How to start making the impact you want (Part 2)

The Real Crisis Facing Our Industry

In the 15 years I’ve spent working on Agile transformations, I’ve met hundreds of Agile coaches. I know the work you do is incredibly valuable and more relevant than ever. You foster connection. You unlock creativity. You catalyze change. 

All of those things are still desperately needed, no matter how many posts you read on LinkedIn about how Agile is dead. 

The real crisis I see facing our industry isn’t about layoffs or framework flame wars. The crisis I see is a collective lack of confidence.

But I believe we aren’t done yet. We have a lot to give. We just need to get our mojo back.

Creating a Virtuous Cycle

The relationship between happiness and success is the inverse of what most people think. As author Shawn Achor puts it in The Happiness Advantage “Happiness and optimism actually fuel performance and achievement” – not the other way around.

The great news for those of us who’ve felt discouraged and beat up by the challenges of our industry is that we can use this knowledge to our advantage and shift the direction of our careers. We can step out of the vicious cycle of frustration, eroding confidence, and underwhelming results and step into a virtuous cycle of positivity, growing resilience, and outstanding performance.

In the previous post, I wrote about using daily habits grounded in positive psychology to create a positive presence and make a bigger impact as a coach. In this post, I’ll share some tangible ways to get started designing your own experiments.

Starting the Day Differently

I’ll start with a situation perhaps you can relate to.

I am not a morning person. My whole life I have struggled to get up and get going. My brain doesn’t turn on before I’ve had my coffee and definitely not before 9:00. 

Most of my career I’ve worked for global companies, so this often means early morning meetings to accommodate various time zones. I would get up at the last responsible moment and barely get my computer powered up in time to not be embarrassingly late.

But the whole time, I’d be groggy, irritable, and distracted as I tried to glance at my email and see what fresh hell was waiting for me while half-heartedly paying attention to the conversation.

I did this for YEARS until I started learning about coaching presence in my coach training.

And then I realized what I was communicating when I showed up like that for my clients and colleagues.

Best case scenario, they were also zoned out and didn’t notice. 

Worst case – they felt disrespected and undervalued by me. 

In either case, my presence in the meeting provided no value. Not to me, and certainly not to them.

So what did I do? Well, part of the problem for me in hating mornings was that I felt I never had enough time to do things that would help me feel alert and centered.

The solution was combining two powerful ideas. Neither one required that I get up any earlier.

First, I learned from positive psychology that positive emotions have a powerful effect on our well-being, not to mention our performance. When we experience joy, love, curiosity, serenity, and so on, we are more open to a wider range of ideas. Being open to a range of ideas and being flexible are very good things for an Agile coach!

So I knew I needed to find a way to sneak some positive feelings in alongside my morning coffee. But where could I find the time?

The second idea comes from Agile 101. Break it down. What’s the smallest shippable increment of a good feeling I could deliver to myself before my first morning meeting?

I started experimenting with spending 5 or 10 minutes doing something I loved before my first call. It could be a few minutes of meditation, reading a poem, playing music, or eating breakfast with my kids. As long as I slowed down for long enough to realize I was enjoying myself, that would do the trick.

And guess what? When I started doing this regularly, I noticed a real difference in how I was showing up in those calls. Instead of immediately getting irritated, frustrated, or feeling stuck, I felt calm, relaxed, happy. And I stopped taking things so personally when people rejected my suggestions or advice. I could see other options…just as the research said I would. 

When Agile Meets Positive Psychology…

So you might be thinking, well, I don’t have time for any of that. How can I possibly find enough time to do something I love before work? 

I’ll just remind you of what you’ve no doubt said to a team you’re coaching. Make it smaller.

You know you can deliver a lot of value in small increments. The point isn’t to deliver all of it. The point is to find something small enough you can try and then see what happens. Learning is the important thing, and we learn by experimenting!

So let’s say tomorrow you test out this idea and magic happens. Amazing! But like any habit or new practice, the hard part is making it stick. Luckily, as Agilists we have great tools for doing this, and we’re going to put them to great use.

On Friday, January 26 I’m hosting a live workshop where we’ll design our personal roadmaps for thriving together, building on what’s already working well. And we’re going to get some momentum going by planning our first happiness sprint together. 

Sign up using this link. Hope to see you there!

Before you go, I’d love to hear what ideas this has sparked for you. What’s one thing you could do before your first call to create some positive emotions? Post a comment below to let us know!