failing too. This is learning.

General Principles of Coaching

If then, the initial improvements and goals are agreed to; management is invested in its own and its team’s ongoing learning activities;  and the skills of the specific coach are aligned to the desired improvements, the coach will come on board with a higher likelihood of success. The very best coach will seek to minimize the touch time with the team over time, and leave them in their own best state for learning on their own.   

The coach will be a powerful observer whose general stance will be to keep the team on track and to help them stay accountable to each other.  Although the coach will often wear the hat of a trainer and facilitator, she will, as much as possible, apply the general principles of coaching, namely:

• A coach focuses on the agenda of the coachee (the goals and improvements they wish to achieve). The coachee decides which goals or problems to work on, not the coach. The coach can help them discover what they want most.
• A coach uses powerful questions to generate new learning. The coach does not teach or advise, but asks questions and listens.  During coaching, the coach will help the team by facilitating sessions to find out more about the goals and areas where the team is stuck.  Many questions will be asked and orient the team towards finding solutions.
• A coach encourages action. The coachee develops his or her own action steps, rather than waiting for assignments of the coach.
• A coach supports change. A coach follows-up to support personal learning, growth, and change.

The reason we want to see general coaching principles applied to agile coaching is quite simple:  a team will feel more ownership, and the coach will be helping the team to generate its own best way forward.  Specific skills and knowledge of the coach can and should be brought into the mix when absolutely needed. However, it is much more powerful for a team to become a learning team, not reliant on the coach for spoon feeding answers.  A coach can help the team feel confident in its own choice, or steer them to select a new option if the first choice is not in the team’s best interest.  Only when the team is stuck, unable to think of options – should the coach provide an answer.
It is no wonder my recent tweet got so much attention.

There is so much work to do to teach people how to learn on their own again. It’s an art they have somewhat lost in the top down style org

This is what using the coaching principles can add.  If you have read “The Goal”, by Eliyahu M. Goldratt, you will understand the power of these principles.

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This post was written from the vantage point of my own prior coaching experiences, many of which did NOT work out or align in the best way possible.  I have just rolled off what I hope is my last ever gig in an organization where agility is mandated and the teams do not genuinely request the coaching.

In the coming year I will be investing in Systemic Modeling training with Caitlin Walker who has achieved major cultural turn arounds in organizations seeking change with as little as 9 days of training, spread over a year with off and on remote coaching after that. I credit much of my thinking around the Setup process described above to her ‘Clean Setup‘ technique.

To hear an account of the effects of Systemic Modeling coaching, watch this video.  This type of work inspires me, and I hope that in the very near future, I can find engagements to do exactly this sort of intervention.   I am not giving up completely on agile coaching, but I will apply the above Setup criteria to whatever opportunity comes my way to ensure I am not ever in the position in which managers and leaders feign wanting the coach in a mandated agile program and then fail to invest in the coach when the coach is present.

Capital One – Can We Dance together?

<rant> I want to share my user experience trying to update my address on my business account with Capital One.   This is a bit of a customer-journey anti-pattern…

I recently moved, so I wanted to change the address associated with my Business checking account.

First, I logged in online to the business side of the bank hoping I could change the address online.  I looked at my profile where the address is shown. It only gave me an option to phone the bank, so I did.

After waiting at least 20 minutes, I got a person who said, that I had landed on the wrong side (personal banking).  I had to call a different toll-free number for the business. So I dialed the number she gave me: 1-888-755-2172.

Again I was warned of long wait times. I waited, but while I was waiting the automated teller voice insisted on verifying my identity through SSN/EIN in combination with the pin code I must have set up when I set up the account.  I failed to recall the correct PIN, and the automated voice signaled that I would ‘need assistance’… so I continued to wait for a real person.   Eventually the person who could provide ‘assistance’ came online, but she said I was not on the business side after all.  [I had had a sneaky suspicion that I had been re-routed without being notified]

I was really losing my cool this time.  She remained very professional and calm.  She asked me what number I had dialed. I told her. She said, ‘Yes, that is the external business number.  I am not sure why you ended up with me.’  (must have been the incorrect pin attempts) ‘But, we have an internal business number I can put you through to.’   I said, ‘Well please try, but I am beginning to doubt that I will ever be able to change my address with you.  Perhaps I should just change banks.’   She said ‘I am so sorry’ again.    I waited again, for a very long time.

I am really frustrated by this experience.   If Capital One could even do something as SIMPLE as providing an email where I could send my updated VA Articles of Incorporation document which has the correct address – they could put the request into their processing queue, and I would be happy not having to experience:  Over an HOUR of waiting with the same lobby, tinny, incredibly boring music, interrupted every 2 minutes with ‘We are continuing to experience high call volumes.  Your Call is Extremely Important to us. Please continue to hold and an Associate will be with you in a moment…’

Capital One – please treat the user experience as an end-to-end process and don’t optimize for the components in the middle.  Training your phone reps well is all good, but doesn’t really add that much to my experience when I can’t get my address changed in under ten minutes.  

As I end this post, which has been written while I’ve been on hold, I have finally gotten the address updated.  I did insist that the rep notate the exact path of what happened, and forward it on to 1.) content managers for the profile/address change page and 2.) phone call routing admins who can maybe change the routing  when one is unable to authenticate on the business side – so that one lands with the business anyway.
Let’s get this system working.  And please adjust the on-duty call staff to be able to accommodate the demand on the system.  </end rant>

Listening for Metaphors in Interviews

Courtesy of the Kansas Historical Society

Here’s what I listen for when I interview: metaphors.  I use metaphor-listening to draw some tentative conclusions about a person’s thinking. I do this out of habit from the skills I’ve developed as a Clean Language coach.

Here are some metaphors used by a recruiter in a recent interview:

‘raw shootout’ to describe the competitive coaches market,   

                      literal meaning of shootout: “a decisive gun battle”

‘running you through the gauntlet’ to describe the customer interview process 

literal meaning:  “a former punishment, chiefly military, in which the offender was made to run between two rows of men who struck at him with switches or weapons as he passed”  

‘put in a pipeline’ to describe what happens to me next

literal meaning of pipeline: “a long pipe, typically underground, for conveying oil, gas, etc., over long distances” 

I soon developed an image of a big filter entering the ground, where I and other ‘resources’ who had survived duking it out, and harsh interrogations would be dumped into the delivery mechanism to fuel that Big Agile industrial complex.

These metaphors do not align with my values.  The interviewer was clearly not aware of his own metaphors.  There were no other metaphors that described an alternate reality or an alternate mental model in that interview. I do not judge, but I do notice how I feel and react. 

I am learning the realities of big placement companies with big revenue numbers that lack focus on what really matters:  the connections that people make with each other to gain trust, build alliances, create great products, and instill humanity back in the work force.

Agility is harder than you might think without this.  Connections do matter. And so do contractual relationships which need to be built on a foundation of trust, transparency, and a healthy does of shared values.

What do you listen for in interviews?

Gratitude and Hopes: My 2016 and 2017 in review!

I am grateful for so much in 2016 and have many hopes for 2017 as well.  Here are some highlights:

 

An Ending and New Beginning: I have ended a 29 year marriage and begun a life of economic and emotional independence.  

Our marriage certificate from 1987

The marriage began in a far away place, was sustained as we built a family, but faltered as the kids became adults, and I ventured into a mode of self discovery, growth, learning, and coaching.  I am sad it couldn’t last through that change. And I am grateful that we both finally acknowledged our need to live apart.  Grateful for the years we did have together, even the difficult ones.

 

Vision, Action, and Results: I started my own business – Connections At Work, and have been coaching leaders, managers,and teams at Fannie Mae  as an independent contractor.  I’ve had some amazing testimonials from a few clients this year.  Here is one that came to me in a New Year’s email from my dear friend, Kathy Kidd:

“Getting the chance to know you has been one of the highlights of the year for me.   Your generosity, kindness, enthusiasm, and passion for making the work world a much more human and connected place makes such a difference.”  

I am proud of this!

 

Courage: I am more bold and audacious with my clients now, not simply teaching or supporting the agile and Kanban core competencies and practices, but reaching for the most effective experiential learning opportunities I can offer that will make a difference in how people connect, communicate, and build things that make a difference.  It is really a sort of mindset training – a way to influence people in how they think, solve problems, collaborate – and I love this work more than anything else.

 

Learning, Growth, Exploration:  In 2016, I also had 3 amazing trips. In January of 2016, I went to Santa Barbara and gave a talk on Clean Language to the Santa Barbara Lean Agile Meetup group, visited with a second cousin there, and then drove up the coast to be with Clean Language experts, James Lawley, Penny Tompkins, and Sharon Small for 10 days. That was a huge highlight of my year and truly helped sustain me throughout the rest of the year.

In April, I went to Boston – to the Agile Games Conference and the Mob Programming Conferences.  There I ran a session of Featureban game – a game I’ve been using a lot to teach Kanban concept of flow and limiting Work in Process.  I learned this game because of two leaders in the Kanban community who invented and socialized the game.  I subsequently joined the Agendashift community online (thank you Mike!) – for additional surveys and tools to help me in my consulting work and eventually met both Karl Scotland and Mike Burrows (see pic below) on my third trip of the year.  I much enjoyed the Mob Programming experience as well – getting me a bit farther back to my programming days – seeing how to get the best knowledge from the group’s individuals into the code – collaboratively.  I also got to visit my mother’s childhood home in Newton.  Memories!

The third trip was to Edinburgh, Scotland to run another Clean Language workshop at the Lean Agile Conference.   I met up with some European friends

Agendashift Worksop with Mike Burrows and Karl Scotland

for the first time and was also able to visit with the son of my Santa Barbara second cousin – (that is my second cousin once removed), who teaches Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh.  I am amazed that I am able to connect with interesting members of my more distant family on the same trips as my conferences! I am truly blessed!  These were not the first such ventures, and hopefully not the last either!   It was, like the others, an amazing conference too.

This year, I also invested in two workshops given online by some wonderfully inspiring women. Lisette Sutherland’s Work Together Anywhere Workshop and Leslie Zucker’s Deliver Workshops that Bring In Clients. Both online workshops were well thought out and delivered flawlessly and I took a lot away for my ever growing toolkit.

 

Self-reliance: Here’s something surprising. In 2016, I returned to coding and built myself some budgeting and tracking software that makes my life so much easier, especially with my business. I am so proud of that. And while I was at it, I learned how to do it using Test-Driven Development.  I had had this goal – to not just know ‘of’ this hugely important agile practice, but to experience it first hand. And I did that! 

 

Resilience: In between all of these things and work, I was able to clean out a substantial amount of accumulated stuff of 30 years. I have pared down by getting rid of 90% of unneeded stuff to make a move out of this house possible. I feel proud of that.  Letting go requires a lot of emotional resilience.

 

Hard work: I power washed the pool deck, the front walkways and the large wood deck behind the house. I put waterproof sealant down on the deck as well.  Only way I got through that was listening to interesting podcasts at the same time. 

 

Self care: I started seeing a chiropractor on a regular basis.  This has been a godsend for my back and physical well-being.  

 

Reliability:  In 2016, I supported my daughter in her dream to leave corporate America and start her own business.  She runs Christie Bailey Fitness now, and is coaching other young women, and very active in social media – now with 10 thousand followers on Instagram.   She is a top-five contender for bodybuilding.com’s spokesperson of the year contest and will be flown to Boise, ID, then on to Los Angeles this coming week for the finals, interviews and lots of photo shoots.  It’ll be exciting to see what comes from this experience.  I am proud that she has the courage to pursue her dreams and to not let negative things or economic uncertainty get in her way!  This is inspiring. (update on 1/7/17 —-> SHE WON!)

She and I (and my ex) have tried the best we can to support my other child, who is taking a path that is slow, unintentional, difficult, bumpy, and very far from a path that leads to economic independence…. The good news is that this child is working full time at a hospital ER as a technical aide. That gives me a little hope, and yet the night shifts and day sleep can be detrimental to health and certainly that makes taking even 1 college class challenging.  Video-gaming takes up most of the rest of the waking hours for this child. Any information anyone has on rehab for gamers – please do share – even if I can’t make force this child to acknowledge the addiction – at least I will be equipped with more information.  Further attention to the mental and physical well being of this kid will form a significant part of my effort no matter where I am or where I go… I am glad they both can rely on me, and I can support them in the best way I know how – through love and belief in them.

 

For 2017 hopes and wishes: What I would like to have happen in 2017? 

 

I would like pay exquisite attention to my own health and welfare, so that I can get my other goals accomplished!

 

I would like to reach out more frequently to ask for help from the amazing coaches I know.

 

I would like to make every week that I work include one or more of my mindset related experiential trainings.  

 

I would like to add new clients to my business.

 

I would like to design a logo for my business and publicize more about my success and techniques.

 

I would like to submit proposals to teach at new conferences and meet ups that I have not yet attended.

 

I would like to write more blogs and collaborate on a book with Sharon Small.

 

I would like to go back to Liverpool and train in Systemic Modeling with Caitlin Walker.

 

I would like to be even more supportive and find resources for my second kid – especially with respect to the gaming addiction (universe, please send me advice!)

I would like to start exploring moving to Europe – what would it take? Could I find work there? What are the visa hurdles?

 

I would like to explore selling my house so that when the time is right, it can be done quickly and effectively.

 

I wish everyone a wonderful year ahead, filled with whatever it is that YOU would like to have happen in your life! Thanks for being with me on my various journeys and do stay in touch! 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Temenos Retreat – A Journey of Change

View from Kayser Ridge log cabin

Temenos

Temenos is a retreat experience created and inspired by the life work of Siraj Sirajuddin, who is also my personal coach. Siraj has been using the Temenos retreat format in his work with organizations that are undergoing change.  This past weekend a group of 5, including Siraj, headed up to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, to beautiful mountaintop log cabin called Kayser Ridge that is used throughout the year for various sorts of retreats.  The group itself was not formerly connected through a work setting – we had all chosen to join in this experience to 1.) Learn Siraj’s techniques for facilitating group change through experiencing them as a group and 2.) Explore our own life journey and our own dreams and visions for the future of our individual work

Backing up a bit, let me explain a bit about the concept of this retreat. Temenos means container in Greek.  The container can be thought of in this context as the space, energy and interactions created between people. A marriage is a container. A group at work is a container. A set of people on a retreat is a container. Just use your imagination to think of all the containers you step into and out of in your daily work.  The significance and usefulness of this concept lies in the acknowledgement and respect given to the container while contributing to the development of its potential.  What I mean by this is that by ‘naming’ and using the word ‘container’, we have consciously acknowledged that we are more than loosely networked individuals – we have purpose as a group and goals to reach.  While we are in the container, we give our full attention to its purpose and growth.

As a change agent sharing this technique, Siraj both observes the container and participates within the container. Siraj moved in and out of these two roles, guiding the container and modeling the techniques for us to practice and learn.  On the retreat, Siraj was mostly inside the container – as he modeled the activities and responded to others as a participant, but at times he would stop us and say he was stepping outside the container to give us the meta-level view of what he was observing about our container. As a change agent, practicing the meta-level view of observation of course requires an extra level of thinking and abstraction. And even purely just as a participant, the listening required during the entire weekend (11 or 12 hours each day) was intense.

A short blog can’t possibly do justice to the experience of the Temenos retreat. However, I would like to share some of the techniques and learnings.

Check In

This was our ‘entry’ mechanism – a familiar round of introductions by each member of our group. We shared briefly our inspiration for coming and hopes for the session.

Introduction

Siraj gave an introduction to the timeline for our work and introduced us to his big-picture model for change agency. Suffice it to say that within the introductory framework, there was something called Personal Vision. To achieve personal vision, one starts by creating an Influence Map, which we did next.

Influence Maps

Influence Maps are pictorial representations of our life stories. Each person independently reflects and draws the events of his or her life that they feel compelled to share. The maps can be depicted in any way and with text if desired. When everyone is done, we take turns telling our life stories. Each person in our retreat took 1.5 to 2 hours for the sharing portion, including time for some open questions at the end.  You have to experience this to know – but what happens is that a web of incredible emotional, intellectual, and social connections is built between all the members of the container. We found not only during this exercise, but emanating from this exercise over the course of the weekend, that connection points between us spanned experiences of pain, growth, struggles, places, relationships, and much more. One person commented at the end:  ‘It is absolutely riveting to realize how little we know about other people.’

After completing the maps, we stepped outside the container to briefly record our learning from this exercise. I noticed

• Listening is a form of respect and is an art and a discipline.
• Influence Maps involves intense storytelling of a very personal nature. These create empathy hooks between people and connect the space between the members of the container.
• Small changes in awareness of the person that sits opposite you have a large impact on how you interact with them in the present and the future.
• Later presentations are more intense – I believe this is due to the slow build of safety in the container – that people feel more able to share more about their past and think of things they might not have initially depicted on their own maps. I like to say of this phenomenon: ‘the connections become thicker’.

Clean Slate

The next exercise we did was Clean Slate. Clean Slate is an essential element of the change process. It combines a look back over your past and a hard look at the present. So here is how it works. Each person answers first this question: How have, in the past, one or more of the ‘container’ systems you have been in failed you? You answer this with 5 or 6 examples and then continue with answering this question: How have you failed these container systems? The group reassembles and shares the results… This process clears the air through acknowledgement and forgiveness and allows you to move into a better pattern. In some organizations Siraj has coached, the organization has benefitted from this cleansing activity so much that they have implemented variants of ‘Clean Slate’ on a regular basis (similar to say a retrospective) with incredible success.  My learning from this section was entirely related to the second question and how it interplays with the dysfunctions described in my answers to the first question. I was able to explore my own accountability as a player in the ‘containers’ that I perceived as having failed me.

Personal Vision

After Clean Slate, we went on to draw our Mandalas. Mandalas are picture/symbolic representations of our future. How do we see our personal future in a  picture without words?  Each drew and we followed with presentation, comments and feedback. At this point, the container was so resilient and comfortable for everyone that I sensed a vested interest by each participant in the future vision of each other person. This aspect of the retreat was extremely intense for that reason.  As a group that had JUST come together, that did not know each other well, we were able to bond over the network of shared past-history story elements to appreciate fully the future visions and positive outcomes for each other.

Compelling Shared Vision

The next step break up into pairs to create a picture of our Compelling Shared Vision. In an organization this would pertain to the organizational container represented by the people doing the drawing. In our case, we paired with people we knew from our retreat without an organizational context, but we still came up with amazing shared visions of a future that we might support each other with. We brought forth all those shared personal connections from the Influence Maps to weave a new tapestry for the future. These maps combined the personal and the shared into one.  It was a little hard to get started since we are not related to each other through a work environment, but we did achieve beautiful shared visions anyway. Each team of two shared its drawing and explained it to the others. We ran out of time to then create a shared Mandala which would have represented our more global shared vision for all four of us. You can imagine how this might be useful with an executive leadership group in an organization.  This was very powerful sharing and visioning.

At this point day 2 was almost over and some people had to leave early. We wrapped up by exploring the process of ‘exiting’ a container and re-entering a different container. Based on the changes we experienced in our ‘retreat’ container, how would entering back into our ‘family’ containers be difficult or different and how would we ease that process.  This discussion helped us understand the impact of change on the surrounding environments and how other containers could benefit from our changes, but only if respecting the new (container) – the one we were entering back to.  My take away from this and the whole weekend in general was that the web and sphere of influence is complex. It is an interaction of containers with each other, of a container with its participants, and of the participants with each other within a container. All of these interactions are dynamic and changing over time and over space.

We also covered some more advanced concepts of Siraj’s work:

• attributes of a container (too many to mention and we only covered the surface of each)
• typical archetypes (influencers in service of the container) in organizations

Exit

We each checked out by summarizing our appreciations to each person and wondering how we would absorb all of this into our professional and personal lives. It is really the beginning of a fascinating journey of change.  We will stay in support of each other and reconnect through social media.

To my fellow participants, thanks for a wonderful experience!

To readers who want another participant’s view of this retreat, please read this blog by Peter Stevens, Scrum Coach and Trainer!